HR, Hustle & Home Life: Michelle Keefe’s Balancing Act

[00:00:00] Hello and welcome to The Balancing Act, the show that dives into real stories of people I admire who are building successful careers while raising families. I’m Sarah Sheridan, your host, Director of Executive Recruiting and Sales with Hirewell and mom to three little ones. In today’s episode, I’m very excited to welcome our guest, Michelle Keefe.
[00:00:22] Michelle is an HR executive, mom to Brian, and I had the pleasure of helping find her current role as VP of HR at Bowes Professional. Michelle, welcome. Thank you so much. Good to be here. Yeah, thanks for being with us. Well, let’s kick, let’s kick things off here. If you could share some more about your career journey and how you got to where you are as an HR executive.
[00:00:50] Sure I kind of always tell people that I started at the bottom and I worked my way up. So I initially started doing administrative [00:01:00] assistant, executive assistant, office manager, and, you know, with those roles, very often comes a little bit of benefits or a little bit of this or a little bit of HR. And so, over time, I was given a lot of excellent opportunities by some of the people I worked with and, you know, was able to just sort of prove myself over and over.
[00:01:21] And every time I did. I, I got a new project or something else to learn or figure out. And so, you know, an example of that would have been, many years back, my CEO came into my office and he said, Michelle, we need to be in Ireland. And I said, okay, what do you mean, what are we going to do? And, you know, he said, we just need to open an office there.
[00:01:41] We need to open a telesales office. We need to start, you know, cracking into the European market. And I said, Okay, let me, let me see what I can do. So I’ve never done anything like this before. I just had to figure it out, had to start interviewing people. I think we hired 8 or 10 people right out of the [00:02:00] gate.
[00:02:00] Each one had to speak a different language for all the different countries that they needed to call into. I had to go find an office. I had to figure out what construction was going to look like. I had to understand what were benefits like in Ireland. I had to figure out how do we set up an entity. I had to work with the accounting department on, you know, figuring out tax things and Stuff like that.
[00:02:23] So just figured it out over time. We, we opened it up. We had a great success there and I still keep in touch with some of the people that I hired there, and that was many years ago, but little did I know that was going to be the first of many times I would do that over my career. Awesome. Awesome. I love that.
[00:02:44] Thanks for sharing. And just to pivot a little bit from career to more on home life, share a little bit more about your family, son, your partner. Sure. So my son, [00:03:00] Brian, is He’s almost 18 now. I can’t believe it, but he is. And my husband, also Brian, we just had our 20 year anniversary back in January.
[00:03:11] And so congrats. Yeah. Thank you. It’s no small feat. It’s not. It’s definitely not. Awesome. Awesome. And what is, we’ll say Brian Senior, what does he do for work? So, for many years he worked on the ambulance. And so, you know, when we get into some of the work life balance, you know, he very often work, he worked different schedules than I do in the typical Monday through Friday, you know, office hours type of thing, he would work 24 hour shifts or 12 hour shifts or 16 hour shifts.
[00:03:47] And then, you know, over time he transitioned and he works in a hospital. And so now he’s in a standard Monday through Friday, but that was definitely not the case for several years as, our son was [00:04:00] growing up. Wow. Okay. So you guys are managing too busy, but not always aligned schedules. That kind of leads me.
[00:04:10] I’m sure there’s many, but what would you say has been one of the biggest challenges you faced while trying to manage both kind of that high level career and the family life? Yeah, there was a seven or eight year period. Back when my son was 3 or 4 to 10, 11 or 12, you know, through those years where I traveled a ton and, you know, most of it was domestic, but some of it was international too I worked for Israeli software companies.
[00:04:41] And so that’s a long trip. There’s a lot of miles between us. It was like a seven, eight hour time difference in a lot of cases. And so, I did a lot of planning, you know, where I was lucky enough to make sure we have, you know, that we had family or friends that would be [00:05:00] able to step in and help with Brian when he was younger.
[00:05:02] Right. And we had to have people sometimes sleep over. Or come at four in the morning when my husband had to leave, you know, for work. And that’s not easy, right? Like you can’t just drop your kid at daycare at 4 a. m. and be like, see you in two weeks. You could, but you can’t. I mean, yeah, you could, but I’m pretty sure it would have different consequences.
[00:05:22] And so it was just, I always had an excel, whether it was my mom doing a pickup and a drop off. My son plays hockey and baseball. So there was always a practice or a game or a tournament or something. And just trying to make sure that there was a person at the house. He was picked up. He was dropped off.
