HR, Party of One with Eileen Lee

Who said HR doesn’t like to party? All those HR conferences are in Vegas for a reason. Welcome to the first installment of HR, Party of One, Lattice’s series covering people teams who are doing the most — all by themselves. 

“The only way to not lose passion is to have fun doing the work,” says Eileen Lee, Human Resources Director at Icon Media Direct. Being on a team of one leaves little room for fun and games, but Eileen finds ways to keep it a priority, and not just for herself.  

Ensuring employees have space to pursue their passions and opportunities to help each other is the special sauce Eileen spread throughout this interview. But she also sprinkled some secrets: how to nail the CEO-HR relationship, how to get rid of the stigma that HR carries, and her go-to ChatGPT prompt for payroll exemptions. 

^{Editor's note: this interview happened before Eileen started her new role at Icon Media Direct. The discussion in this Q&A pertains to her career leading up to and during her role as head of people operations at Pathrise.}

First things first: How did you end up in HR?

I'm one of those people who actively chose to be in HR — I didn't just fall into it. I used to be an entrepreneur and owned my own business in senior home care for about 10 years.

But I really wanted to support organizations and show their employees that they did appreciate them. I wanted to be the messenger, who is there to support employees with resources, but also show them that organizations aren't as negative as some would think. We really do the best we possibly can with the resources that we have.

What did you know about HR when you started out, and how is that different from what you know now?

I didn't know there were so many subsectors of HR. I very much focused on talent acquisition because of the nature of the industry and how turnover rate was really high. I didn't know about employee engagement or total rewards. The larger the company, the more diversified and the more siloed each of these departments, but they all have their purpose. 

It doesn't matter what you call these departments, they all have the same goal and they're trying to achieve the same mission.

What is something that people don't realize is your responsibility?

Everything — there's so many things. I felt the pressure in that question. 

A lot of employees expect me to have an answer for them immediately in regards to any kind of issue that they're having, whether that be with their manager, the role in itself, or pay. They have a hard time understanding that HR is their advocate, but we are not the ultimate decision makers. We are the ones that are providing the context in order to get those decisions made.

What’s your typical day-to-day like? Is there even such a thing? 

No, I get that question a lot. Every single day is different. The only thing that stays consistent is the first hour of my day is dedicated to async, emails catch up, and then the end of the day is dedicated to closing out, responding to last-minute emails, and prepping for the next morning. 

Everything in between is really up in the air, and it also depends on the size of the company. At Pathrise, at our peak, we had about 115 full-time employees and 450 consultants, so every day looked very differently because I was directly supporting 115 employees, and indirectly all of our global consultants. 

At a smaller startup, it might be more consistent where you have your meetings with your specific department leads or you're focused on a specific project, one at a time. So it kind of just depends.

Do you feel empowered as the only one managing so many different things? 

I think I'm the only go-to person when it comes to that, right? So I find empowerment, especially in feedback, taking away that stigma that HR typically has within an organization and creating an open door policy where people feel comfortable coming in to talk to me, not just about complaints, but about what we're doing great and how the company has helped them. 

I quite enjoy building these relationships with employees within the company as well.

The only way to not lose that passion is to have fun doing the work.

Are those relationships the key to overcoming the stigma of HR?

One hundred percent. It starts with treating people like how you want to be treated and bringing an empathetic perspective, but also understanding that employees are humans and we all have things going on. 

Yes, work is extremely important, but there are so many other components within one's life that we have to take into consideration. In the simplest of terms, it’s treating people like they're human.

Do you ever feel isolated as the only one tasked with undoing that stigma?

Yeah, absolutely. Sometimes you do feel like you're on an island by yourself, but that's what you sign up for essentially. You are the representative of the employees, you are their spokesperson, you're their messenger, and you're there to try to make things more efficient and easy so they can do their jobs productively.

When you’re on that island, who do you lean on for support? 

My CEO. In all the startups I've worked in, I’ve had the privilege of reporting directly to the CEO and had a really good relationship with the C-level executives and department leads. 

So depending on what's going on, he's going to be the first person that I am going to rely on. But I get a lot of feedback from department leads as well, and managers, so I really lean on everybody, but in order to get the yeses, that's going to be the CEO of the company.

The CEO-HR relationship is challenging for a lot of people, but you’ve nailed it. What’s your secret? 

Being open, honest, and transparent with whatever feedback you're collecting. It's really important that the CEO is aligned with what the expectations are for culture, and that comes in the form of defining values employees need to have in order to succeed. That’s the foundation.

Also, explaining to the CEO that any kind of feedback is better than no feedback. 

At the end of the day, understanding you're not always going to please everyone, but the goal is to try to accommodate the majority, and if there's anything else that we can do for the outliers, we can do that. So aiming for perfection, but knowing that you're not going to reach it is a very realistic motto to have.

What keeps you grounded when you're overwhelmed?

