December 13, 2024 • 11 mins
Do your employees trust your HR team, or are they wary of them? Discover the complexities that HR professionals face in creating trust and building relationships with employees. In this episode, we discuss the delicate balancing act HR must perform, serving as both advocates for employees and strategic partners for management, often leading to a disconnect that can seem insurmountable.
Are you confident in fostering an environment for trusting, collaborative relationships with HR?
If you want to understand your employees challenges, and support them with strategies that nurture positive workplace relationships, you should join us for this episode!
To have your questions answered on the show, submit your story here: https://allthrive.ca/share-your-story
Leadership Ripples with Leah Fink is live every week at 12:00pm MST. Please join us to get answers to your leadership questions! https://www.linkedin.com/in/leah-fink-all-thrive/
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Every action you take as a leader has a ripple effect
, starting with your team, goingout to the organization and
even out into people's personallives.
Here we offer you the chance tolearn from real-life stories of
leadership so you can gain adeeper understanding and level
up your own skills Fromcommunication to culture, to
power and equity, to feedback,to resolving conflict and more.
(00:23):
Join us and make sure you'recreating the ripples you want.
Welcome to Leadership Rippleswith Leah Fink.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
Hello and welcome to Leadership Ripples with Leah
Fink.
Today we are going to betalking about the complex
relationship between HR andmanagement and what that might
mean for employees how theyexperience that.
Esty shares their story.
I've been an HR professionalfor many years at a variety of
(00:52):
organizations.
Something I find veryfrustrating is how little trust
there is for HR professionalsand how staff are often very
guarded around me.
I understand they may have hadbad experiences before, but as
someone who is genuinely tryingto help and support them, this
can be painful to experience.
Again and again I feel likeonce I've been with an
organization for a while, I'mable to develop some trust with
(01:15):
the staff, but it always takeslonger than I would like.
So thank you so much forsharing that SD, and I can
imagine that would be painful.
All leaders take on somecomponent, some representation
of all the leaders that someonehad in the past, someone with
more power than them in thatsituation, and you really get to
(01:36):
be that living representationof all the things that happened
right, all their experienceswith HR, with managers and
beyond.
And that is hard, no matterwhat kind of leader, no matter
what kind of situation.
That is going to be tough, andas much as that is a reality for
many leaders, I do think HRprofessionals have their own
(01:56):
specific space where this iscomplex and a little bit
different, and I really want toaddress some of those challenges
today so we understand them abit better Now.
Let's look at some of thefactors, then, that play into
this, and first I find there's acomponent of HR which should be
about managing people, aboutsupporting people and the whole
employee journey through theorganization.
(02:18):
And ideally, when I think aboutHR, I think of a role that
should naturally be very focusedin relationship, focused on
that connection with individualsand how to help them.
But, of course, hrprofessionals have so many
different priorities and they'resupporting usually so many
people to one HR professionalthat this isn't realistically
possible for a lot oforganizations.
(02:39):
And so then this role, which issupposed to be, or ideally
going to be, very relational,becomes a lot more about the
tasks and the checkboxes and thethings that need to be
completed every single day.
And that's not to say thatthere aren't a lot of HR
professionals that prioritizerelationship, that genuinely
care about people like SD, andthey're trying to prioritize
(03:01):
relationship at the same time,and maybe they can balance both
worlds, trying to prioritizerelationship at the same time,
and maybe they can balance bothworlds, but generally it comes
down to a piece of conflictingpriorities and limited time to
do all the things you want to do.
So, even with this intention andeffort put into relationship
building, the first challenge isdo you have access to staff?
Are you really able to spend alot of time with them?
And, realistically, mostemployees aren't spending a lot
(03:24):
of time with HR.
They're going to spend sometime at the beginning of their
employment, maybe at the end oftheir employment, some sporadic
times throughout, but ultimatelyit's not a relationship they'd
probably be cultivating everyday if they're outside the HR
department.
It is, of course, the directsupervisor and the team that
this staff member is going tohave the most connection with.
