February has been crazy busy and that is an understatement. I keep thinking that the next day will be better and it ends up being just as busy. Now I have just pinned my hope on March. Almost everyone who has crossed paths with me this month, has heard me say – “March will be better.” To the extent that they wonder what exactly is happening in March. Well, nothing is. It is just me being extremely hopeful. I realize I am rambling so without further ado, here is what my yesterday (Friday!) looked like.
I must begin with a caveat though. Not all days look like this. They are usually much much different. I will do a few ‘day in my life’ posts throughout the year so that you get a glimpse of both the busy days and the not so busy days. Ok. Now I am really going to tell you about my day. I promise.
8:30AM: Enter office. I prefer getting into work early. I try to squeeze as many hours as I can before 10am to get real work done because once the clock hits 10am, it is time for meetings, people popping into the cabin, endless messages on the internal communicator etc. In short, the madness begins.
8:45AM: Pour self some tea, light a scented candle, fill my water bottles, jot down my to-do list for the day and begin clearing emails. Yes, I am a little quirky. I also used a few minutes to download the compensation audit report.
10:00AM: Head for my first meeting. Hang around for ten minutes only to get a call that the engineering leader is running late and after multiple apologies, the meeting is rescheduled to 5pm. Head back to desk. Continue with emails and comp audit closure.
11:00AM: 1:1 with my manager
12:00PM: Meeting with a few team managers to discuss strategy for hiring, the right job family, long term and short-term solutions.
12:30PM: Head downstairs for lunch with team. This is the first day this week I am eating lunch in the cafeteria and not while in a meeting. Because we have time, we add a short walk around the block.
1:30PM: Get back to desk. Start knocking things from the massive to-do list.
2:00PM: Project#1 meeting
3:00PM: Join a meeting with multiple HR folks to socialize an idea that I implemented in the past year and check with other locations if they would like to scale it. Received positive feedback with no real direction.
3:30PM: Strike some more things off to-do list. Only one to be real. I got distracted with managers raising concerns around the predicted compensation for some team members. It is the compensation cycle season after all.
4:00PM: Project meeting to work on a top-secret big project. We spend the hour working on the workflow and feel like proud project/program managers. Wonder if I should consider a career change into product management.
5:00PM: Head to the 10AM rescheduled meeting. Leader is 15 minutes late. Meeting extends to 5:45PM vs the 5:30PM end time.
5:45PM: Head back to my cabin where my colleague with who I had a 5:30PM meeting has already begun work on the workflow. This is an extension of the 4PM meeting.
6:30PM: Another colleague joins us. He is late as he was caught up in an employee investigation. We continue to debate and discuss the product & program workflow.
8:00PM: Throw hurrays’ into the air as we finish the workflow. I race to the scanning machine and scan the drawings we made on paper. Yes, we drew the workflow on A3 sheets. I am guessing this is how all great products begin.
8:15PM: Head home after feeling extremely accomplished. I realize I am too exhausted to do anything else and my to-do list looks a lot like it did at the start of the day. I am just going to have to push it all to Monday.
9:10PM: Reach home. Eat dinner. Watch two episodes of The Magicians (would not recommend the series). Fall asleep close to midnight.
The HR Business Partner Story 