How bartending helped this chief people officer fill his cup, before filling others

Corporate America loves happy hour. And those who found themselves at the bar at Penalty Box in Alexandria, Virginia, for a post-work drink in the 1990s might’ve been served by Greg Hill.

Hill wasn’t the typical bartender—yes, he was earning a paycheck, but he was there to balance the grind of his nine-to-five as an area director of HR at Hyatt Hotels.

Social connectedness can help combat stress, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Bartending also taught Hill fundamental people skills that he has used throughout his HR career, which has found him in roles including SVP of HR at Frontier Communications, CHRO at Equinox, and now CPO at corporate wellness company Exos.

“[Bartending] allowed me to have [more] authentic behaviors all day long, not that I went out and jumped on bars and chandeliers, but I wasn’t looked at as an HR guy and that had a lot of value to me at the time,” Hill told HR Brew.

Why bartending? Hill said he always wanted to work in HR. While studying hospitality and human resource management at Niagara University in New York, he interned at Hyatt Hotels. Eight years later, he had worked his way up to a regional director of HR. While he enjoyed the work, the 20-something realized the only people in his social circle were his coworkers. His manager encouraged him to find an outlet for socialization outside of work.

“He said, ‘You need an outlet, Greg, you’re too all in’…so, I think it was a little bit of a push to go find a hobby. I don’t think he was saying, ‘Go be a bartender,’ but nonetheless, it was, ‘Find an outlet,’” Hill said.

So, for two years, Hill moonlighted as a bartender on Thursday and Saturday nights. He chose bartending, he said, because while traveling to New York City, Miami, and New Orleans for Hyatt, he saw how much people enjoyed nightlife.

“I saw the power of bartenders. I saw the power of the energy that those roles could bring to a room, could bring to a group, and celebratory environments…I just thought that was something I could do pretty well,” Hill said. “I ended up being in a sports bar where it just married a lot of different things that I was personally interested in.”

Most importantly, to Hill, bartending didn’t have anything to do with HR—or so he thought.

Bartending 🤝 leading people. While Hill didn’t get into bartending wanting to hone his HR skills, he said he learned “powerful human skills,” like active listening. Behind the bar, he had to not only listen carefully, but determine what type of listener to be.

Nowadays, when talking to his employees as a CPO, he’ll ask himself: Are they asking me just to listen, or are they asking me to help them solve their problem? “That was a great bartending trick that I learned,” he said.

The ability to connect with customers is an important skill that bartenders learn and showcase by, for example, remembering everybody’s name. (You didn’t think the lyric “Where everybody knows your name” from the Cheers theme song came out of nowhere, did you?) Hill said this skill has also helped him in his HR roles.

“If you can remember what someone’s talking about, the connectivity is real…there is something about someone coming back in and using their name or if you don’t remember the[ir] name, you know where they work…what they’re celebrating or what they’re drowning in,” Hill said. “So, connectivity is a powerful tool…and those are two really important things I continue to use.”

Finding your outlet. Hill advises HR pros looking for a hobby to ask a friend or a mentor what they think they might enjoy, and to consider their lifestyles. While bartending was right for him in his 20s, these days, hiking and exploring national parks with his wife and kids does the trick.

“[When] you truly do escape from what your job is, and I find that incredibly helpful, invigorating, and motivating, that when you do come back, you’re fully charged, motivated, and ready to go again,” he said.