My name is Sabrina Baker, and I have a confession to make. I suck at networking. Partly because I am an introvert, I do a lot of extroverted things, but at heart, at my core, I am an introvert who would rather poke her eyes out than have to make small talk with anybody. And partly because I just never seem to think about networking or making connections until I need them. I was laid off while on maternity leave. If you want that whole story, you can go back to episode two and listen. But I was laid off while on maternity leave. This was the first time in 11 years that I had been without a job, and I had no network. I had no one to call upon who wasn't currently in the company that I had been working for. I had no HR network. I had not been attending HR events. I had not been um connecting with other HR people. I had nothing. And if I had to go back now and do all of that all over again, I would tell myself to start way, way earlier. When I then decided to start the business, feelings of loneliness and isolation set in because not only did I not have a network, I also didn't know what I was doing inside of small employers. I thought I did. I've talked about before how I thought that I could just take all of that big business knowledge and scale it down and I couldn't. And so I had no network. There was, and still is, a huge lack of resources for small employer HR. Everything kind of caters to enterprise level, mid-market level. And so I felt so lonely, so isolated, had no network, had nothing that I could rely on to try to help me build this business, do what I needed to do, and figure out what I what I needed to to be able to help our clients effectively. And I know that if you are managing human resources in a small employer, everything I just said resonates with you. It can absolutely be the most isolating, lonely role I guess any department of one could feel that way. But I do think there's some unique aspects of managing human resources that can make it especially lonely and isolating and frustrating if you are doing it alone, if you are an HR department of one or this is a hybrid situation for you. Your office manager and HR, it can feel really lonely. And if you do not have an HR network to rely on, then those feelings of loneliness and isolation are only going to continue. This is episode seven of the HR Connection podcast. And in this episode, I want to do a couple of things. One, if you're managing HR in a small employer, I want to make sure you know you are not alone. It feels lonely. I know, but I want to make sure you know that you are not alone. There are many people in your shoes, many people who are managing the way that you are. And it is our goal to connect those people. And so I want to talk through that. I want to talk through why this feels lonely, why it feels isolating, and some steps that I took early in my business and some steps that one of my employees is taking right now to build her network so that we're not scrambling when we need it, so that we have this network that we can call upon and rely upon to help us brainstorm, to help us bounce ideas off of, to just check our understanding of things. That's the power of a network. And if you are managing HR solo and you don't have that, you are missing out on so much. Unfortunately, right now, there's not many communities focused, community groups, HR groups focused on small employer. We're going to fix that next year. I'll talk about that coming up. Um, but you can still take some steps today to start building your network with the right people so that you have that group that you can go to when you're feeling lonely, when you're feeling isolated, when you just need somebody to rant to, or to run something by to see how they manage it in their organization.  Uh, we're going to talk through some things you can do right now to start building that network. So let's talk about why managing HR in a small environment can be lonely and isolating. And the first one is obvious, and it's because you're doing it alone. You are the only person who is managing all of the HR things, and so you are bouncing from compliance to infrastructure to strategy. You have no one, no one on your team to say, "Am I doing this right? Am I thinking about this right? Can we talk about some ideas?" Nothing. I remember early in the business, I was by myself for the first seven years of the business. I was completely by myself, and um, I would have to rely on talking things through with clients, or luckily, early on, I started building a really strong social presence. And so back when I first started the business in 2011, Twitter was a big thing for HR communities, and and um, I was able to jump on there and start building on LinkedIn. And so I I realized that if I was going to be able to do the things that I wanted to do, I needed to build a community somewhere and build a social network somewhere. And um, so I had those groups that I could reach out to, but again, the number of people doing that inside of a small business was limited. And so it just, it often felt like I had no one that I could really go to who understood me, understood what I was doing, understood what I was facing, understood the unique challenges that were being presented in my clients. Um, and it was really lonely to have no one who completely understood that. So that is obviously the the biggest reason and the most obvious reason why somebody managing HR in a small employer would feel lonely and isolated. The second one is that, as I've mentioned on many times before, working in a small employer is like working in a small town, but as HR, you can't be everybody's friend. You may not be able to be anybody's friend. You have to bridge this gap between being employee advocate and policy enforcer. You, you know, many people have thoughts about whether they should friend their employees on Facebook or friend their leaders on Facebook or Instagram or whatever it is. And as HR, we have to think about those things. It's easier for marketing or finance to be a little bit more friendly, a little bit more involved at a personal level. But HR has to hold this decorum, right? Because we may also have to be the one who is disciplining or letting go or making decisions about someone's work. And so because of that, we have to walk this