They're going to be cultivatingthe relationships, they're
(03:46):
going to be getting support fromthose people, and that is a
good and healthy system, right?
That's why we have differentlevels of management and
different teams.
But what happens when there's anissue?
Of course, your supervisor willtry to address what they can in
the moment, but when there's abigger issue, often they might
not feel able to support that orthey need something else with
that and so they'll bring in HR,and HR can often help in these
(04:09):
situations.
However, there's someone thathas a lot of influence and not a
lot of relationship with thatemployee, and think of how
vulnerable it is for an employeeto be in a place where they're
now having to talk to multiplepeople about these large
challenges that they're having.
Where they're now having totalk to multiple people about
these large challenges thatthey're having.
They barely know one of thempotentially, and this person has
a lot of power over theirprofessional life.
(04:30):
They know what kind of roles HRcan take on and, especially if
there's been some sort ofnegative experience with HR in
the past, they're probably goingto be quite worried about
what's going to happen in thissituation.
They may be resisting what'shappening because they're
worried.
That's a real experience forthem.
So, trying to build thoserelationships with employees
(04:51):
while facing these time limits,while facing this lack of
opportunity to really bond withthem and this past experience,
those are all layered into thisdynamic that the employees have
with someone who's an HRprofessional.
Now that we've said all of that, that's kind of the employee
and HR professional start of therelationship.
In addition to this, there'salso relationships between HR
(05:14):
and management.
That's a big piece that we needto consider, because, after all
, hr should be getting theirdirection from the leadership of
the organization, andleadership is pretty much always
going to have differentperspectives and different
priorities than employees do.
And they're the ones workingcloser with HR.
They're going to be creatingorganizational structure and
(05:35):
ways of working, they're keepingHR informed of these big
picture changes.
They're going to be drivingculture and trying to support HR
in that, and so that's allbeing communicated between
leadership and HR, probably atmore regular intervals.
So, when it comes to theirperspective on a situation, hr
professionals are generallygoing to be more similar to the
perspectives of the leadershipteam and, on top of that,
(05:57):
they're going to be spending alot more time with the
leadership team generally, andthat's going to also be
cultivating relationship.
And what does this mean?
I have spoken with a lot ofemployees who feel that their HR
are friends with the managementteam, with the leadership team,
and that they might shareinformation with leadership or
be more likely to take the sideof leadership if an employee
(06:19):
brings a challenge forward.
And so, as much as it'simportant to cultivate that
healthy relationship betweenmanagement and HR, it needs to
be done in a way that doesn'tfeel like it takes precedence
over the relationship withemployees, and even that you're
conscious of what perspectivethe employees might be having
about this.
What is the appearance of therelationship between management
(06:42):
and HR, between management andHR?
That all being said, finally,there's a sad situation that
also layers onto this, but alsosome leaders unfortunately use
HR to take on responsibilitiesthat they don't feel comfortable
with or they don't feel skilledin, and something I've heard
about probably more often isleaders who use HR to deliver
feedback.
They're not comfortable givingconsistent, constructive
(07:05):
feedback, and so they'll gostraight to HR for the paperwork
side of things and they'll havethem write out employee plans
and plan this, and then HRpresents it to this employee.
They might not have even knownthere was any issues at all and
suddenly they're getting a planthat says you need to correct
these things or you might loseyour job.
That's big, that's a really bigresponsibility that now, in
(07:26):
that employee's mind, they'reseeing coming from HR, when it
should have been a healthyprocess that was engaged with
their management, that wentthrough all these different
steps.
On the extreme end of this, I'vealso talked to fractional HR,
who have talked about beinghired by companies to come in
and do mass layoffs becausetheir leadership team isn't
comfortable with doing a lot oflayoffs at once.
(07:48):
They want to save everyone'smental health in the
organization and so they'llbring in someone external to do
that, to do the dirty work, asit were, for that situation.
And it's understandable howleaders want to keep mentally
healthy in their roles and theywant to be supported and they're
trying to protect their ownmental health.
