Plain Speak for CHROs With Dr Deborah Bosley, Ph.D.

CHROPartners

Plain Speak for CHROs With Dr Deborah Bosley, Ph.D.

31:06

 

Transcript is generated with the help of AI.

Well, hello there, LinkedIn friends. We are here on, um, the 27th of August and I'm here with Debra Bosley, Dr. Debra Bosley. And we're going to be talking about plain speak today. And I think many of you are mastermind members in the CHRO community recognize how important it is to have plain speak, right? It's a part of our marketing hat. So we talk about a lot, Debra, we're about the five pillars of not just successful CHROs, but happily successful CHROs. And one of those is putting your marketing hat on. And so I'd love for you to, first of all, tell us a little bit about your background and your company and then let's jump right into some of the areas that, some tips, tricks you can give us but also like why is this so important?

Dr. Debra Bosley: Okay, thank you, Cindy. Thank you so much and thank all of you in the audience who are here to share this time together. Um, I, uh, I was a professor of technical communication for 20 some years and in the midst of working with computer science folks and engineering students, and technical writing, I became really fascinated with the concept of plain language. So I started the company, the Plain Language Group, and we work with Fortune 100, 500 companies. We work with government agencies, with non-profits. And my passion is truly my mission is I believe people have a right to understand information that affects their lives and they shouldn't have to work really hard to understand critical information. And I thought it would be interesting for you all in HR to know that the very first consulting job I ever had was I was hired by an HR person from a very large investment firm. And they were concerned about the fact that a number of their employees were unable to understand some of their basic employee information, as well as their customers and their clients. And so, when Cindy contacted me, and she said, HR, CHRO, I said yes, immediately, like, you are a great audience to talk about plain language.

Cindy Lu: Yeah, you know, Debra, um, there's... I think the marketing hat, right, is both looking at the C-suite executives, right? The people who are going, "I'm going to approve or, you know, buy into an HR initiative." And I can't tell you how many times CEOs have said to me, "I'm not really even sure what my CHRO was trying to tell me," right? And, or "I don't know how relevant it is to growing the business." Um, and on the other hand, the employees, right? We are so trained now by Amazon to everything's easy for us, right? It's easy to buy, easy to return. Um, and so as an employee, if it's not so easy for you, it, it, uh, I think it just creates a really bad employee experience. In fact, one of somebody I'm close to, when they started their new job, probably took them a day to do onboarding, a whole full day of just paperwork and reading through everything. Personally, I would have been like, "I'm out. I'm done."

Dr. Debra Bosley: Well, and I have to say, I can't stand the word "onboarding" because I'm not getting on a boat. I'm being hired. So right away we're speaking different languages.

Cindy Lu: Yeah. What were some of your personal experiences that got you into this field? And then I'd love to also just hear, um, just why you think it's so important.

Dr. Debra Bosley: Well, I actually, I want to, I will be happy to do that, but I want to start out actually by asking our audience if you all were, if we were in the same room together, I would ask you to raise your hands if you ever received anything from HR, even though you're in HR, of course, you're an employee and you're going to get the materials, where you were either scratching your head or you had to answer questions from the person sitting next to you in a different department because they didn't understand. And how did you feel about your inability to understand that information? And so if we were in the same room, almost every hand would go up because we've all had these experiences. But the first experience that I had with HR was, as I said, at an investment company. And this company was moving to Charlotte, and the head of HR came to the university, kind of wanted to talk to some of the professors because they wanted some of their people to take courses, et cetera. And she and I had a conversation and she said, "What do you think is the most important thing to think about when someone is writing financial material?" And I said, "Their audience." And she liked that answer so much because of course, that's true. You have to focus on your audience, your audience. And I learned this very quickly because I suddenly was thrown into the world of investments and finance that your audience, like your CEO may be very well educated and yet not understand the language that you're speaking. And HR folks just like every other area speak their own language. And when I first started with this investment firm, they would say to me things like, "Well, you have a PhD, surely you understand financial information." And I said, "No, no, my PhD is in English. It's not in finance. And I don't know how to speak Greek." So, so it, you know, the, the process was not just helping people learn how to use plain language because it saves time. Think about all those calls that come into your call center. People, employees asking you questions that they don't understand, and had it been, the information been written in plain language, perhaps you wouldn't be getting so many calls. But anyway, I ended up developing an entire curriculum for them, through the training, their training sat in HR, and I had a relationship with this company for many years. So I do owe HR a grant, some gratitude for recognizing how important it is to speak the same language as your audience. So I have other stories that I'll get to as we go through this conversation, but, um, yeah, I mean, HR to me, communication is the bedrock of human resources, and note the word human in human resources. And I think one of the most important things for HR when communicating with other employees is to sound like a human being, and to remember that the guy you're, or the woman or the person in another department does not speak HR language, nor does the CEO above, nor do the employees themselves in other areas. And so you got to learn how to switch off Greek and speak English, plain language English, so that your employees can understand your materials.

