No one disputes the fact that the medical community is selflessly serving the sickest among us on the front line of this pandemic. When it comes to our health, they are there for us. We are grateful beyond words. Then there are the grocery store workers. The supply chain workers. The teachers. All have stepped up and adapted on the fly to help us try to maintain business and life as usual. We are realizing just how much we depend on them, and they are getting some much-needed recognition.

What we may not realize is that there is an unsung hero on the work battlefront, working tirelessly behind the scenes to learn the new laws about sick leave, FMLA, and eligibility for unemployment, not to mention dealing with the top-down decisions that impact benefits and pay for millions of workers. Those heroes work in your human resources department (HR). It used to be kind of fashionable to hate on the HR department, but now many of them are working six and seven days a week to support company leadership, respond to countless employee inquiries and perform unprecedented damage control. And because of that, we should be kinda loving on them.

Overnight, HR Directors across the globe were suddenly responsible for implementing virtual work teams, designing ways to keep engagement and morale up at an impossible time and meet the new standard of daily, encouraging-but-realistic communication with everyone on their teams everywhere.

Most healthcare workers go into the medical field because they want to cure people. And most HR directors go into HR because they want to help people—and that is exactly what they are doing now.

Coaching assignment:

Send a written note or email thanking someone connected to human resources, compensation or benefits. They could use a little boost right now.