Welcome friends and followers! March has blown into the Midwest with an outstanding display of warm weather, blooming flowers, and increased vacation days. Records have been broken, shorts have been pulled out, and suntans have even begun to surface – however – many are still holding out for the other shoe to drop, referencing back to the old English proverb “in like a lamb, out like a lion” (or vice versa). But enough of the weather lore – what does this have to do with HR?
As I began writing this month’s blog, it occurred to me that weather is not the only thing people hold out reservations for; in fact, most do this pretty regularly in everything. Not wanting to seem too trusting, not wanting to look like a fool, your employees are constantly holding out, waiting for the bad news. From an HR perspective, this is bad, bad, bad. Preoccupation with negative company actions, not reaching full potential because employees are holding back, or consistently checking to see if the grass is truly greener on the other side by interviewing with competitors are all side effects from this epidemic. These issues come to pass when clear, concise top-down communication is not at play and withholding information from employees is a common practice.
Now, everyone take a heavy sigh. This is not new news. Nor is this incredibly insightful. It is, however, common sense. And while every top-level leader in the organization says they have open communication with their staff, they support an open-door policy, and they don’t withhold information from their employees, only about half of their employees would agree. However, I am not really concerned about the top-level managers – more often than not, where information gets lost in translation, or just plain left out, is somewhere in the middle, leaving the masses of your lower-level employees uninformed and fearing the unknown.
What can we do? I have a favorite saying, that I’m sure I share with many of you: Keep It Simple Stupid. Employee problems always start and end with HR – let’s not kid ourselves there. Start with recruiting individuals with the right cultural fit, and give them a realistic job preview – don’t sugar-coat the job, or make it more glamorous, because once they get here, disappointment and disillusionment will lead to distrust. Secondly, be an advocate for your employees – if you see that your middle managers are leaving them in the dark, or information is not getting out to your employee base is a timely fashion, figure out a way to make it work. Quarterly meetings? Monthly webinars? A newsletter? Whatever works for your organization, you need to become the change agent and insist that transparent communication (as much as possible) occur from a company-wide perspective. Do not leave this up to the direct managers – the daily grind will get in the way of something they may not see as imperative, and thus the breakdown in communication will occur. While group meetings to discuss current projects, issues, etc. should be theirs to plan, communication on the over-all company needs to take place at a higher level, and many times this will fall to HR (some larger companies will have a communications dept. – utilize them!). We want our employees to feel secure with the information we are telling them, secure with their positions, and with the company, so that they can become fully engaged and spend all the time they used to predicting what was going to happen next making your business more profitable and better for your customers.
Until next time… Be Inspirational!
