My HR Story

Just want to share how I got into HR...

I never really expected that I would be doing HR work. I'm an Entrepreneur and a Marketing Communications Specialist by profession while my partners are into education, sales and finance. So when we started Businessmaker Academy 5 years ago, HR was at the bottom of our list of priorities. I was busy working on the Marketing and R&D aspect of the business---giving literally my blood, sweat and tears to build our company with my partners Mark and Cindy who were working as hard.

Building the company from scratch, we went through a lot of sleepless nights working hard to survive the then shaky economy and early challenges of business. But no matter how hard we worked, we found ourselves having to work harder and harder... oftentimes having to troubleshoot, solve problems and fix the mistakes of our staff back then.

Worse---Instead of handling HR, we assigned the HR function to our then Accounting & Office Supervisor---BIG MISTAKE. Being inexperienced in HR work and having no prior training, she was not ready to take on that role. There were several occasions wherein our staff made their issues known to her, but she did not inform us of any problems encountered. Consequently, morale got low, productivity suffered, then a great divide between staff and mancomm arose. Those were dark times...

It was then that I realized that I had to take charge of our company's HR---aaack! Well, somebody had to do it.

So by default, I became the HR head. I first created a simple 5-page HR manual. Then, together with my partners, we mapped out policies, benefits and incentives. More importantly, we spent time training our new team and establishing exciting programs (please read Successful HR Project Ideas in this forum). Within a year, we managed to build a better HR system and an employee enabling company culture. Whew!

It took us 5 years to finally succeed and make Businessmaker Academy successful. Now, we can breathe and enjoy some of the fruits of our labor. We now understand: One of the key ingredients for business success is good HR Management. With our new and improved team, morale is much improved, everyone is united and productivity is high. Galing ng team!

That's how important HR is---looking back, it should have been at the top of our list: "Take care of your team and your team will take care of your company."

>>> Jhoanna O. Gan-So is the president and head of research and development for Businessmaker Academy. She is an educator, entrepreneur, marketing communication specialist and HR practitioner. Together with her husband, Mark So, she is committed to helping people improve their personal, professional and financial lives.