“You can’t use that word. ‘Love’ can’t be used when talking about the workplace.”
That was the initial response when Bianca shared with an HR professional that she wanted to draw on bell hooks’ framework of love for a professional workshop.
The startled reaction was understandable. HR professionals are often trained to reinforce workplace policies, manage risk, and maintain objectivity and emotional boundaries. Within an HR context, love can sound risky, inappropriate or incompatible with professionalism.
But what if love at work is not about boundary crossing, forced emotional intimacy, or inappropriate relationship structures? What if love is a disciplined professional practice? In “All About Love,” bell hooks defines love as a “combination of care, commitment, knowledge, responsibility, respect, and trust.”
We believe love offers HR professionals a human-centered framework for building cultures of dignity, belonging, accountability and repair.
Why Love Matters in HR
Employees do not arrive at work siloed from the challenging realities of the world around them. Many are carrying the weight of real-world problems, including grief, fear, caregiving responsibilities, financial concerns, and the effects of social and political uncertainty. The expectation that employees should leave their personal lives at the door can be unrealistic.
In higher ed, HR professionals support people working across different identities, disciplines, departments and levels of institutional power. Staff, faculty, administrators, student employees, and contract employees experience the same institution very differently due to their own lived experiences and positions on campus. Meanwhile, higher ed is facing financial pressures, organizational change, political scrutiny, and uncertainty. Love does not resolve these challenges. Rather, it can shape how HR professionals respond to them. Love asks us to consider not only whether a decision is compliant or efficient, but also whether a decision or action honors people’s dignity, conveys respect, recognizes power, and creates the possibility of trust, connection and accountability.
Love Requires Boundaries and Psychological Safety
A love-centered workplace is not a workplace without boundaries. Love must be practiced through consent, equity, accountability, and a clear understanding of power. Because workplace hierarchies influence what employees feel safe sharing, care should never require or force personal disclosure or emotional intimacy. Employees should be able to choose whether and how to be vulnerable without fearing that their choices will affect their professional standing.
Employees are also not “family.” Family-based language can obscure organizational hierarchies, undermine work-life boundaries, and encourage expectations of loyalty or sacrifice beyond the reasonable responsibilities of a job. Colleagues can offer one another genuine care, respect, and support without relying on family dynamics.
Love is not passive kindness. It is a strong practice of empathy and justice that helps HR professionals recognize inequity, address harm, and protect the dignity of the people they serve.
Love also requires psychological safety. Employees should be able to ask questions, acknowledge mistakes, express concerns, challenge decisions, and report harm without fear of retaliation. In practice, this means transparent decision-making, respectful dialogue, clear expectations, safe reporting processes, and meaningful accountability when harm occurs. Understood this way, love is not passive kindness. It is a strong practice of empathy and justice that helps HR professionals recognize inequity, address harm, and protect the dignity of the people they serve.
Bianca’s Story: Love as an HR Value
Love has always been both a core value and a lived practice in my life. Even my last name, Zamora, holds “amor”— “love”— at its center.
Throughout my HR career, I have experienced love through mentors, colleagues and supervisors who remained invested in my personal and professional flourishing. I remember being in my first professional role and sobbing in the breakroom during my first heartbreak. A supervisor found me and offered comfort when grief followed me into work. I also remember the deep love I have for a colleague who helped me prepare for an interview for my dream job and another who asked me to serve as make-up artist for her Zoom wedding during the pandemic.
These moments did not make us less professional. They allowed us to build relationships rooted in authenticity, vulnerability and trust. I was reminded of the broader power of these relationships while moderating a panel of Latinx LGBTQ+ corporate leaders. Many described love as central to their leadership journeys. Love helped them cultivate mentorship, build networks of care, sustain resilience, and advocate for more equitable workplace practices.
I experienced the personal stakes of love as a professional framework during a difficult moment early in my career. After disagreeing with a workplace decision, I responded to my supervisor with anger and accusation. I was ashamed and embarrassed by how I had acted. I recognized that unresolved childhood trauma had been activated, moving me first into a fight response and then into flight. I feared that I had damaged our relationship beyond repair and wondered whether I should begin looking for another job. Ultimately, I took responsibility for my behavior and acknowledged the pain I had projected. I shared that my reaction had emerged from a deep childhood wound. My supervisor responded with remarkable care: “It’s okay. We will get through this.”
My supervisor’s response did not excuse my behavior or eliminate accountability. Instead, it made genuine accountability possible and created a path toward greater honesty and repair.
Because I was met with care rather than permanent judgment or retaliation, I was able to take responsibility without being defined by my worst professional moment.
Love asks us to acknowledge our impact, change our behavior, and remain committed to growth, both our own and that of others.