Cindy Lu: I think, um, something you said earlier about, um, you know, we were talking about the curse of genius, how sometimes you get to, you know, the content so well that, and we have our shortcuts, right? And we have our acronyms and things that make it faster for us to communicate with people who also, you know, speak the same language, but, um, it's not always the case with others. And what was the quote that you said from Einstein?

Dr. Debra Bosley: Oh, "If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it."

Cindy Lu: Yeah, and I have found that to be the case so many times, right? Um, or when you really dig into it, the person who is trying to explain something doesn't have a clear picture of it, and it's confusing for everyone. So I think that's a great, great quote to think about.

Dr. Debra Bosley: I also, I mean, another thing to keep in mind is that you, when you're writing, creating content, um, tell people what they need to know, not what you want to tell them, because you may have so much knowledge about X. But the employee may not necessarily need to know everything you know about X. So I often suggest start out, of course, regulations are another issue, but, so some things have to be included. But I also suggest when I'm creating content, I often start with what are the questions the person reading this is going to have about this information. So if you think about employee benefits or like your summary plan description, what is it that the employee is going to need to know, rather than my just dumping everything I know out there? Uh, and the real interesting study was done at Stanford with, uh, graduate students. And they took actually was HR material, oddly enough, or coincidentally, they took HR material and they made it very difficult for the kids to understand in like two or three categories of difficulty. And the grad students, in trying to read the most complex information, they determined that they lost respect for the writer, and they lost respect for the company, because they couldn't understand the information that they were being given. Now, it used to be, I'll say people my age, but I won't tell you what that is. When we would read something we didn't understand, we would often blame ourselves. "Gee, I'm not smart enough to understand this." But things have really flipped. And if you're giving even your employees information that they're not going to understand, it, they lose respect, can lose respect for the people providing that information. So I love that you mentioned the word marketing, because I think that almost everything HR does is a form of marketing. You're trying to get people to take action, to do something, to respond, et cetera.

Cindy Lu: Uh, and many CHROs actually have the communications, uh, department or function reporting to them as well, but they're not always trained in communications. Classic, right

. Maybe they've taken a lot of the HR work and communication, internal communications happens to fall under HR. Um, you know, I often think about, like, uh, CHROs complaining about employees who won't even sign up for their own employee benefits and it's something they want, they need, right? And then after open enrollment closes and they're like, "Well, hey, I need my benefits." And it's like, "Well, you didn't sign up." And I often wonder if there's not, uh, you know, some issues with them understanding what they should be doing.

