Not Just Another Human Resources Story

The HR We Need in Alaska

True HR, or what we need in Alaska, is real-world. True HR focuses on what organizations need in terms of its people and how HR can help employers achieve success—making the right hiring decisions, helping managers motivate and retain productive employees, and fairly removing the wrong employees before they destroy the morale of others. Here’s what HR can do to alleviate these issues. HR professionals can vet applicants by creating recruitment ads that draw the most qualified candidates, assess them against organizational needs, and conduct reference and background checks to spot potential problems.HR can create the skills-training programs needed to keep managers and employers working at the highest levels and can teach managers and supervisors how to best motivate, appraise, and retain employees. While employees still value basic health and retirement benefits, they also want more individualized, flexible benefits. HR can design the right compensation, benefit, and incentive programs that fairly reward high performers without breaking the bank. HR can also help senior management assess the organization’s pulse by administering employee surveys, 360-degree reviews that assess every manager, and create grievance channels that allow employees to voice concerns. If an employee deserves termination, HR can investigate the supervisor’s claims to ensure fair decisions have been made and can provide the departing employee with outplacement. HR helps organizations avoid risk with EEO compliance, safety and OSHA compliance, workers’ compensation administration, drug testing, policy creation and enforcement, and other risk management processes. Finally, HR can partner with senior management to forecast organizational needs and strategically develop the organization’s future structure—but only if senior management sees HR as a viable partner.

The Balance: Organizational Interests and Employee Advocacy

To do the above, HR needs to fairly balance employer and employee needs. Some HR rookies so eagerly strive to please management that they fail both employees and their organization; after all, management needs to hear what they’ve done wrong to make it right. Also, employees aren’t widgets, and HR serves no one if it forgets the H in HR.

When the Trust Isn’t There

When employees don’t trust HR to solve problems, they disengage, walk out the door or worse, negatively impact other employees. Further, how can management fix a problem if they don’t know it exists?

As just one example, the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission recently noted that three-quarters of those with sexual harassment allegations hadn’t brought their complaints forward. As a result, these long-buried complaints allowed anger to fester, allowed potential harassers to create problems for others even as they secured promotions, and resulted in defamation against some potentially falsely-accused employees. We see the result all over the media.

Time to Turn to HR

HR professionals often wonder why supervisors and managers don’t seek them out before problem employee situations hit rock bottom. The answer? Managers see problem-solving as their job, not HR’s. It isn’t until a capable HR professional proves his or her worth that a supervisor or manager learns to make HR a first and not a last call.

Similarly, how can HR earn a place at the table when senior executives meet to create strategy? After thirty-nine years offering HR On-call services, I’ve learned three answers for gaining trust and thus a seat at the table.

First, I have to prove I know what I’m doing. When I don’t know an answer or strategy, I need to say so and then find the right answer and strategy.

Second, my intent must be clear. I need to make it clear I place their organizational needs first—whatever the cost. For example, when I’m asked to investigate certain situations, I may suggest my client reach out first to their attorney, even if that means the attorney’s staff then provides the investigative services.

Third and most important, I, and any HR professional, need to show we “get it,” that we understand how supervisors, managers, and executives view situations. Instead of expecting managers to join HR’s team, HR needs to partner on management’s team. Finally, we need to contribute in ways that demonstrate our value.

HR’s Future

Some “old-style” thinkers believe HR departments should focus on administering payroll and employee benefits, processing hiring decisions made by others, and managing terminations, layoffs, and Department of Labor paperwork. All true, but HR needs to move beyond these boundaries.

Nothing shows the problem that results from employers and HR sticking their heads in the “HR is only compliance and paperwork” sand more than the #MeToo movement. Thousands of women and men aired long-buried painful stories, igniting anger that swept through many workplaces. Others, feeling unfairly targeted for behavior they believe to be acceptable, fought back.

Employers need HR’s help to address these complaints, many of which take aim at senior managers and others that organizations hope to retain. HR needs to do more than fairly investigate these allegations: it needs to help organizations overhaul themselves at the cultural DNA level. HR needs to make it safe for targets and witnesses to come forward, to ensure that no one is above the law and to hold managers, supervisors, and employees accountable for creating and maintaining a respectful work environment for everyone.

While harassment issues are glaringly obvious, they represent only one area in which HR needs to exercise interventionary muscle. Our workplaces, like our larger world, appears to be coming apart, with escalating amounts of workplace violence and polarized groups who shout at rather than talk with and listen to each other. A truly effective HR may be the one group most suited to help organizations address these needs.

Lynne Curry is author of “Solutions” and “Beating the Workplace Bully” and founded The Growth Company, an Avitus Group company. Curry is now a Regional Director of Training and Business Consulting at Avitus Group. She may be reached at Lcurry@avitusgroup.com, on Twitter @lynnecurry10, and at www.workplacecoachblog.com. Curry was recently named one of the Top 30 Conflict Management experts on LinkedIn.