Still, I have seen how the word “love” can create discomfort. Several months later, I shared this experience during a workshop on love and accountability. One participant questioned whether I should be leading the workshop after having made such a mistake. Their response surfaced an important tension: Can someone who has caused harm speak credibly about love and repair? Yes. Practicing love does not require perfection. In fact, our capacity to make mistakes and cause harm is precisely why accountability and repair matter. Love asks us to acknowledge our impact, change our behavior, and remain committed to growth, both our own and that of others.
This is the kind of love I believe belongs in the workplace: not love without boundaries or consequences, but love as a reciprocal commitment to dignity, accountability and the possibility of repair.
Six Ways to Practice Love in Higher Ed HR
“Bringing love into the work environment can create the necessary transformation that can make any job we do, no matter how menial, a place where workers can express the best of themselves.”- bell hooks
The following practices are inspired by hooks’ definition of love (defined as a “combination of care, commitment, knowledge, responsibility, respect, and trust”) and provide practical starting points for HR professionals.
1. Care
Care begins with genuine attention. Rather than superficially asking how someone is doing, make time to listen without pressuring them to disclose.
- Conduct regular check-ins during one-on-ones and team meetings. Consider asking: “How are you, really? What or who has been bringing you joy? What support might lighten what you are carrying?”
- Use different methods to determine how employees are feeling, such as Zoom chat questions, anonymous polls and pulse surveys.
2. Commitment
Commitment extends beyond an employee’s first day. Love means continuing to show up after the first impression fades and difficult weeks arise.
- Consider how you consistently show up and what practices you embed on a regular basis. Ask: “Where have I offered support once but not sustained it? What support would I have valued during my own difficult professional seasons?”
- Keep reminders to check on people who ask for help. Follow up to determine if they received the support they requested and if there is anything else you can do.
3. Knowledge
Knowledge and wisdom are not determined solely by tenure or position. Newer and more junior employees often notice what others have learned to overlook.
- Do a routine check with the following questions: “Whose knowledge is routinely taken seriously, and whose is dismissed? How can I demonstrate that another person’s wisdom is valuable?”
- Create ways to hear all voices in the room, including roundtable sharing, anonymous ways to share, and offering one-on-one spaces to hear ideas from individuals who might be adjusting to the culture or are new and learning how to use their voice.
4. Responsibility
When harm creates rupture, love requires accountability. This means acknowledging our impact, making meaningful efforts to repair harm, and allowing room for mistakes without excusing repeated harmful behavior.
- Consider what actions you can take to create accountability in spaces: “What would a loving and accountable response look like the next time I see power operating harmfully in a meeting, one-on-one conversation, or campus forum?”
- When addressing harmful behavior, consider power imbalances and institutional power in your response.
- The most important part of accountability is follow-through: “How are individuals held responsible for changing their behavior? Who is following up to ensure that change occurs?”
5. Respect
Respect is demonstrated not only in one-on-one interactions but also in group settings. Notice when and whether dissent receives genuine consideration or carries negative consequences.
- Ask yourself: “Who can safely challenge decisions in your organization? What happens to people who speak their opposing perspective?”
- Notice patterns of behavior that silence or diminish others. Consider ways you can demonstrate respect for those often overlooked or minimized.
6. Trust
Trust requires responsible stewardship of what others share. HR professionals cannot always promise complete confidentiality and should be steadfast about what remains private and what may require action.
- Personal information should not be disclosed casually or without permission: “Do employees understand how I will handle what they entrust to me? How do I nurture trust when someone is vulnerable with me and when I choose to be vulnerable with others? How did I feel when I was entrusted with someone’s story — what became possible?”
- Review your governance policies and be clear on what is disclosed and what is not, and what precautions are taken to keep privacy.
- Provide information and resources on confidential offices as a first point of contact when problems or challenges arise.
Choosing Love in Ordinary Moments
Love as an HR framework is not simple in the context of structural power; it requires reorientation toward dignity, compassion, connection and accountability. Love is not a departure from professionalism but a fuller and more embodied expression of it. HR professionals cannot remove every source of uncertainty or distress. We can, however, shape how people experience conversations, decisions and responses to harm.
Love becomes visible in ordinary moments: listening without rushing, responding thoughtfully to dissent, protecting what someone has entrusted to us, acknowledging the effects of our decisions, and returning to a relationship after rupture. The question is not whether love belongs in the workplace. The more important question is what might become possible if higher ed HR professionals practiced love with courage, boundaries and accountability.
About the Authors: Bianca Tonantzin Zamora (she/her), M.S., is a recognized facilitator specializing in culturally responsive leadership, employee experience and organizational transformation, and Shaila Kotadia, Ph.D., is the director of employee experience and community impact at Stanford University School of Medicine.
Share your HR success story. We invite higher ed HR professionals to submit articles on innovative programs and effective solutions. Inspire your colleagues by showcasing what’s working in higher ed HR. See submission guidelines.