tightrope of, can we really be friends? Probably not. How, what does that, what does that look like for us? What are those relationships look like? So while other departments of one may be lonely and feel isolated in the work they're doing, they can at least be friendly with their coworkers on a personal level. Where in human resources, we have to be a little bit more careful of that. It can happen. It can be done. We should be friends, but we just have to be a little bit more careful about how we go about it. And so that compounds the feelings of lonely and isolation. So not only are you doing everything alone, you are the only one in the department, and you have no one to even talk work with, but then you really can't create strong personal relationships with your coworkers because you have to to walk that tightrope of being human resources. And so you combine those two things, and if you don't have a network outside of that organization, then you are going to perpetually feel like you are the only person on the planet going through whatever it is you're going through. So let's talk about the value of having peer support and being involved in HR communities of people who can relate to the work that you're doing. The first one, of course, is new ideas, fresh perspectives, best practices. When I started the business, as I said, I had no network. I really didn't know how to start a business. I didn't know what I was doing. I just decided to kind of take a leap and figure it out as I went. And I got onto Twitter. I got onto LinkedIn. I started connecting with other HR professionals and I found two great benefits to that. The first one was they challenged everything I thought I knew about human resources. I think had you talked to Sabrina 17 years ago when she was in corporate, big business, and you asked her about certain HR ideas or to define how HR should work, the answer would look very different than it is today. And there's a variety of reasons for that, but part of it is, um, I had been so isolated in my corporate jobs that I had never known anything different. I had never thought differently. I had always just been told by my supervisors, "This is the way you manage HR. This is what you do." And I just did that. And when I jumped on social media and got really involved in the HR community there, wonderful HR community, um, man, was I challenged. I was really constantly absorbing blogs and YouTube videos and and, um, webinars and whatever I could about different HR topics. And almost every time would hear something that I would have never thought of or that really challenged my belief about human resources and kind of made me rethink what I thought about certain aspects, how we manage certain things. And having that community and that that part of it could be anybody. It doesn't have to be somebody in a small employer, just somebody managing HR, having that place where you can go to get some new ideas, some fresh perspectives is so, so valuable in really challenging what you think you know about human resources. In my 20 plus year career, again, mind your business on my age, but in my 20 plus year career, I have completely rethought everything. I think that human resources has evolved and the way that we are viewed, the way that we are working inside many organizations has changed. Do you have some dinosaurs that may never change? But, um, certainly I think the way that we're working, the way that we are seen as inside the business, as a business unit, that is changing. And that requires us to evolve our thinking as well. And so one of the huge benefits that you can get from a really good community of HR professionals is that fresh perspective, that really challenges the things that you think you know to be true. And just makes you think deeply about, is the way I'm doing it really the only way I should be doing it, or should I think a little bit differently? And would something else work for my organization? The other piece that comes from that is best practices. Who wants to reinvent the wheel? Or better yet, who has time to reinvent the wheel? None of us. Not one of us has time to reinvent the wheel. And so one of the things, as I grew the business, that I didn't even realize would be a benefit, but it has been a huge benefit, is the more clients we get, the more best practices we learn. Because we will have a client come in and we see all of the things that they're doing. Um, we see all of the the things that are working for them. As a CEO, I can tell you this is extremely beneficial for me to be able to see how other CEOs are leading their business, what they're doing well, what they could be doing better. And then for me to iterate that in my own business or avoid it if it's not working for them. And same thing with our HR policies and practices. When we have a client come to us and say, "Hey, I want to revamp my entire performance review process," we don't sit down and start from scratch. We have 20 other clients we can go say, "Well, what are they doing? Here's a client that's similar to them in their leadership style and in their culture. What are they doing for performance reviews? Does that work for them?" We're able to kind of pull from all of our different best practices across our clients. We don't have boilerplate anything. We don't, we do not, um, have standard practices for things like performance reviews or what benefits you have to offer. We certainly have ideas and we have perspectives, but clients can really customize that and choose what fits them. And I think that we've talked about personalization in a small business, and I think you have to do that. Um, but for us to be able to not have to start from scratch each time to have all of these clients that we can say, "Oh, this client needs a new HRIS system. Here's all the ones our other client uses. Which of these do we feel like might be good for them?" To have those best practices where you're not starting from scratch so that every time you're faced with a new problem, something you haven't done in the business, you don't have to sit down and just figure it out. You can call on a peer network and say, "What, what are you all doing for this? What are you doing around this problem? Or how are you solving for this? Or we're looking to introduce an engagement