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 !!
