53 - Companies Without HR Departments

On episode 53 of The HR Famous Podcast, long-time HR leaders (and friends) Tim Sackett and Jessica Lee come together to discuss BTS, companies without HR departments, and whether the new COVID-19 bill will affect employment in the service industry. Listen below (click this link if you don’t see the player) and be sure to subscribe, rate, and review (Apple Podcasts) and follow (Spotify)! SHOW HIGHLIGHTS: 2:00 - Just JLee and Tim today! KD is out for this episode. 3:15 - JLee and her family have become a part of the BTS Army. BTS is a K-Pop group that has taken over the world. 6:00 - Tim loves that JLee is very tied to her Korean culture and instills that pride and love in her children. He mentions an article that discusses Norwegian families raising Korean children and discusses the nature vs. nurture argument in that context. 8:00 - Tim brings up how the article examines the racial aspect of coming into a homogenous culture and trying to succeed with all the advantages your family can give you. 10:00 - Next topic: The CEO of UK startup Octopus Energy says he has no interest in having traditional business departments like HR. His company is worth over a billion pounds. 12:20 - Tim asks “what we do without HR”? Well, Tim discovered that this company actually does have job openings in HR/IT adjacent roles but he couldn’t find any hard HR or recruiting roles. 14:15 - JLee thinks that he’s gotta be outsourcing things like HR to other agencies or companies. 16:15 - Tim was on vacation this past week and read the book The Hard Thing About Hard Things by Ben Horowitz. He said he hired a recruiter after only having 9 employees for his company. 17:30 - Tim asks JLee if the newly passed COVID-19 stimulus bill will affect people wanting to go back to work in the service industry. JLee says she understands why people would not want to go back to working at restaurants or other service type places because a lot of the draws of working there are now gone. 19:00 - JLee shares a story about going to lunch at a restaurant only the second time in the past year recently and how she felt very awkward there and didn’t know what to do while in the restaurant. 23:00 - Tim recently went to a dinner and a movie for his birthday and he noticed that the business was understaffed. He wonders when people will start to return to the mentality of getting frustrated by long waits and lines. 25:20 - What’s there not to like about Koreans? Here is Time Entertainer of the Year BTS! ---------------Jessica Lee, Kris Dunn and Tim Sackett HRU Tech Kinetix Jessica Lee on LinkedIn Tim Sackett on Linkedin Kris Dunn on LinkedIn The Tim Sackett Project The HR Capitalist Fistful of Talent Boss Leadership Training Series