Hot HR Hot Spot - 'The Case for Doing Less in HR' by Tim Rawson

Welcome to the second Hot Spot article written by Tim Rawson, HR Manager for Travel Jigsaw. Thought provoking and interesting - please comment on this article in Hot HR.

The Case for Doing Less in HR

We’ve got a problem. An employee did something, and we didn’t like it. Something went awry last time we processed the payroll file. A manager spoke to an employee in a way we wouldn’t have. HR snaps in to action, forms a committee, draws a diagram, drafts a proposal and two months later, a new policy is ready to solve the world’s ills. Or is it?  

Here’s why you don’t need another policy. Your HR team can’t handle it. Your managers won’t read it, and your employees don’t want it.

OK. Well maybe we can have a couple. We all need a bit of certainty and an agreed ‘way of doing things’ on the key points. Recruitment, disciplinary, grievance etc. But how many policies could we get rid of? How short could we make our employee handbooks and how attractive and readable would they be as a result?

 We all have a disciplinary policy in place and it sets out boundaries of behaviour and conduct. Most companies will have a capability policy which defines how poor performance is tackled. So why on earth would we need a Social Networking Policy, or an Email Policy, a holiday policy, a drugs policy (surely being high at work is covered in the conduct policy?) or a 44 page dress code? Surely as adults we can discuss performance with employees and managers without having to write every minute detail of daily life down at every turn, only for it to need updating and reviewing constantly.

 Now, at this point I may have been tempted to bang on about how no-one needs an Olympics Policy, but credit where it’s due, Simon Jones beat me to it here.

Policies often make it harder to manage people! 

Take a look at your contracts of employment. No doubt drafted by an experienced employment lawyer. What DON’T they cover?

·         ‘Job title and duties’, (basically saying we reserve the right to ask you to do ANYTHING within reason, at ANYTIME)

·         ‘Pay and hours of work’ (which we reserve the right to change too)

·         ‘Absence’ (usually saying most of what your ‘essential’ absence policy says)

 The list goes on. Become familiar with this document, and you’ll be surprised how infrequently you need to refer to a policy. If you have a specific policy, you’ll have to prove the employee had the correct copy and that they agreed to it or had sufficient notice of the change, before using its teeth.

And lastly, if you write a policy which sets out all ‘unacceptable’ activity in a document, you are essentially saying that all other behaviour is de facto acceptable! 

Make a general statement about behaviour and standards, and the company remains in control of interpretation and application of those rules. Draft a policy on everything and we’ll all be chasing our tails forever and a day. 

The company I work for is GREAT at what it does. It doesn’t need me to tell it how to go about its everyday business. So, sometimes, the best you can do as an HR Manager is let the guys who call the customers, seal the deals, and improve the profit margin do what they do best.

 They’ll thank you for it!