HR Role

How To Keep Your Star Employees

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Leo Wolfert/Shutterstock

Most supervisors are the worst enemy for employee retention – and it may not be their fault. The fault may lie with the well-intentioned Human Resources department and their overreaching policies and procedure manuals.

A now-departed business associate of mine, Ron McQuide, once told me something that has always stayed with me: “All HR policies are just the scar tissue left over from some employee’s mistake.”

Think about what scar tissue does to a body: it can be unpleasant looking on the surface, but below the surface, it can decrease function, flexibility, and potentially cause more damage. Think about many of the policies that HR departments make their supervisors enforce. Here are some of those policies:

  • punitive attendance management programs
  • ineffective and condescending annual performance reviews
  • fault finding safety programs.

Many HR policies and procedures are valuable and effective, but just as many are not. Many of our HR systems are focusing on the wrong things, which is not beneficial to retain your star employees.

A Fact Company article by author Stephanie Vozza outlines some ideas on how to keep star employees from exiting the building.

One big idea (which is not new) is to give people autonomy to do their job. Star employees know what to do to be successful, so make sure HR policies do not hold them back.  Another idea is to keep the lines of communication open by having formal stay interviews. Ask them where you can help them in their career path.  Also, be open to their suggestions and respond to changes your employees want to make.

“Strive to create a community where people can be themselves, have a good time, bring their A-game, and employee engagement will follow,” Vozza suggests.

If more employers took Vozza’s advice, it would certainly make the executive recruiter’s job much more difficult.

Discussion Questions

Think back to a job you have had. Did you see examples where HR policies and procedures were holding you or other employees from performing at their best?

Review the Fast Company article. Create a dynamic performance management program that could be presented to a VP of HR that incorporates some of the ideas in the article.

Probationary Periods Just Got Muddy

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Uncertain stressed woman during her job interview
Photographee.eu/Shutterstock

Whose probationary period is it, anyway?

The Cambridge online dictionary definition of “Muddy the Waters” is “To make a situation confused and less easy to understand or deal with.”

Well, this is what is happening in Canadian employment law, especially in regards to employment probationary periods. An employer in British Columbia has just been ordered to pay 3 months’ pay in lieu of notice to an employee who was terminated after working for just two months, and he was on a standard probationary period.

What gives? Isn’t the point of an employment probationary period to test or trial a person’s character or conduct, which has been an accepted practice since the early 1500s? Well maybe not anymore in Canada; probationary periods just got very muddy!

Click here to read the latest legal precedent in probationary periods.

In this case, it seems the Interior Health Authority who was the employer failed to meet the test of sufficient feedback to the employee on probation. The employer only met with the employee once about his poor performance, which in fact was the termination meeting. The employer’s conduct did not give the employee any opportunity to improve his performance prior to being terminated, even though the employee was on probation.

Just because the employee is on a probationary period this does not give the employer carte blanche to terminate the employment relationship. All actions in the workplace must be reasonable: the rule or natural justice and progressive action are still required even with a probationary employee. HR Departments must ensure their probationary period contracts will be defendable in court, by ensuring proper HR practices are implemented during the probationary period.

Discussion Questions

  1. Research and identify three different employment probationary period clauses, once you have reviewed them, create your own probationary clause.
  2. After reading the attached case, develop a probationary review program which would avoid paying unnecessary termination payouts.

The Scrapper or the Silver Spoon?

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As Human Resources professionals, we are taught (and we teach others) to make sure that everything we do is in compliance with rules and regulations.  This is especially true in the areas of Recruitment and Selection.  We work hard at making sure that there are no appearances of bias in potential candidate considerations.  We apply the consistency lens throughout our human resources processes with vigorous tenacity so that we can proceed with confidence in making the best hiring decisions.

Sometimes, however, these approaches cloud the lens and we miss seeing who the best candidate really is.

Regina Hartley, a director of human resources with UPS Information Systems, provides a refreshing approach to seeking, looking at and finding the best candidate in her recent TED talk.