And this all being said, thisalso really creates this
(08:09):
experience that staff have wherethey're going to their next
company and all they're going tothink of is how much they can't
trust HR, how much HR hasrelationship with management, is
on the side of management andis not safe for them to go to.
And really, this culminates inthe two perspectives that I hear
about HR, and either HR isthere to serve the company and,
(08:30):
in fact, are working againstemployees as almost the enemy,
or that HR is there to supportand advocate for their employee,
even if they might need supportdifferent or against what
management is going with.
And so these really two big,conflicting pieces of how people
perceive HR.
You really want to decide whatthat looks like for your
(08:52):
organization.
And if you're an HRprofessional, you are now
hearing and you probably alreadyknow a lot of these things
about what you might have toovercome when it comes to
building up that trust and thatrelationship with those staff.
And if you want to look atbuilding trust and relationships
(09:12):
, you can listen to some of ourother episodes that focus a
little bit more on that or reachout.
I'm happy to share some tipsand ideas.
And if you're a leader that'snot an HR professional, it's
really important that you'reconsidering how you can be
supporting your whole team to beinteracting in a healthy way
with HR.
How do you ensure that you'renot prioritizing the
relationship between HR andmanagement where it might be
disadvantaging the employeerelationship with HR?
How would you best support yourteam while leveraging the
(09:36):
strengths of HR and make surethat it's a healthy experience
for everyone, because it can beextremely beneficial?
If your culture and yourorganization does focus on the
employee, does focus onrelationship and how you're
cultivating this, then you'rebuilding that into your HR team
and you're building a kind ofsituation where your employees
not only have a management teamthat they can trust through your
(09:58):
culture, but also have otherpeople that when they are
struggling, they have someone togo to.
They have that.
External support can be sopowerful and such a great way to
keep great employees, as always.
If you want to discuss this alittle bit more, we don't have
time to go into all of the waysthat you could potentially do
this, but please do feel free toreach out and I would love to
have a conversation with you, sd, I am very excited for our
(10:20):
conversation.
Let's make sure that you aregetting the best results from
all the work that you're puttingin to build trust and build
those relationships.
And, as a reminder to all ourlisteners, if you have a story
or a question that you want toshare, we would love to have it.
You can send that using thelink down below in the
description and, as a thank youfor that, I'll follow up with a
session to make sure yourquestions are fully answered and
(10:43):
as a way of saying thank you,and I want to thank you so much
for listening, for learning withme.
There are so many relationshipsgoing on in the workplace at
all times.
There's so much complexity andI appreciate you taking the time
to consider how these might beaffecting other pieces of your
work and how they might beaffecting your employees.
And, as we close, remember toask yourself what kind of
(11:06):
ripples am I going to createthis week?
Speaker 1 (11:09):
We hope you enjoyed the episode.
Make sure to subscribe, commentand connect with Leah at
meetleahca.
Every action you take as a leader has a ripple effect
, starting with your team, goingout to the organization and
even out into people's personallives.
Here we offer you the chance tolearn from real-life stories of
leadership so you can gain adeeper understanding and level
up your own skills Fromcommunication to culture, to
power and equity, to feedback,to resolving conflict and more.
(00:23):
Join us and make sure you'recreating the ripples you want.
Welcome to Leadership Rippleswith Leah Fink.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
Hello and welcome to Leadership Ripples with Leah
Fink.
Today we are going to betalking about the complex
relationship between HR andmanagement and what that might
mean for employees how theyexperience that.
Esty shares their story.
I've been an HR professionalfor many years at a variety of
(00:52):
organizations.
Something I find veryfrustrating is how little trust
there is for HR professionalsand how staff are often very
guarded around me.
I understand they may have hadbad experiences before, but as
someone who is genuinely tryingto help and support them, this
can be painful to experience.
Again and again I feel likeonce I've been with an
organization for a while, I'mable to develop some trust with
(01:15):
the staff, but it always takeslonger than I would like.
So thank you so much forsharing that SD, and I can
imagine that would be painful.