[00:05:43] There was a meal, so they weren’t eating McDonald’s and cereal for three meals a day for a week or two at a time. So, you know, it was, it was a lot, but you just do it because what else are you gonna do? Yeah, I love that. I think a lot, it’s a lot more [00:06:00] common these days to have family units where both parents work and especially where one may be traveling or both, and I think a lot of parents are You know, looking for solutions, how to keep the house going, how to meal prep, how to get child care.
[00:06:16] And you mentioned you lived by family. Yes, most of both my husband and I’s family are within a half hour or so. Yeah, yeah, I live ten minutes away from my family and it truly does take a village, so. It’s a good support system. Awesome. And then I know there’s no like magic answer, but for couples and working parents who do have like that one who’s traveling and the other one’s still working full time, like outside of daycare, was there any tips or tricks that you found that worked or didn’t work just doing that for so many years?
[00:06:56] I mean, it’s it still goes back to kind of friends [00:07:00] and family, but I would try to set up carpools so that I didn’t always have to depend on somebody to drive my son to and from hockey practice or baseball, which was generally every day. So, you know, I would try to work that out so that, there was another family that could help us.
[00:07:17] And then, you know, when, when we were able, we would, switch off and make sure that we were, we’re helping at the same time,
[00:07:24] So Michelle, I know that you traveled a lot throughout your career as a working mom. Did that get easier over time or what was your experience with that? Yes. When he was younger, say between four and 11, it was always a lot of work to get it going, but when you’re far away and you have a person crying for you on the other end of the phone or on a FaceTime, you know, that’s, that’s tough.
[00:07:50] And so I did think as he got older, it would get easier, but then when he hit. I don’t know, 9, 10, 11. It actually [00:08:00] was more difficult because he could then take a selfie of himself crying and send it to me while I was in Israel. So I would wake up and see this on my phone. And of course, like as a mom, you can’t help but Not feel good about that when you see your, your son or your child struggling to have you so far away or not be able to call you.
[00:08:21] I don’t know why it was like that. I don’t know if it was just that he was more aware of how far I was and how long I was away and, you know, how that impacted him versus when he was smaller. It was tough, but I think he was very easily like redirected to something else. Distracted. Yes. Out of mind. Right.
[00:08:43] Now, you know, as he’s even older, 17, almost 18, he can drive, he can get himself places, he wakes himself up to get to school, so now it’s much easier to go away. I don’t have to do as much planning, I don’t really have to worry so much about him, I just worry [00:09:00] about him driving around, you know, as a newer driver.
[00:09:02] Maybe he can even cook his own meals too, take some work off your plate, right? Yeah, he’s like mastered the grilled cheese, I think. Okay, that’s good though. Awesome. Well, no, that makes sense. I’ve, I’ve heard that, you know, the older your kids are, sometimes the bigger the problems, where mine are still kind of in the very hands on stage, but.
[00:09:23] That that makes sense. So kind of to change directions a little bit as as an HR leader, what are some examples you think were, you know, being a mom, having Brian has influenced how you’ve shown up in this role? Yeah, you know. Everybody has something going on outside of work. You know, not everybody has kids, not everybody is married.
[00:09:48] Everybody’s situation is different. And I would like to think that going through what I went through, having really amazing mentors and leaders that showed me it’s, [00:10:00] okay to give yourself grace to have to leave early to you know, to take care of your family. I try to do the same thing right with with the people that are working for me, or if I’m coaching a manager who might have a situation with their employees, right?
[00:10:18] Like, give them grace as long as you have an employee who is in good standing, if you will not somebody who has a performance problem or is taking advantage of a situation like let them, let them do their jobs. They can, they can do it remote. They can leave early. They can make up the time later in the night, you know, for whatever that reason is.
[00:10:40] So I definitely try to think about the other person and what they need to, you know, what they need to be out of the office for. And that’s okay. We have to be flexible and we need to treat our employees like adults. I love that. It’s almost like you have to have the trust, but once you have the trust, I think you nailed it.
[00:10:59] [00:11:00] Treat people like adults. That’s always going to be appreciated. And then, you know, again, you, you’ve had an opportunity to kind of sit in that HR seat from, you know, being kind of generalist all the way up to executive. Have you ever had an opportunity or been in a situation where you could Build or influence a policy to maybe make it more family friendly.
[00:11:28] Yeah, you know, I have worked in a lot of early stage companies and so very often I’m helping to put different policies and such in place. And unfortunately, until fairly recently, you know, it was always like, we have to just go by with what the law says, because we didn’t, you know, in the early stage companies, you don’t always have the ability to do more, even though you might want to.
