Is Policy The Enemy of Trust?

For several years, Human Resources has battled perceptions of administrative qualities characterizing skill sets. With all the developments in Employee Engagement, Performance Management, Succession Planning, The Navigation of Generation Diversity and Cultural Enhancement; how can less-than-strategic characterizations exist? Unfortunately, a few people can validate a stigma which fuels the fire of the opinionated. People like to be proven right and they will ignore 90% of the information to validate stereotypes. This way, we can disregard change and blame Executive motives when we fail to evolve.

Performance reviews will not go away, we need them as a receipt of failure in the event someone has to be fired. Allowing Executives to use their better judgement can be toxic and turning a blind eye to wrong doing could land us all in court. Regardless of the advancement of HR's pivotal role in change management, someone has to hold the fort down.

What does HR need to do less of?

We should stop using policy as a front-end strategy.

I conducted a seminar recently in which an attendee explained their organization's policy on work/life balance: Employees could work from home until their performance metrics were deemed unacceptable. At which point, they were forced to work from the office (every day).

The aforementioned policy sounds fair enough but it never works because performance metrics are not always the result of work environment. Even if employees needed the regiment of the office to keep them productive, they would fight an unwilling return to the office and move on to another company. People want to dictate their own terms.

You know what trumps policy?

Trust!

Our top performers are not concerned with minimum requirements and they only contact HR when they want to increase their stock options. Can we not agree that if all our employees ignored HR as the policy police then everyone would be more strategic. In actuality, our employees cry wolf when they fail...and then HR gets involved.

The above proving that the very people who characterize HR as administrative, force us to be.

If we hire the best people (and give them the tools to succeed) we develop transparency. In a transparent culture there are no office politics, no back stabbing and no one masking the behaviors that indoctrinated their failure.

Wouldn't it be nice if we could ALL be more strategic? Don't we all want to do what we do best?

Work can actually be fun if we are not forced disprove the stereotypes of our occupation.

Developing trust is a two way street.

Don't Forget to Remember!

Dave