Inside SHRM’s expert hotline service answering 50,000-plus questions from HR pros each year

Any people pro who has wished for a Batphone-like service to call during an HR emergency is in luck.

Well, sort of. Batman won’t be on the other end of the line. But HR pros with SHRM memberships get access to a group of experts who can answer just about any question thrown at them. The service, called Ask an Advisor, is staffed by a team of 20 who boast an average of 18 years of experience in the profession. Each year, the service fields more than 50,000 inquiries. SHRM members can send in 15 inquiries per their 12-month membership subscription.

“I would say that the HR knowledge advisor service is more like an HR hotline,” said Liz Petersen, manager of SHRM’s HR Knowledge Center. Petersen leads a team that conducts HR-specific research, and compiles resources for SHRM’s 340,000-plus members. The Ask an Advisor service is a key part of her team’s work.

“It’s a contact center for our members, who are mostly HR professionals, to call us about anything work related, anything HR related, and we can help them with research, get them some data points, talk through an issue, just be another peer to them.”

Petersen served as an HR knowledge advisor at SHRM for more than 12 years, before stepping into her current role in 2017. Prior to her career at SHRM, she was an outsourced HR manager, serving several small- and medium-sized businesses across several industries. Her career in outsourcing proved invaluable for helping her frame her feedback based on more objective information rather than pulling only from her own experience as an HR pro, she told HR Brew.

“Having that experience of dealing with so many different industries and so many different work cultures allowed me to really see past the ‘this is the only way to do things’ mentality,” she said. “Which sometimes, if you go to one organization or in one industry, that’s all you know, which is great, and you really know it well. But in this position, you have to look at things not necessarily by, ‘What have I done in the past?’ We have to look at it from: What’s the compliance concern? What are the risk issues?”

At your service. The Ask an Advisor service fields questions from members across all industries and sizes, but the service receives the most inquiries from HR practitioners on small teams, including some who are their company’s sole HR representative or professionals who are in remote jobs and may feel uncomfortable approaching a colleague. The most common questions asked via the service, according to Petersen, typically revolve around compensation and compliance, including the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) and ever-changing state leave laws, administering payroll, and overtime compliance.

Petersen’s team also has to provide speedy guidance about world events while, or soon after, they happen.

“It just depends on what’s going on in the world right now,” she said, adding that “as soon as an Executive Order happens, everybody’s like: ‘What does this mean to me?’ And so we need to quickly figure out, what does it mean to employers, and find resources to help them as soon as they’re created.”

When responding to inquiries, Petersen’s team must balance providing relevant, tailored guidance while steering clear of offering legal advice. The team often focuses on sharing common practices by employers in similar situations, including the pros and cons of a specific approach, and ensuring that their answers are backed up by research and resources. As an example, if an inquirer asks about handling an employee who broke their arm, an advisor would respond with resources about laws that cover workplace injuries.

“So we’re still helping. We’re just not going to be able to interpret it to that member’s specific scenario,” Petersen explained.

From fax to chats. The service has significantly evolved from when Petersen first joined SHRM. “When I first started, we were faxing responses to members and taking photocopies from books from the library,” she said, adding that it was considered impressive when advisors could respond to an inquiry that same day.

Now, as tools like AI search engines can provide answers to questions at near lightning speed (even if the accuracy of those answers is questionable), Petersen feels the pressure for her team to keep up. The team leverages a myriad of ways to support members, from live chat, phone calls, email, and more. While it might use AI to assist with research, the team isn’t using the technology when responding to inquiries.

That said, there’s also an advantage to being a human on the other end of the line, Petersen notes.

“The biggest thing they need right now is that human touch of information,” she said. “Just communicating and having somebody who’s maybe experienced a similar situation, or has heard of a similar situation, is really helpful.”