survey. Are you doing this and how did you introduce it the first time?" To get that advice and that coaching and that guidance and that jumping off point in a time when you don't have any time anyway, uh, can be so, super beneficial. And I would say out of all of the things that I could list, that's probably one of the top reasons why I think individuals managing HR in a small employer have to have to reach out and develop a strong peer network. The other thing that I believe a really strong peer network does is give you a sense of validation. There are a lot of times when business partners or generalists in my team will come into our G chat and say, "Okay, am I crazy for thinking about this this way? Am I crazy for thinking this is weird, the thing that this client wants to do? Um, or they'll come in and say they're stressed about something or they'll come in and just say, you know, I this is overwhelming to me. And to have their peers jump in and say, "Nope, you're not crazy. That is crazy what they want to do." Or, "Yeah, I bet that is stressful and I can understand how that's overwhelming." To have that validation to know that other people are experiencing the same thing that you are, um, can be really helpful in removing some of that isolation and removing some of that loneliness. When you have others who even aren't inside your business, but you know wherever they are, they're experiencing some of the same stuff, then that validation and that sense of like, "Okay, I'm not alone. I'm not insane," other people are experiencing this can be really, really helpful. Let's just be really honest for a second. Small employers are wild. There are other words floating through my head. I'm just going to leave it at wild. You have founders, many of them who are so, super creative. They're visionaries. I mean, they see things that no one else can. But man, are they poor at managing people. Just, they it's just not a strong suit. And so some of the things they come and they want to to do or they ask or ways that they're going about things, you're just like, "What on earth are you thinking or are you thinking at all?" And to have a group that you can reach out to and say, "Okay, here's what my leadership wants to do today." Can anybody else tell me if they've dealt with this crazy request? Um, it's this validation that, "Okay, it's not you. It's not you that's crazy. It's the way sometimes that leadership in these environments um go about things."  I'm sure leadership in all environments can sometimes be crazy, but it just often happens so much inside of small employers, startups, especially when they're trying to raise to profitability. They've got some serious funding or whatever it is. They're just, they can really get twisted around the wrong things or try to go down the wrong paths in an effort to build their business. And some of the people side of that gets just goes completely out the door. I saw a post recently um in a Facebook group that I'm a part of that the person came and was saying that her CEO refuses, I believe it was the CEO, somebody on her leadership team, refuses to look at resumes that don't have pictures on them. And she was an HR department of one. And so, of course, in her mind, she's like, "I think this is crazy." And risky and potentially leading to a lawsuit. But maybe I'm wrong. And so she goes to the Facebook group and says, "Am I crazy here? Am I the wrong one? Is this okay?" And of course, all the responses were like, "Girl, you are not wrong." That's not smart. That's a huge risk, right? He's setting himself up for potential lawsuit. And so that having that network that you can say, "This craziness is happening inside my organization. What, how do, what do I do? How do I do this? Am I the crazy one or is it them?" And having that group that'll say, "Oh yeah, that's totally crazy. You should not have to be dealing with that. Or here's how you can deal with that." That validation can really remove those uh that sense of loneliness and that isolation. I spent the last seven years of my corporate life before I was laid off in a call center environment. And I could write a book on the craziness, just the the stories that I have that happened inside of a call center. I would often tell people, "I think we make people weird." Like I feel like they come in and they're normal and they're great. And then after three to six months, it's like, "What are you thinking? What are you doing? What are you thinking?" And I didn't know if they came in that way or if we made them that way. But after doing this for 14 years now, I think sometimes it's the organization that can make people a little crazy. They can make them a little weird. And if you are in HR and you're managing that all alone, man, that can feel really hard to navigate. And uh really hard to do alone. And so having that network that can validate and say, "Oh yeah, here's the crazy, crazy town stuff that happens in my organization." Um, you know, sometimes our employees will sit there and chat and be like, "Listen to this one for the day. This is what happened at this place. Listen to what happened at that place." And it seems to happen everywhere. And it's nice to be able to have those people that that can say, "Yep, I feel you. I'm right there with you." So before I give you some actionable steps on how can you go and build a network, if you have no network or if your network is only people who are in much larger organizations and you feel like they can't really relate to you, then I want to give you a few things you can do to start building that network. But before I do, I want to tease something. Um, I have had a dream for many years now. That there is a community for small employers, that they're for those managing HR in small employers, that there is an online space that those who are maybe early career HR, because that seems to be who ends up in small employers quite a bit, um, or maybe they're not early career, they've just been managing HR in small environments for a very long time, a a place where they can go to and they know that every other person inside that space can relate to them. Every other person who is in that community is somebody who's also managing HR in a small environment. I had a dream to do that, build that for five, six years a long time, and finally this year felt like we were in the space to start building it. So it's launching next year in January. There's going to be so much more to come on this, but I did want to just bring it up now because if you're listening, I hope you'll stay listening. I hope you'll stay connected to us so that when we launch this, you can be a part of it. Um, this podcast is called the HR Connection.  