The only 3 point HR plan you need?

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IMGP8686Sarah Browning shares her thoughts following a twitter conversation she had with Rachel Eden, our Coordinating Director

It started with my eye being caught by a LinkedIn article  from a connection of a connection of a connection of mine (you see how social media gives you a wide reach to people beyond your own network?) about the silly company ‘rules’ that make good people leave an organisation.

This struck such a chord with me that I re-tweeted it and our  Coordinating Director, Rachel Eden, spotted it and liked it too. Her response about a 3-point HR plan inspired me to write this blog piece.

The rules that Travis Bradberry cited as reasons that people get fed up and leave included:

  • shutting down self-expression (does it really matter how many photo frames an employee or volunteer has on their desk, as long as they have enough space to get their actual job done?)
  • limiting bathroom breaks (if you’re going to limit how many times people can do that, you might as well tell them outright you would prefer to employ actual robots) and
  • requiring ridiculous amounts of proof for leaves of absence such as doctor’s appointments and bereavement (if a member of staff feels the need to invent a funeral just to get a day off, what does that say about your organisation?)

Everything Bradberry talks about comes down to a lack of trust in your people.   If you are employing people you don’t trust, then your problem is not how many times they need the loo or whether they have a throat infection that the GP needs to see.

Somewhere along the line you have lost sight of why your organisation exists in the first place, what you are trying to achieve and how to engage your people to perform to their very best in pursuit of that purpose. People who don’t feel trusted will often start to act up – a culture like this becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

In order to engage people with a purpose, everyone needs to have a clear view of what your organisation is there to do and of the part they play in delivering it. There are a whole range of ways in which you can involve people, perhaps by helping to define that purpose from the start or by looking at the direction the leaders have set and using their own knowledge of how things work ‘on the front line’ to put detail into the bigger picture. As Rachel said in her tweet, people with meaningful work that they are trusted to get on with will always be an asset to any organisation.

At Holy Brook, we work with our clients to support them in identifying what their organisation is there for and what that means in practice. Developing a culture of engagement that delivers higher productivity can be a tricky thing to start, but with support, tools and a willingness to trust people, there is a big difference to be made.

Incidentally we also offer social media training, so if you want to tap into that far-reaching network I mentioned at the beginning of this piece, we can help you with that too.