After reading an open and honest LinkedIn post from Alice Hanna, People and Culture Manager at Harris HMC, I arranged a catch up to learn about how Alice and her team are leading Harris HMC through COVID-19.
Can you tell me about Harris HMC and your role as People and Culture Manager?
Harris HMC is a family owned construction business,, including general construction, fitout, maintenance, electrics, and plumbing, employing roughly 250 people. As the People and Culture Manager, I manage the People and Culture team. We help the business with everything people and culture related, including recruitment, health and wellbeing, training and development, staff events, and leadership development.
In the last 6 months, since the pandemic, how has your role changed?
Our team is very structured and well planned, and we generally know what is happening each week. Pre-COVID it was not very often that a surprise would come up in our team, but in COVID times, there’s something new every day.
My team and I have become a lot more focused on providing logistical support to the business. From helping out with mass communications, to managing change processes as it relates to COVID matters.
How we administer support hasn’t changed, what has changed is the nature of conversation we are having with people. We thought in the past we were having a lot of mental health conversations, well now we are having even more of them. We are having conversations with managers around supporting them with how to have mental health conversations with their team.
Because of the nature of COVID and the unknowns, recruitment stopped overnight and physical social events ceased. Overnight we had to come up with a new way to keep the social events going as they are a very important part of our business.
Six months into COVID-19 what has been the biggest challenge for Harris HMC?
Things have changed so quickly, and the [construction] industry doesn't normally change this quickly. The biggest challenge this has created is the rate and pace of change required to our operations as a result of COVID, that is then required to be communicated within the workplace.
Prior to COVID how we communicated in the construction industry was pretty simple, and video calls were uncommon, so adapting to that and working from home was a challenge at the start.
More recently the reduction in the number of people permitted on our construction sites has been a significant challenge for the business and the People and Culture team to administer, with reductions of hours and changes to working conditions.
The biggest challenge for the People and Culture team has been dealing with the emotional challenges that COVID presents. We are finding that people are being open, far more open than what they had been in the past, which is great. The team is being presented with some very emotional issues that our employees are experiencing, from mental health and well being to financial hardship.The emotional toll that this can take on the team is certainly a challenge and one we have to be mindful of.
What initiatives has Harris HMC put in place during COVID-19 to help with some of these challenges?
We have conducted internal webinars focusing on three topics so far - mental health, getting a good night’s sleep and resilience. Our people have been engaged in these sessions and have been open and sharing their experiences.
Each month we have picked a topic and conducted a campaign. The topics have included Mindful May, Selfcare June, Dry July, Sleep Month August, and Mental Health September. Accompanying each topic is a resource guide about the topic and how to participate.
We have been giving our managers a lot of resources to help them with how to have conversations around mental health and well being. We have also been helping them and encouraging them with how to proactively have mental health conversations. As part of our role as the people and culture team, we have been educating managers to have the courage to share with their teams that everything is not okay at the moment, it is a very challenging time. This has really helped with people starting to speak up and share how they are actually feeling.
As part of the people and culture team, we have simply been listening to people, and being mindful to not take on their problem, tell them that we care, check in on them and provide them with support through EAP.
Working from home is pretty uncommon for the construction industry, so when we first moved to working from home, we put together some resources on how to work from home, including some tips on how to prevent blending your work and home life.
As the leader of an important function of the business, what have you found to be the biggest challenge?
For me, in this role during COVID I have felt more like a counsellor than a People and Culture Manager. This has been a challenge for my team too.
The legislation has also been a challenge for me - keeping up with it and understanding it and having to constantly research it - for example, JobKeeper.
I have also found myself doing things that I never thought I would be doing in my career. At the start of COVID, when there was a shortage of hand sanitiser I was pumping it from a big barrel into little bottles so we could give them to our people!
What measures do you put in place to assess and maintain your own mental health?
I am very aware that I have to be careful not to take on the role of counsellor, and to make sure that I refer people to the right support and advice.