That no one is going to die, honestly. I know it's a little bit morbid, but I come from the senior home care industry — so as long as nobody is in the process of passing away or in a situation that could lead to that, everything is resolvable and fixable within time.

And I constantly ask that question to our department leads and executives: Will someone die if we don't do this by yesterday? And they're just like, “Well, I guess not.” Okay, great. Then let’s put together a realistic timeline for this.

Hypothetical: You get budget to bring on another team member. What would their job be and what’s their biggest impact?

We can always use more help, right? Because you're so involved in everything that has to do with people. There's the fun stuff, and the employee relations stuff, so being a department of one has taught me to be very versatile. 

So after hiring someone, I would ask where their interests lie. I’d divvy up responsibilities and include areas of interest so there's some enjoyment in their role — I think it's really important to have fun at work.

Fun has meaning, it makes the day go faster. It makes you feel pleasant, and you want to associate that with a job that you're at 40 plus hours a week. Sometimes people forget you get into the field because you have a passion for it. I think it's extremely important to not lose that, and the only way to not lose that passion is to have fun doing the work.

If you could work on a larger team, would you? Or would you miss flying solo?

I think I go back and forth. The last five years have been so much of me by myself. I'm very used to doing things the way that I do them, creating my own schedule. 

But working with a team has so much value because you have different perspectives. Sometimes you get to a conclusion a lot easier after discussion and collaboration, and then you're also not the lead of every single project, and that would be a relief. 

Selfishly, being able to disperse the responsibilities has its peaks, definitely. But I love the fact that every single day is super busy and it goes by so quickly. So, pros and cons, both.

You love being busy. Is that a requirement for a team of one? 

Not necessarily. They would have to be okay with it. What it takes to be successful in a department of one role is to be comfortable just working by yourself. You're the one that's ultimately going to be making the decisions. You're the one that's going to be creating things from the bottom up, and you're not going to have perhaps a sounding board at all times. 

Obviously, there are going to be people within the organization that you can speak to about specific projects, but that's just something that you're going to have to be very okay with, is having quiet days where you're collaborating just with yourself.

When you left a team to work by yourself, how did you adjust? Did it come naturally to you?

I think you're always going to suffer from some sort of imposter syndrome, but you just have to really hone in on the skills that you've developed. I've been in HR for the last 16 years, and yes, I still get imposter syndrome. ChatGPT is my best friend because it reassures me that what I'm thinking is in the right direction. 

What’s an initiative or program you're proud of pulling off by yourself?

When I first joined the team at Pathrise, my onboarding experience was basically just an Asana checklist that I had to complete within two weeks. And because I had previous experience in a startup, I knew what Asana was and how to use it. 

But we hire a lot of people from higher ed, and they're probably not familiar with any of the tools that a startup uses. So they're going to look at this list and think, how do I get through all of this? 

So I was really proud of putting together a very robust and complete orientation training for all of our new hires. Instead of a checklist, we had an orientation to go over all the general information so new hires didn't feel so overwhelmed. They were guided through the entire process of what they were supposed to do, and met with the appropriate people. 

Within the first two quarters, we hired about 50 employees, and our satisfaction for onboarding went up by 30%. It came together really quickly, we were kind of building the plane as we were flying it. I still think back on that and get the feels every time someone brings up, “Remember the culture handbook that you put together for us?” 

It's just nice to hear feedback like that — I didn't realize at the time I was building it that it would be so important and so memorable for everybody who joined the team.

What is something you wish you had more time for?

Everything. I really wish I had more time to review offerings, benchmarking, and employee perks. Reevaluate our performance review cycles. Look at different platforms so we can do more cost savings. 

Everything, everything. Nothing is ever perfect. Everything can be more efficient and be better.

Speaking of savings, what’s a life hack you wish you had known about sooner?

ChatGPT. I didn't start using it until about four months ago. I still remember to this day how happy and giddy I was when it answered a research question for me about employee training statistics. Previous to that, I was researching a lot. 

Here’s an example. We’re a remote team, so we have employees in about 39 states, and every single year I had to look up the exempt thresholds for everybody's salaries in every single state. Now I can just type that into ChatGPT. I would have to schedule a week to do those exempt threshold checks. 

• Use Eileen’s prompt: "Can you give me the salary exempt thresholds for 2025 of all 50 states? Please insert information in a table by state."

What is it about Pathrise that makes a team of one suitable? 

It's the culture. Everybody we've hired has been very helpful and empathetic. It’s the nature of the roles that we hire for as well. Everybody is so open to helping when there are questions, it doesn't matter what team you're on. 

I've never seen a team that has been so open to sharing and helping and setting time aside, — even though everybody's bandwidth is full — to help with whatever question it is. You just pop it in Slack and they say, “Yeah, let's put 15 minutes on the calendar to hash this out.” 

Culture comes top down. It starts with the co-founders and then how they allow department leads to run their departments, and that trickles down.

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