Humanising HR Procedures
HR needs to lose its fixation with internal process and procedure.
Part of our training in HR is to follow procedure and the rules to the letter.
This is largely shaped by a desire to protect our organisations from legal claims.
It comes from a good place, but this mentality holds HR back, damages our reputation and frustrates attempts to build trust and better working cultures.
We’ve seen countless situations where blindly following procedure has made things worse not better. It has formalised situations that could have been dealt with differently. There is no substitute for doing the right thing, even if this means we haven’t strictly followed the rules. And anyway, rules are there to be broken aren’t they?
So we need a rethink in this area.
A challenge for HR is to humanise our internal rules and procedures. As HR people, we need to rethink our roles in first creating and then applying the procedures. We need to keep things simple, and accessible. Too many HR policies are baffling and confusing for managers and this causes more stress.
So we need to ask whether our HR policies and practices are working in the best interest of our organisations and building trust with people, or are they getting in the way?