That community is going to be called the HR Connection. And we are calling it that because we know how hard it is for people in small employers to make connections. And so we want to give you a space. We want to give you one space, one community online space that you can come to. You are going to be able to get resources, um, see FAQs, see forms, have all of these like just available resources to you to help you navigate HR in a small employer. But also where I think the biggest benefit is going to come from this is that there will be forums and pages where you can go ask your HR questions and know that every single person, whether they're on my team or another community member, every single person is managing human resources in an organization similar to yours in that 1 to 500 range, uh, will will have definitely groups that are broken out by maybe startup or growth companies or whatever it may be. So that you know you're connecting with those people. So please be on the lookout for that. As I said later on this year, I will share so, so much more before we get to launch. But we're working really, really hard behind the scenes to get this going for you. And I think that it's going to be such an amazing space and a new space that does not exist in this size. It does not exist at this size. Solely for those managing HR in a small employer. Okay, so let's talk through some things you can do today if you want to start building your HR network. The first thing that I want to mention is if you have local HR groups, SHRM, here in California, it's PIRA, but if there are local HR groups that you have in your local community and you have the time to go, I don't think that's a bad idea. If you are someone who you feel like you can go and get value out of that, please do that. What I have found in going to those groups is a couple of different things. One, as I've mentioned, the content is almost always geared towards big business and the content doesn't help me then. But two, most of the people in the room are also working in large orgs. But it's not to say that there's not value. I will still go to a meeting or my employees will still go to a meeting when there is a topic that we feel like will resonate and fit with our clients. Um, or if we feel like the audience might be a little bit more of the people we're trying to network with. So I would encourage you, if you're going to go to those things, to one, understand that sometimes the content may not necessarily resonate with you or you may have to adjust what they suggest in the content to whatever it is you're trying to do in your organization and the budget and the resources that you have. But more importantly, along the network lines, I would make sure that you are trying to connect. If you find somebody else in that room who is also managing HR in a business similar size to yours, make them your bestie, right? You want to connect with them. If they're on social media, connect with them. If they can have coffee, if they can have lunch, if you can start emailing, however you would normally go about your making a friendship in your life, that's what you want to do. So those groups can be great ways to meet large groups of people. Um, but you're going to want to dial in and find those ones who can relate to what you're doing, who fit what you are doing in the size of the organization that you are doing. And when you find them, you want to make sure that you are asking for emails or that you are asking to connect with them on social media, so that you can keep that conversation going and make sure that you can use each other as a resource when you need to. The other thing that I do think you should do is be active to some degree on social media. I know, again, a lot of people are going to say, "I don't have a lot of time." I I feel you. Um, but if you can replace just like 30 minutes of doom scrolling at night on whatever your social media platform is, and replace that 30 minutes with scrolling on LinkedIn or just even putting a post on LinkedIn that says, "You know, this is what I do. This is the size org. I would love to connect with other people who do this as well." And then be really intentional about that. Right now, one of my employees, Marie Rolston, she is actually um working with me to get the community all set up for next year. She is uh building her network right now. So she has started to post on LinkedIn, occasionally um not in any kind of massively regular interval. I'm not going to tell you you have to post every day or post three to five times a week or whatever. She just, as she has something, she'll she'll put it out there. We're going to uh make sure that we tag her so that you can connect with her. And the the point is that she's she is specifically looking for other people who like her are acting as business partners, HR managers in small environments. So Marie is a business partner with us. That means that she is connecting with um all of our clients at an HR manager level, being being their point of contact as an HR manager. And is always looking for a network that can help her give her ideas and fresh perspectives on all of those things. And that she can do that as well. And so she is kind of going through this whole process now of trying to build her network and trying to find like-minded people um that she can connect with for the community, but also just her own networking and being able to to build that in that way.  