Are you the type of manager who says,”HR told me to do it”?
No doubt some managers feel that HR restricts their actions. But you don’t need HR’s permission it’s your decision you just need to be prepared to justify it. Especially if it goes against the advice of HR !
Most HR officers will have experienced the practice of a manager ringing round various members of the team until they get the,”advice” they want. And when the decsion is challenged stating HR told me to do it.
I must admit as a manager I preferred to ask for forgiveness rather than seek permission that is until I became a senior manager. By the time I became a senior manager I had learnt to cultivate my HR contacts ( It might be that I became a senior manager because of my HR contacts -they certainly got me out of a few holes I had dug my self into) . As a senior manager I naturally didn’t need to ask permission but I did ask how I might go about what I wanted to achieve without digging holes, failing foul of the organisations policies and creating unnecessary conflict. The last bit may surprise some people who worked with me and would recognise the description of a former boss as “ opinionated, abrasive and intolerant of those less committed or able”. But that just goes to show how influential HR were and how clever various heads of HR were in coming up with ways to achieve my objectives.
Whether it was changing the shift system or reorganising the whole provider service, making a reality of EDI or responding to the discovery of pornography being circulated on works computers, changing working practices or tackling high levels of absentism, HR provided the tactics and the support.
HR made me look good and helped me be reasonable, human and compassionate. Not every organisation sees the HR role like this.In some organisation HR is an enforcer imposing the will of senior management ,where managers are expected to be macho and the Chief Executive autocratic. But with one exception I have always worked in organisations that expected change to be achieved by persuasion not issuing ultimations. And in my view the organisations have been all the better for the influence of HR.
blairmcpherson.co.uk
