One of the most visceral emotions people experience everyday is during their commute to and from work. It may be the pace of traffic, the volume of traffic or the urgency to get to your destination. Driving is never without emotion !! One item that never misses is when you drive past gas stations. The board listing the prices of the moment glares at you every time you pass it.
If the prices are lower, you’re ecstatic – even it’s a few cents. If they are higher in the least, you say something under your breath, or you curse the sign and the unexplained variability from the morning drive to the commute home. It feels like you’re being held hostage. You know you need to drive to get anywhere (at least in the States), and it never makes any sense when you see the price variation. You can’t go to anyone to get an answer for the change. It just happens and you’re left to “deal with it.”
Sound like HR ??
Too often we sit at our desks writing policies and procedures that address the fringes of our employees and then enact them with little rhyme or reason. We do our best to hold people “accountable” through enforcement and inconsistency. How’s that working for you? Frustrated? Emotional?
In order for HR to bring stability through the workplace and a company’s culture, we must have consistency. That doesn’t mean being fair. It means being consistent. We strive to make EVERYONE fit all that we do when that just isn’t possible.
This week try something new that will really work. Look for the inconsistencies in how HR occurs at your company. That could be within the HR department or how things are carried out in action in the field. Take one area and get it to have less variation. Keep it in check and then find the next area. Over time the lack of variation will bring a flow to what you’re doing vs. having to feel that you must react !! Knee jerking only gives you black eyes.
I was listening to The Police this week and heard a real gem from them called Walking in Your Footsteps.It talks about the dinosaurs and how they once ruled the earth, but you can only see them in museums today. If HR doesn’t change its ways to move from compliance to integrating itself into the flow of work, we will become extinct as well.
Try something new this week !! Start removing the variation and you’ll see others outside of HR treating you differently. You won’t be like the ever-changing gas prices. You’ll be the fuel necessary to help them run better !!
This is a great blog post. Comparing our everyday frustration of the rising and falling gas prices to the new policy and procedures that HR releases frequently, or the free movie tickets HR occasionally hand out as morale booster.
In HR, if we’re going to one thing for one situation (the gas prices lowered) and then the next time we do something different for a similar situation (gas prices on the rise), we will create inconsistencies.
If possible, I’d say document processes and procedures (or if you’re lucky enough to have time, flowchart your processes and procedures) and when that situation comes up then just follow documented steps.
I loved this post!
Great post and comparison. I think you are spot on in terms of changing our approach in how we deal with people and working within the organization to make it better, rather than being the “Police” and spending a majority of our time making the rules work to eliminate people. Loved the song as well!
Spot on, Steve. I love the line about consistency! I think too many HR Pros think they have to do this or that to make it “work for her” or “adapt to him” when the long term result of that is just confusion.
I, like you, challenge HR Pros to look at their practices and see which ones are way too inconsistent and then ask themselves why…and then do something about it!
I loved your post Steve. Looking at how our behavior affects others is always useful, even if we don’t always like what we learn.
Both inconsistencies and policies hold people hostage. But so does uniformity that doesn’t make sense. Yes, it’s important for people to understand the rules and know what to expect. But it’s equally important not to treat people the same, when different responses are appropriate. Scheduling and leave are two examples that come to mind. Different people want and need to work different schedules and often this works out really well for the company. So consistently treating people as individuals, with different lives and different needs, within the bounds of the goals and operations of the company is the balancing act. It’s often not straight forward or easy.
It’s okay to treat people differently. It’s not okay to discriminate, create policies to address one person’s behavior, show favoritism that is unfair to others, and apply policies in an arbitrary way. Compassion and self-reflection always make a difference.
Great analogy, Steve. HR needs to concentrate on adding real value by bringing in substantially better people and helping the organization keep the great people they have. HR needs to focus on improving the Talent Value Chain within their organization. People would notice and understand that. You don’t inspire people through a better HRIS system or a better Perfomance Management process. You do it through leadership and adding value that moves the needle for the top line and the bottom line.
I relate more to this topic Steve by thinking of the prices related to demand. Prices go up when demand is going to be high…..and while that may not be fair to consumers, it is generally a fact of life in most markets. What this means to me in an HR role is that often times HR is forgotten about/ignored/accepted as a fact of life many times, but as soon as something goes wrong (someone quits, needs discipline, policy or procedure breaches, etc) the HR department is all anyone talks about. Not sure there is a way to level this out, we are kind of at themercy of our workforce there, jsut as us gas consumers are at the mercy of oil companies.
Steve, you are right on target! Great Post!
It is a shame that so many organizations don’t understand the difference between “consistent” and “fair”. If this is to change it will be up to us to “fight the good fight”.