Dr. Debra Bosley: Absolutely, absolutely. And, you know, we only have so much time even to respond to the things that are most important, most critical, health and money, you know. But I wanted to tell you another kind of story in terms of it's because it's not just the bigger pieces of information. So I was getting ready to retire from the university. And, um, I got an email from the HR department, "We understand you're retiring," and, uh, they wanted to get me to sign up for my health benefits that would extend after I left the university through the state plan. So blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, very long, very long email. And at the very bottom, it said, "If your, uh, if your benefits come, go, excuse me, if you're connected to the state retirement plan, this information is not for you. This is the information is not appropriate for you." So in other words, I spent time reading this whole email, thinking about benefits and you know, health insurance is like a huge deal. And I, at the very bottom, I discover that I'm not the appropriate audience. And so, because I couldn't help myself, I called them up and I said, "May I make a suggestion? Perhaps the opening line in the email should state who this email is relevant for or to." And they said, "Oh, that's a really good idea." And I said, "Good." I hope—no, I don't know. I didn't follow up. I don't know. But even, even in sending emails to your employees, you know, who are you sending it to? Why do they need this? Are they the appropriate audience? Are they going to understand the terms, the language that you're using? Anyway, it was, it has become an example I use in many of my presentations because I thought somebody wasn't really thinking, you know, when they sent that out. And of course then I picked up the phone, so then I'm wasting their time. Uh, in, in any case, so...

Cindy Lu: Yeah, no, it's, uh, it's very true. Now HR has to do, deal with a lot of regulations and, you know, there's the legal side where a lot of information has to be put out there. I'm curious if you could give us some of your insights around, you know, the regulatory side, HIPAA, ERISA, I mean, are there tips that you might share with the CHROs?

Dr. Debra Bosley: Sure. Well, the tips I would share would really be how to write in plain language. So, uh, I will talk about the regulations, but then I'll give you some of those tips that I think could be really just things you could do, begin to do immediately. So, uh, regulatory requirements. So around ERISA, uh, your summary plan description—and I'm going to give you a quote because I know it by heart—your summary plan description has to be written in a manner calculated to be understood by the average plan participant. And the reason I can quote that is because I was an expert. I've even had a chance to be an expert witness in a lawsuit—two of them, actually—in which employees brought a suit against companies who will remain nameless, but we all would recognize them. Uh, because they charged that the summary plan description was not written in plain language. So there are consequences, occasionally, to making things more difficult and not following that regulation. The other regulation I think that is most, uh, appropriate to is HIPAA. So health privacy, uh, covered—again a quote—covered entities are required to provide a notice in plain language that describes, and then goes on to describe what that is. There's also the Graham-Leach-Bliley Act, which is financial privacy notices, and they say the notice should use plain language, be easy to read, and be distinctive in appearance. I thought that was... I got to think about that. That was really kind of interesting. The Department of Labor requires it. So there's a lot of, there are a lot of regulations behind the kinds of information that you're giving to your employees. And, uh, in 2008, there were over 300 companies that got in trouble for not meeting the plain language requirements. So I like to let you know that there is the sort of the force of law behind it. But what's more important is to focus on the human part of human resources, that you are trying to help people get their benefits or understand their employment or learn about your, um, 401(k), et cetera, or maybe they're being hired. I'm not going to say onboarded. Maybe they're being hired and you're giving them all this new employee information and the clearer and easier it is for people to understand all that information, you'll save time, you'll save money, you'll increase profits, and you'll make people feel good about HR and the information they're getting and the company that they're working for. And again, it's about human, human interaction.

Cindy Lu: Yeah, no, that's great. Um, I know marketers have a great incentive, right, to make sure that it's clear because you're, you know, you're not going to, you know, sign up or you're not going to become a prospect. Um, there's this marketer, um, Donald Miller, who I love his tagline: "If you confuse, you lose." And if you confuse, you lose. And I think that happens so often for our employees, right? When they're looking at the paperwork that they have to go through or, you know, the compliance training that they need. We need them to go through to be the first-time supervisor kind of training. And I'm not saying you have to create like a music video to make it really, uh, entertaining. But I think just making it simple is, um, respecting their time. And that's why, you know, they lose respect for the writer and the company. If you're wasting their time, they're like, well, why would I respect you? You're not respecting me.