The work that I have been doing in the last six months has been more emotional and it consumes a lot more of your energy, so I make sure I practice what I preach. For example, when I ran the “getting a good night sleep” webinar, I made sure I was checking in and assessing my quality of sleep. I know at the start of COVID I wasn’t sleeping well and because of this I made changes. I stopped watching the news, there was just so much information and so overwhelming, everyday I was wanting to know what the numbers were. Once I stopped consuming so much news I noticed I was sleeping better.
I regularly check in on myself, I am mindful to eat healthily and to drink far less and to make sure I exercise. Prior to the introduction of masks, I was doing a lot of walking meetings. There are so many benefits to walking meetings - exercise, vitamin D and fresh air.
At the start of COVID-19 I made a very conscious decision to see a counsellor. I didn't do this because I was unwell and not coping, I did this as preventative maintenance. I see my counsellor once every six weeks or so, and I am quite open with my team about it. I let them all know that I am seeing a counsellor and why. In the past I would have most likely said “I have a doctor’s appointment”.
As a leader of other people and working remotely, can you share how to check in on your team's mental health?
At our weekly team meeting call, my team and I ask each other three questions: what are we grateful for, what are we looking forward to this week and then a general check in to see where we are at mentally.
I am also one to be open. If I am having a bad day and I’m not okay, I will call it out. Just because I am the leader, I don't think I always have to say that everything is okay, I know it is important to open up and say how I am feeling.
You have worked in some “heavy” industries over your career, is this the first time you have really seen people open up and break the stigma of the “blokey” world?
Yes, people have definitely been very open during this time. Guys typically don't talk about their mental health and well being.
I think people have been more open during this time, because leaders have been showing some vulnerability too. People are now having more deep conversations and are starting to show emotions and I am glad people feel comfortable to do that.
The resources that we have provided our managers with have assisted them to facilitate these conversations. In the past, people might not have been sure if they could talk about mental health and well being with their manager, now that their managers are equipped to have the conversation and their managers are opening up and discussing how they are feeling, people are having these deeper conversations.
Do you think that in a couple of years time once we have a vaccine for COVID -19, that we will have embedded some of these new behaviours in the construction industry. Will people continue to have conversations about mental health or will they retreat?
I hope that some of this sticks. Throughout these conversations that have been had, some deep and strong relationships have been formed and the foundations are there to continue to have these conversations no matter what the issue or topic is. I would like to hope that we are continuing the more regular checking with one another and that flexibility in the workplace remains.
The value and ongoing need for people and culture professionals within businesses is evident given that our people are now able to have these types of conversations.
What does construction look like in the future? In your people focused role where will your attention be?
At Harris HMC we always focused on leadership development and we will continue on that in future. The focus of leadership development will be around less tangible topics such as resilience and emotional intelligence.
There will also be a lot more initiatives around mental health and wellbeing, and hopefully the increased budget and time that has been given to these initiatives during this COVID period remains too.
I would like to think that as a result of COVID people start to see the “whole person”. Managers in our team now know how many kids people have and they have got to know them and see their children on video calls. It's nice for people to know more about the whole person and who they are outside of work.
This period has been really tough for people, and I have really understood the power of focusing on what you can control and not getting lost in the things you can't control. My attention moving forward be on focusing on what I can control.
Now a little about you:
What is one thing you have enjoyed about COVID–19?
Eating healthier. I haven’t been grabbing food on the run. I have had time to cook and have enjoyed cooking. Just before COVID we got a kitten, so I have been getting to hang out with him during the day.
Have you learnt anything new during COVID -19?
Legislation! Never in my entire career have I stood someone down. Unfortunately as a result of COVID I’ve had to do this.
Have you kicked any habits?
I used to go to the pub every Friday and probably have too many drinks in one night. Now if I have a drink, it's just one drink.
When we return to normal, what is one thing you are going to change in your workplace?
Keep talking about mental health, have more real and deeper conversations.