Sometimes it seems that the HR world and the employee world are completely different and opposing sides, even if they meed daily in the company’s offices. There are tons of literature addressing HR specialists and a double amount of data addressing the employees, and yet it seems that this information doesn’t correlate and doesn’t make things better. A recent article published by HR News Daily speaks about 7 capital sins any good HR manager should avoid making and today we will take a look at these mistakes made by the HR manager and try interpreting them from the employee’s point of view, as if the said manager unknowingly keeps doing those mistakes, it’s your task to put a stop to them, for your own benefit.
1. The HR manager makes performance evaluations only once a year
And what’s it to you, you may ask, as nobody likes these evaluations anyway, nobody wants them and everybody fears them. Your benefit from multiple and repeated evaluations throughout a year comes from the fact that if you are a talented employee, your results contributed to the company’s overall performance and you had some good ideas to push the company forward, the HR manager should know about these achievements and evaluate talent, skills, development and engagement. And these evaluations are not only good for you, but for the company as well. Don’t be afraid to ask for more than just an evaluation a year (unless you’re the sloppy one in the bunch running away every time annual performance assessment comes to town).
2. The HR manager plays the role of the monster under the bed and the unforgiving deity all at once
Good HR strategies involve communication, transparent exchange of facts, openness, reliable feed-back and so on. Bad, sinful HR strategies can be narrowed down to the HR manager coming over the employees like a hawk, delivering a monologue about everything that is going bad and should be improved, placing some threats, bashing people around and instilling fear in the hearts of the innocents. That’s why nobody likes the HR people. If this is the case in your company, you should take a stand and openly talk about all these problems. The HR manager is there to nurture talent, support the people in doing things better, to communicate with the employees, listen to them and find solutions to all the issues. Playing the power card is one of the biggest mistakes made by the HR manager and you should try to put a stop to, not by complaining around, but by constructively making points backed up by facts, figures and other companies’ examples.
3. The HR manager takes rumors and gossip into account when evaluating
Now this one is one of the worst mistakes made by the HR manager and you should proactively try to draw their attention over this harmful attitude and behavior. The HR manager’s role is to support the human resources, to back them up, find improvement means for their performance and work to build and maintain the employees’ engagement towards the company. Hearing that John from Accountants is lazy and does a poor job should be not enough to take actions against John. Rumors and gossip are quite hard to eradicate from a company, so everybody hears everything about the others, with the usual “I work more and better than the rest of you” routine. So it can happen to you what it happened to John and this is inadmissible. Try to talk the HR manager into studying the facts, the numbers, the statistics and the concrete information on somebody’s performance, not only to sum – up the co – workers complains, gossip and corner whispers in the cafeteria. If you want to stay in that company and do a good job, this HR sin should be constructively pointed out and eliminated.
Easier to be said than done, isn’t it? Shouldn’t it be better to let the HR manager read all the specialist advice out there while you stay out of this business? Perhaps, but HR managers are also humans, just like you, and just as they can give you feedback, point out your mistakes and share their opinions on your performance, so can you.