Click here to watch the TED talk

Ms. Hartley definitely provides inspiration to the rest of us – both as Human Resources Professionals and as potential candidates looking for future success in our own careers.

We all have elements of the ‘scrapper’ somewhere in our employment histories.  By looking for and celebrating the success of the scrapper, we open the doors to a host of dynamic and talented individuals who might be missed along the way.

Cheers to the scrappers!

Discussion Questions:

  1. If you had to make a decision to interview the ‘scrapper’ or the ‘silver spoon’ candidate, which one would you pick? Why?
  2. Identify one element from this video clip that you disagree with and explain why.
  3. Which candidate profile do you think others see you as? Are you perceived as a scrapper or silver spoon?
  4. Ms. Hartley refers to ‘Post Traumatic Growth’. What is this and how does it have a positive impact on an individual’s career success?

 

HR Practitioner & the Hiring Manager

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Working the relationship

All too often, we, as HR Practitioners fall into the trap of ‘owning’ the entire recruitment and staffing process. Is this because we want the control, or, is it because the supervisor does not want to take it on? After all, it is HR’s responsibility to ensure that the process is done effectively from the very beginning, before a vacancy is even created, to the very end, when the successful candidate is in place and working with the equally successful hiring manager.

We do all of the work and yet, final decisions are, typically, not in the control of the HR Practitioner.

Click here to view the article.

Our challenge is to find ways to work effectively with the hiring manager in order to ensure that good decisions are made. HR recruiters, as noted in the article above, need to work and understand what managers are looking for, and also, to whom they are connected. HR may have a central role in any organization, but we may not have expansive knowledge about business practices or required expertise to fill specific roles as positional or subject matter experts.

Source: Tumblr. The above content constitutes a link to the source website.

Sometimes we impose our own HR processes and timelines on to the overwhelmed and overworked hiring manager, who does not understand or appreciate why ‘our’ processes and timelines are important. If the HR Practitioner is able to make pro-active connections with each hiring manager, then there should be mutual benefit for both.

Discussion Questions:

  • Do you agree that there can be mutual benefit for both HR practitioner and Hiring Manager, if proactive connections are made?
  • What steps can you take when assigned to work with a hiring manager who is too busy to commit to ‘your’ HR processes?
  • What can you do to pro-actively encourage a positive decision-making result when working with a hiring manager?

HR and the Interview Setting

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Should HR Practitioners know what they are doing in an interview setting?  Whose role is it anyway?

As Human Resources Practitioners, we are often called upon to be the organizational role model for employee behaviour. It’s easy, then, to become the target for how to do things wrong, when the expectation is that the HR Practitioner should always be doing things right.  Right?

Why is HR expected to be perfect? It is because it is so important to organizational success!

A great example of this comes from the following article which reveals that twenty percent of HR practitioners were involved in asking illegal interview questions!   How is that even possible?   If HR cannot get it right, what are supervisors expected to do?

man with fingers crossed
dolgachov/Thinkstock

Click here to view the article.

The article states that, in some cases, HR practitioners are involved in asking questions that focus on religious preferences and practices, disabilities, and gender based issues. When this occurs, the article recommends correcting the situation immediately by addressing the question of concern and ensuring that the person being interviewed knows that the question asked was inappropriate and is not an acceptable practice. Is this solution a little bit of “too little, too late”?

The article has some great comments – many of them harshly critical of the role of HR in the interview process, including the perception that HR practitioners are ‘liars’ and, “Liars are not leaders”. If HR practitioners are regarded as liars then what does that say about the rest of the organization as represented by HR?  The article and the comments may make for uncomfortable reading and show how quickly HR can lose credibility if we do not know what we are doing!   If HR does not have credibility, then what is its value?

Discussion Questions:

  • What are three practices that HR must include in preparing for interviews?
  • How will I address members of an interview panel when they go ‘off script’ or outside of legal boundaries?
  • Have I been in an interview where the HR practitioner has made me feel uncomfortable?
  • How will I lead in the role of HR to avoid being called a liar?
  • How do I continually improve the credibility of HR?
  • What will I do to address issues of accommodation when they come up in an interview setting?