Dr. Debra Bosley: Exactly. Well, and again, I go back to the very first, almost the first thing I did, you know, raise your hand. We have all been on the side of the employees receiving information, maybe not from HR, but maybe, but from something else within the company, or even externally. My explanation of benefits from my health insurance is like, I go, you know, do I need eight pages front and back in order to know how much I've spent and what my deductible is? And, uh, so if you think about what content you're creating, how would it land if it was something that was important to you? You know, we are the audience for so much complicated information. We sign, we agree to things. There was a funny story of a GameStop, which is a gaming company, years ago in their terms and conditions. They put the phrase something about like, "You know, if you agree, you're going to have to give up your firstborn child." You know, then they just snuck it in one of those long, long—you know, everybody says, "I agree. I agree." Well, in fact, they agreed to give up their firstborn. And luckily GameStop wasn't going to take all their kids, but their point was made that nobody reads it.

Cindy Lu: That's funny.

Dr. Debra Bosley: Well, I've even had, um, companies say to me, "Well, no one reads anymore," as if that's an excuse for not making things clear. And I said, "We don't read so much material because we've been trained not to," because if I'm getting a booklet about, um, you know, my employee benefits and the booklet is 35 pages long and it's full of acronyms and jargon and it doesn't sound like human-to-human communication, it just sounds like a bureaucracy, uh, you know, that's not going to make me feel good and it's certainly not going to invite me to read it. Right. So, and let me also say it's not just the words. It's also the visual appeal. You know, does it look easy to read? If it doesn't look easy, then I'm likely to not. But if it has headings, if it has bulleted or numbered information lists, if there's a table of contents that doesn't, you know, look too thick, if the sentences are fewer than 20 words, so short sentences, short paragraphs, headings, bullets, using words rather than just acronyms—these are things you could do tomorrow if you wanted to, to improve your writing. But the most important thing of all in that realm too is what do I really think my audience is going to understand?

Cindy Lu: Um, it's funny, my, uh, my poor husband will send me an email with three things in it and I will always respond with one. One response to one of the things. And he's like, "I should know better than to send you an email with three questions." What's your opinion on work emails and having multiple questions in an email?

Dr. Debra Bosley: Well, you know, when somebody—the way I have a client with a bank, a big bank here in Charlotte, and he and I have this way of he'll send me

three questions, and then I will reply by putting my answers right after his three questions, right? So that's something that's simple. And then sometimes I'll highlight my response, or I don't like all caps, but sometimes he's gotten used to me just saying, "All right, I'm going to respond in all caps." But there are easy ways to respond to multiple questions, uh, and without repeating everything that's been said. So, you know, and everything that I just said earlier, these tips about sentences, et cetera, and headings, they're all appropriate for email. We all spend so much time with email that the more easily your reader can respond, the more likely they are to respond. If you make it difficult, they'll ignore it. I mean, that's still, that's just human nature.

Cindy Lu: I can imagine also with how global our world is, right? Many, many of our Mastermind members are global CHROs and they've got people all over the globe. That plain speak is something that is necessary when you're, when you get a global audience. What are your thoughts on that?

Dr. Debra Bosley: Well, I will tell you, there is lots of evidence to show that if content is written in plain language, it is so much easier to translate into other languages. You know, so there's a funny kind of example of years and years ago, uh, one of the car companies, I can't remember what it was, but they named their car Nova. And then they couldn't understand why it wasn't selling in Mexico. Well, of course, "Nova" means "doesn't go" or "can't go." It became kind of a joke. But the ability to translate content—if it's full of acronyms, if it's full of metaphors, if it's full of complex, legal language—it's going to be sometimes literally impossible. Chevy, somebody popped up on. Thank you very much. That's exactly right. Chevy, right? Um, it makes it and it's more expensive. So not only is it more difficult, but it's, you're going to spend a lot more money to get complex information translated. So plain language is a way to move information into a variety of languages globally.

