Jania Dammer

What really served me well was learning other cultures, learning people, and truly understanding them. As I mentioned, I was in hospitality, so I worked with a very diverse group of staff - from entry-level employees where maybe computer skills weren't there or there was no desire for them to be, where English could be a second language and they were new to this country, to simultaneously working with corporate leadership who were very polished and coming from a very different world. I found that middle ground by understanding who my players were at a deeper level - not just what is the job that they do, but who are they, what do they go home to every day, and how are they showing up for work as a result. I worked in environments where it was typical that we would serve a meal during everyone's shift for all of our staff members, and sometimes that was the only meal some of my staff members ate that day because the fields they worked in didn't pay a lot of money and they had family to support. Where I supported that was making sure that we had a good meal for them, and they were given the time and the space to actually eat the meal without standing up, without eating it over a bucket because we're busy in the restaurant, but they actually had time to take their breaks. That's where I saw HR adding value and building those relationships, and I think that served me well when it came to some tough investigations and some tough employee relations issues.

The best career advice I ever received in HR was that to be good in HR, you have to get over wanting to be liked, especially in dealing with the employee relations side. When I was very young and emotionally immature, that hit home hard. It was a big learning curve for me, because I did want to be liked - that's kind of how we're ingrained to be as women, to be the nice person, the caregiver, the good girl - and that was hard to overcome for a few years. But it certainly served me very well in creating a stronger backbone and allowing me to walk that line of having compassion and empathy while still not going overboard.

I would say to really never lose that side of humanity. It can be tough and it can feel difficult at times when you feel like you really have to be the in-between of corporate, rules and regulations and laws, and then the compassionate side for employee relations to keep people engaged, especially in a time that's so politically charged like now. I think it's very important for people in HR not to lose that compassionate side. It can be very difficult - you see a lot of repeated things, you start to feel a little jaded over the years of this person wants to take advantage of this, and this person isn't working, and all those things - but there's always something deeper, there's always something behind it. People are not intentionally or inherently bad, or wanting to take advantage. People come from all different walks of life, and that's really important not to lose that compassion and that integrity as you're moving through, because you can be challenged in HR.

Integrity and humanity are the most important values to me.