The HR Plague Doctor
The plague doctor did not arrive when the first symptoms appeared. He arrived when the patient was already seriously ill. His strange mask and collection of remedies were reassuring, but they also revealed the problem. By the time he was called, there was usually a lot more wrong than a remedy could fix.
Modern HR can sometimes be treated in much the same way. HR is called when morale has collapsed, grievances have multiplied, managers have lost credibility and good people are leaving. The expectation is that HR will arrive with a remedy and make the problem go away.
The comparison is uncomfortable. The plague doctor was not responsible for the conditions that caused the disease. HR sometimes is. But more often, HR is being asked to treat the consequences of decisions made by managers and senior leaders.
Why do organisations call HR when the patient is already bleeding, rather than when the first symptoms appear?
It is an oddly familiar pattern. Something starts to go wrong. Employees complain. Sickness absence increases. People start leaving. Managers become defensive. The employee survey produces worrying results. Grievances arrive. Perhaps there is even a formal complaint about the culture. For months, these are treated as separate problems. Then someone says: “We need to get HR involved.” Suddenly it is an HR problem.
But perhaps that is the wrong diagnosis.
One of HR’s most important jobs is to stop organisations turning management problems into HR problems. A difficult manager is tolerated because they deliver results. When their team starts leaving, HR is asked to deal with the turnover. Workloads become unreasonable. When sickness absence rises, HR is asked to run a wellbeing initiative. Senior leaders repeatedly make decisions without listening to employees. When trust collapses, HR is asked to improve engagement.
The organisation creates the conditions. HR gets the treatment plan.
This is how HR can become the organisational shock absorber. It absorbs the consequences of decisions made elsewhere and is then expected to make those consequences disappear. But HR should have a different role. It should be the organisation’s diagnostic system.
HR sees information that is often scattered across the organisation. It sees grievances, turnover, sickness absence, recruitment difficulties, exit interviews, employee survey results and management concerns. Individually, each may look like a separate issue. Taken together, they can reveal a pattern that individual managers cannot see.
That is where HR adds value. Not simply by reporting the symptoms, but by asking what they are telling the organisation.
One grievance may be a grievance. Ten grievances about the same manager are a management problem. One resignation may be bad luck. A steady stream of experienced employees leaving the same team is evidence. Rising sickness, complaints and turnover in the same service may be symptoms of the same underlying problem.
The HR question should therefore be: what is causing this?
That can be an uncomfortable question because the answer may point upwards.
If employees have lost trust in their managers, another workshop on communication is unlikely to solve the problem. If workloads are unreasonable, a wellbeing webinar is not a cure. If senior leaders repeatedly make decisions without listening to employees, another engagement survey may simply measure the disappointment more accurately.
Sometimes HR needs to say: “This is not primarily an HR problem.”
That requires courage. It means challenging a senior leader rather than offering another intervention. It means saying that a manager’s behaviour is the issue, not the team’s resilience. It means saying that workload is the problem, not employee wellbeing. It means saying that employees are not disengaged because they need another away day. They may simply have stopped believing their leaders.
HR can sometimes make this easier than it should be. It is tempting to arrive with remedies: engagement surveys, wellbeing programmes, mediation, coaching, leadership development, culture initiatives, policies and training. All can be useful. But having a remedy for every symptom can allow the organisation to avoid diagnosing the disease.
Fixing is sometimes easier than challenging.
HR’s distinctive role is to diagnose the problem, challenge the organisation’s interpretation of it and identify who has the power to change what is causing it. HR can provide evidence, advice, coaching, mediation and expertise. It can facilitate solutions and monitor whether they work. But it should not quietly accept ownership of a problem simply because someone has handed it to HR.
The manager has to own the cure. Senior leaders have to own the culture they create.
The practical test is simple. When a serious people problem reaches HR, ask five questions: What symptoms appeared first? What pattern do we see? What is causing the problem rather than simply describing it? Who has the power to change it? And what needs to happen now, and who owns it?
Those questions stop HR becoming the organisation’s permanent repair service. They also make HR more useful. Instead of simply treating the presenting problem, HR helps the organisation understand what is producing it.
The plague doctor arrived when the patient was already seriously ill. Modern HR should aim to arrive much earlier, not carrying a collection of remedies, but carrying evidence, asking difficult questions and telling leaders what they may not want to hear.
Because the best HR intervention is not always the one that fixes the problem. Sometimes it is the one that stops the organisation treating the wrong problem.
The plague doctor could provide a remedy. He could not change the conditions that allowed the plague to spread. HR can do something more useful: diagnose the illness, challenge the diagnosis and make sure the people with the power to change the conditions actually do so.