Cindy Lu: Um, one last tip for the CHROs on how they can, I think most of them get it, right? That plain language is important. How can they help their employees, right? Their direct reports?

Dr. Debra Bosley: Well, I would, I mean, I know this sounds self-serving, but it's true, which is train, train the people, train your people in how to write using plain language. And the reason I say train is because the way we write has been so embedded. It's become a habit to write in a certain way. Universities actually do a good job of teaching you how to write in the most complex manner possible. And then you go into a field like HR and then you're again, you're writing in a complex manner because this is what you're expected to do. So, practice with feedback over time because you are changing the habit of writing. So one of the things that I suggest is, okay, tomorrow when you're at work or you're doing an email, think of two things, two tips that I've given you today: write shorter sentences, and use more common language and just practice because you sort of have to unlearn what you know, or maybe there's another analogy. You kind of have to flip to the other side and, and practice one, just kind of one strategy after another.

Cindy Lu: Okay. So I'm going to throw out a, um, I hear an ambulance. Is that you?

Dr. Debra Bosley: That's me. Sorry.

Cindy Lu: Okay. So I'm not going to ask you to respond right now, but maybe later in the LinkedIn chat, you can, um, you can tell me how I could say this differently. But let's just say that I'm presenting to the CFO or CEO, and I want to get budget dollars for something called recruiting pipelining. And, um, this is how I might explain it in my HR, you know, speak or talent speak. You don't have to tell me how you might write it now, but maybe later you can pop it into the chat on how you would present it. So, we'd love to get, uh, we're missing our sales numbers and, um, as because we don't have enough salespeople. And so we constantly, we're also, have a lot of salespeople who are not performing, but the leaders don't want to let them go because they're feeling like they're being held hostage, um, because they don't have anybody in the pipeline to hire right away. And so because of our poor recruiter is handling, you know, 15 different requisitions and three different, you know, countries, it's, it's really challenging for them to, uh, actually always have a salesperson ready for them. So we'd like to, you know, hire an additional recruiter. So all they can do is just pipeline salespeople and constantly have salespeople ready to be hired whenever we want to hire them so that we don't miss any revenue dollars.

Dr. Debra Bosley: Yes.

Cindy Lu: So, just an initial reaction.

Dr. Debra Bosley: Well, you know, I, I got stuck on the word "pipeline."

Cindy Lu: Okay.

Dr. Debra Bosley: Okay. So that's oil going from Alaska to wherever. That's how I think of pipeline.

Cindy Lu: Okay. So analogies aren't great.

Dr. Debra Bosley: And I would say if, you know, if you had written what you just said, I would say, "All right, that's too many words. We're going to be more concise. We're going to break that down to one or two sentences." And depending on who you're writing it to, you know, there's bureaucracy speak, and then there's HR speak. So pipeline is bureaucracy speak. But I think I mentioned earlier, like, onboarding just drives me crazy. So, I don't know. I don't know what else to say.

Cindy Lu: Yeah, well, that's good. Pipelining is not a, not a word that's descriptive of what we're actually doing, right?

Dr. Debra Bosley: Well, you know, you're kind of flowing through, but, you know, I don't know really what it means. It's metaphor and see translation. So how would that, that would not translate. "Pipeline," yeah, into any other language. I know the metaphor, the analogy would not translate.

Cindy Lu: Well, Debra, thank you so much for joining us. I loved your... yeah, I'm going to put your TED Talk link in, uh, later so people can watch it. It's really, uh, well-spent 20 minutes to, to watch that and, uh, really appreciate you sharing your knowledge and tips with our CHRO community.

Dr. Debra Bosley: Oh, I enjoyed this so much, Cindy. Thank you. And if anyone has any questions, of course, they can contact—I didn't say reach out—they can contact me.

Cindy Lu: Okay. All right. Thank you.