And so again, very simple. She's just sharing some thoughts and ideas when she has them, even just posts around, "Hey, here's who I am. Here's what I do. Um, and then as people respond to that, connecting with them and just like if you went to a networking group, making sure that you are kind of taking that from LinkedIn offline, getting an email, being able to email them and and kind of building that group. It can be very small, easy steps that you take um that allows you to start to build a little bit of a network. You, of course, can go search uh on LinkedIn. You can search for people in your area who are working in similar size orgs. If you have the time to do that, I would say 1,000% do that. Um, if you have that capacity, that time to go and find them and connect and just let them know when your connection message, "Hey, I'm just trying to build my network of others who are managing HR in small environments would love to connect with you." I find that people are very happy and willing to connect on LinkedIn. If you don't have a sales pitch for them, if they think you have a sales pitch, maybe they're a little resistant. But if it's just coming from a, "Hey, we're doing the same thing here. We are doing the same thing and I would really love to just connect with you." I'm going to give you a script. Um, so in the show notes of this show, there is a script that I will put that you can then put in your own words. You can use that as a connection request. So if you're connecting with people on LinkedIn, you can use it as a connection request. Or if you are networking um out and about, maybe you're at an HR event and you want to ask somebody if you could connect with them separately, to be a part of their network and be a part of their community. We'll give you a little script that you can use um to make sure that you have the right words. Because sometimes, again, for us in introverts, those words come hard. And so we'll give you a script that I often uh have kind of honed and used to make sure that I'm networking with people the right way and asking asking that next step rather than just seeing each other at this event or rather than just being connected on LinkedIn. How can we take this one step further and use each other as a valid resource because we're going through the exact same things? Speaking of LinkedIn, one of the things that I do is I will go and find like-minded people so you could go and search me. You could search for Marie. And connect with us, of course, if you are not. We would love for you to do that. But also just look at our posts, see who's commenting, see who's liking, a lot of times um you can grab people who have already built the networks that you're looking to build and kind of latch onto those. That's the beautiful thing. I think about online presence is that you don't have to build from scratch. You can go and find somebody who has that network, has that community that you're looking for, and um build from there. So you can could be us, could be somebody else that you know that has a really good presence in the small employer space. I will tell you that for me, sometimes it's finding CEOs, it's finding marketing people. They don't even have to be HR related, but when I'm going through and I'm looking at their posts and I realize that they're in a small space, I'll look at who's commenting, who's liking, and oftentimes we'll find HR professionals in there that I can connect with. And so if you have, even five minutes to just go on, see what somebody has posted for the day, see who's commenting. Of course, if you have a comment, you should share that. But um see who's commenting, see who's liking it, and then connect with those people that can be another great way to build your network. Here's the thing. The connections, the introducing yourself to people is only as good as what you do with it after. And so if you are really trying to build a network, then you want to figure out how to take that offline. You want to figure out how to have um a regular conversation, the ability to be able to text them on a dime or send them an email to get some advice. Obviously, those things take time. Just like any friendship, any relationship, you have to build that up. You have to build that trust. You have to build that camaraderie. And so if you meet somebody at a um event or you connect with somebody on LinkedIn who's maybe local to your area and they're in a business very, very similar to yours and you feel like it would be a great connection, then don't be afraid to reach out and say, "Hey, could we have 15 minutes over Zoom just to to get to know each other? Could we go for coffee? Could we um could I email you some things I'm working on?" You even email me some things you're working on just to start a conversation. Think a lot of times um those of us who work in small employers, we kind of get stuck, of course, in the work. I know there's so much going on. I know you're busy. um But if we can carve out five minutes to even do those sorts of things, then that's going to build that network because the thing is, you want the network before you need the network. You want to be able to to build it and have that person that you can just text, you can just email and say, "Hey, this is what's going on with me today. Do you have any advice?" um And then, you know, even for us introverts, the the coffees and the chats are so nice to kind of get us out of our norm. Every once in a while to see what other people have going on. And to, for me, just get out of the office for a minute um because I spend a lot of time in here. So to to be able to get out of the office for a few minutes and meet with like-minded people is is super helpful. Again, I find people are willing to do that when it's not a vendor, when it's not somebody who's trying to sell them something. It's just, I don't have anything to sell you. I want to just talk to you because we're doing the same stuff here and I'd really love to have you in my network in case we can rely on each other, pick each other's brains, whatever it is, um because we're both trying to navigate a really small space. Alone. So just a few ideas for you. I, you know, networking, I guess it's not difficult to do, but it does take deliberate action. And if you aren't willing to put in that deliberate action, then the network is certainly not going to grow. And I just don't want anybody to get into the situation that I was in where I really needed the network and didn't have it. I hadn't done any work to have it. So the the faster that you can get on building a network and having that, those resources that you can go to, then I think the better of an HR practitioner you'll be and the happier you'll be because you won't feel so lonely and isolated all the time.