5 ingredients for HR that doesn’t suck

  1. Simple: Death to bureaucracy. Great HR doesn’t ignore laws , but it doesn’t make things harder than they need to be on the business. It never obfuscates, it demystifies. It doesn’t inflate it’s importance by making things seem like a bigger deal than they are.
  2. Useful: So much HR energy is spent on things that are never seen or touched again. Great HR strives for utility. It understands that designing a human process around pathological cases leads to processes that are themselves pathological. (e.g. If one employee is abusing the unlimited PTO policy, don’t scrap the PTO for everyone, address it with that employee.) Does this make things harder sometimes? Yes. Is it worth the effort? Of course.
  3. Proactive: You can’t provide Great HR by sitting back and waiting for instructions. Reactive work done well is nice, but it pales in comparison to great work that isn’t expected. Client’s don’t know what they don’t know—Great HR educates and delivers at the same time.
  4. Put the Business First: Great ****HR knows it’s purpose is to serve the business, not the other way around. The guiding principle in every situation is, “Figure out what would be best for the business”. Rather than, “What is our policy on that?”. Once you know what is best for the business, you stress test that action against things like employment law, existing company policies, best practices, and what is morally right.
  5. Approachable: Great HR doesn’t use scare tactics or fixate on worst-case scenarios like lawsuits or fines. You don’t dread dealing with Great HR, you look forward to it. Great HR is confident and calm.

*An easy-ish way to remember is this spells SUPPA. . .