Why can’t we all just get along? (or the art of being nice)
I work with two of the loveliest people (hi Lois and Laura) and they always make you feel that nothing is a bother for them. This, in turn, makes me want to help them. Simple. So why is this so hard for people to understand? In the course of most people’s working life they will be hassled. Shouted at and belittled and, for some customer- facing staff, there are even more serious situations. Unbelievably, at Transport for London there were 1,400 assaults on staff in 2010/11 and this is a reduction from the amount the year before!
Although most of us won’t face anything as bad as being physically assaulted it can be easy to remember that, in HR, we are dealing with real people with real problems. For example, I have often seen managers complain that people are getting stroppy over the fact that their pay is wrong, forgetting that is how people pay their bills and, of course, you can never really know people’s financial situation. One particular time sticks out for me where I had one senior HR manager mess up on someone’s pay which saw them get only half of what they should be getting. The manager’s feeling was that the member of staff should be able to cope on half pay which would mean the manager not having to confess her mistake and instead just adjusting next month’s payroll. Had she spoken to the person concerned (as I did) they would have discovered that the staff member had just moved house, was flat broke after stumping up a large deposit and really needed the pay she was owed.
I try to work with a customer service mindset, not just treating others how I would like to be treated but using the phrase “what sort of person do I want to be” to influence how I work. In HR we often have to deal with difficult and sometimes heartbreaking situations and dealing with these issues in a sensitive manner can make all the difference to the employees involved and often results in a better outcome all round.
The other side of being a nice person is that people will want to work with you – we all know horror stories about people who have had bad service in shops and won’t go back to them – we in HR must make sure we give the customer service to all our customers (and that includes those that are off with bad backs but posting pictures of themselves on Facebook doing somersaults, those caught stealing red handed).
So try and be a Ms or Mr Do-As-You-Would-Be-Done-By and see what happens.
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