[00:11:53] But I’m excited that when we were building out our policies at Bose Professional, we [00:12:00] were able to do that. So we have a, what I think, or at least again, in my experience is a pretty, pretty great leave policies, right? So whether it’s a family leave or a paternity leave or a maternity leave. So, and employees that are in states that don’t have paid family leave,
[00:12:21] they are getting full pay for some period of time by the company and for employees that are in states that have that do have paid leaves. They very often only pay out at 50, 60, 70%. And so the company will also top them up again for some period of time. Depending on, you know, what their leave situation is.
[00:12:43] So that was an exciting, like, win, if you will, on my part when we were when we were putting those types of things in place. And, you know, again, in in my local location here today, we are in the office 3 days a week and home 2 days. So I [00:13:00] think. For me, I love the hybrid. It’s a really good mix of both. And, you know, we all again have things going on outside of work.
[00:13:08] And I just think we have the flexibility. We, we work with really smart people that are doing the right thing. And if you have to work at home, you have to leave early. You have to leave all of a sudden, like it’s okay. Nobody needs to be nervous and worry about their job. Like. We’ve got their backs and, you know, we want it to be a great place to work where people are happy to come into the office and work with us.
[00:13:35] For sure. And I love how you’ve highlighted. It doesn’t really matter. It’s not just about having kids. Everyone has something outside of work and it’s kind of like acknowledging and then respecting that. I think that’s huge in leadership. Yeah. Unfortunately, I’ve heard in the past, like, well, that person doesn’t have kids.
[00:13:52] They can stay late. Like. That’s not okay. There’s, there’s other reasons, sick parents, pets. There’s probably a million things that I [00:14:00] myself can’t even think of, but yeah, you know, again, it goes back to you hire people to do a good job and you treat them with respect like an adult and you get what you give in my opinion.
[00:14:12] Yeah, and then they act like adults. So awesome. And then, you know, I’m curious as an HR leader, what are some positive changes you’ve seen in the workplace over the years? I would say the biggest shift was COVID, right? So that threw a wrench into everything work related and I think as we have come out the other side of that kind of post COVID,
[00:14:41] I think many workplaces today are more flexible. You know, having hybrid or remote options, I think more recently, of course, we’re seeing some companies take an extreme, you know, stand one way or the other, be back in the office in a full time capacity, or we never need to go back [00:15:00] into the office again, you know, I, myself, like the hybrid capacity, I feel like it’s the best of both worlds.
[00:15:07] You know, I can be in and talk to people. And I think there’s no substitution for real, in person, face to face time, but also have a few days without dealing with any kind of commuting aggravation. And today I work with an awesome group of people and I love the time we get to spend together in the office, you know, whether we’re just.
[00:15:30] talking around the coffee machine, which is, we have a very fancy coffee machine. So there’s a lot of people always talking around it, you know, or if it’s in more organized get togethers because we’re having cupcakes for birthdays or pizza lunches or whatever it might be. But, you know, I think the bottom line is when you have employees who perform well and don’t take advantage of the company, we shouldn’t hesitate to be flexible on.
[00:15:55] On things that we should allow flexibility for. So we have employees that are [00:16:00] successful, both at work and at home. For sure. For sure. And even in the recruiting capacity, we see that a lot. We see a lot of candidates, HR candidates who understand they’re in the people function. You have to get face to face time in.
[00:16:15] But sometimes you just need to be heads down without interruption. So I, I think that’s kind of the feedback we’ve gotten for most of our talent. So I’m glad to see that works for you guys. Well, Michelle, thank you so much for joining us today. We loved hearing about your, your journey, coming up to an HR executive, raising Brian,
[00:16:36] managing travel and schedules. But before we let you go, what would you say is kind of the one thing you want our listeners to take away from today’s episode? You know, it might sound dumb, but you know, just do the right thing. Even when nobody’s looking, this is, this is an integrity thing, right? But if you’re dealing with employees, you can’t trust, you [00:17:00] have to, you know, you’re not going to be able to, to Be the as flexible as we talked about here today.
[00:17:06] And so when you have a good, trusted working relationship, it’s easier. It’s more pleasant is less stress. Right? So, but we need to also make navigating things out of the norm, a piece of cake, right? Like, we have to be flexible with people otherwise, you know, it’s, it’s less appealing for employees to want to come and be a part of our team.
[00:17:30] Yep. Cannot agree more. Well, Michelle, thank you so much for being here. Thank you all for listening and please tune in next time for more insights and managing career and family life. I am Sarah Sheridan, Director of Sales and Executive Recruiting. If you need hiring help, please reach out to me directly at the link below.
[00:17:51] Thanks.