What’s HR really about?
…..helping people managers manage their people
The greatest value I get as a HR professional is making a manager’s people management responsibilities as easy as possible for them. Being a people manager is a tough job. On top of their ‘day job’ they also have their team’s performance and development to fit into the mix. Team management can be a full-time job. Consider the call centre environment where the team leader’s role is not direct call handling but to guide the team and assess their performance. That’s a luxury many people managers don’t have.
How can HR professionals help?
HR often gets a bad reputation for adding to work levels, but I have recognised for many years that if I want good HR practice to be delivered by managers, I need to facilitate that through:
- Practical, meaningful and useful employment policies and procedures – removing bureaucracy and maximising value
- Training on why these policies are important and how to put them into practice
- Help and support to implement them – not doing it for the manager (that would undermine their relationship with their people) but empowerment, ‘hand-holding’, coaching and feedback
- Influencing senior leadership to put people development at the top of the agenda and to talk about it, all of the time
- Designing work and roles to prioritise employee engagement
The value of HR training
One of the key things here is training. Not just when launching a new policy but continuously. Thankfully, line managers don’t have to deal with the tricky aspects of employment every day. Training on less frequent events such as managing redundancies and handling grievances, whilst important is soon forgotten if those skills are not put into action – but managers need enough knowledge to recognise emerging issues and know when to seek help. Here, short ‘top up’ sessions are incredibly useful – as a quick reminder and refresh on what the policy says and why it’s important. Monthly lunch and learn sessions are a perfect way to deliver such refresher sessions.
At West HR we provide a broad range of services designed to enable people managers get the best from their people and be confident in recognising and dealing with issues as they arise, with the right level of support when they need it. Book a discovery meeting with a CIPD qualified consultant to discuss your needs.