All leaders take on somecomponent, some representation
of all the leaders that someonehad in the past, someone with
more power than them in thatsituation, and you really get to
(01:36):
be that living representationof all the things that happened
right, all their experienceswith HR, with managers and
beyond.
And that is hard, no matterwhat kind of leader, no matter
what kind of situation.
That is going to be tough, andas much as that is a reality for
many leaders, I do think HRprofessionals have their own
(01:56):
specific space where this iscomplex and a little bit
different, and I really want toaddress some of those challenges
today so we understand them abit better Now.
Let's look at some of thefactors, then, that play into
this, and first I find there's acomponent of HR which should be
about managing people, aboutsupporting people and the whole
employee journey through theorganization.
(02:18):
And ideally, when I think aboutHR, I think of a role that
should naturally be very focusedin relationship, focused on
that connection with individualsand how to help them.
But, of course, hrprofessionals have so many
different priorities and they'resupporting usually so many
people to one HR professionalthat this isn't realistically
possible for a lot oforganizations.
(02:39):
And so then this role, which issupposed to be, or ideally
going to be, very relational,becomes a lot more about the
tasks and the checkboxes and thethings that need to be
completed every single day.
And that's not to say thatthere aren't a lot of HR
professionals that prioritizerelationship, that genuinely
care about people like SD, andthey're trying to prioritize
(03:01):
relationship at the same time,and maybe they can balance both
worlds, trying to prioritizerelationship at the same time,
and maybe they can balance bothworlds, but generally it comes
down to a piece of conflictingpriorities and limited time to
do all the things you want to do.
So, even with this intention andeffort put into relationship
building, the first challenge isdo you have access to staff?
Are you really able to spend alot of time with them?
And, realistically, mostemployees aren't spending a lot
(03:24):
of time with HR.
They're going to spend sometime at the beginning of their
employment, maybe at the end oftheir employment, some sporadic
times throughout, but ultimatelyit's not a relationship they'd
probably be cultivating everyday if they're outside the HR
department.
It is, of course, the directsupervisor and the team that
this staff member is going tohave the most connection with.
They're going to be cultivatingthe relationships, they're
(03:46):
going to be getting support fromthose people, and that is a
good and healthy system, right?
That's why we have differentlevels of management and
different teams.
But what happens when there's anissue?
Of course, your supervisor willtry to address what they can in
the moment, but when there's abigger issue, often they might
not feel able to support that orthey need something else with
that and so they'll bring in HR,and HR can often help in these
(04:09):
situations.
However, there's someone thathas a lot of influence and not a
lot of relationship with thatemployee, and think of how
vulnerable it is for an employeeto be in a place where they're
now having to talk to multiplepeople about these large
challenges that they're having.
Where they're now having totalk to multiple people about
these large challenges thatthey're having.
They barely know one of thempotentially, and this person has
a lot of power over theirprofessional life.
(04:30):
They know what kind of roles HRcan take on and, especially if
there's been some sort ofnegative experience with HR in
the past, they're probably goingto be quite worried about
what's going to happen in thissituation.
They may be resisting what'shappening because they're
worried.
That's a real experience forthem.
So, trying to build thoserelationships with employees
(04:51):
while facing these time limits,while facing this lack of
opportunity to really bond withthem and this past experience,
those are all layered into thisdynamic that the employees have
with someone who's an HRprofessional.
Now that we've said all of that, that's kind of the employee
and HR professional start of therelationship.
In addition to this, there'salso relationships between HR
(05:14):
and management.
That's a big piece that we needto consider, because, after all
, hr should be getting theirdirection from the leadership of
the organization, andleadership is pretty much always
going to have differentperspectives and different
priorities than employees do.
And they're the ones workingcloser with HR.
They're going to be creatingorganizational structure and
(05:35):
ways of working, they're keepingHR informed of these big
picture changes.
They're going to be drivingculture and trying to support HR
in that, and so that's allbeing communicated between
leadership and HR, probably atmore regular intervals.
So, when it comes to theirperspective on a situation, hr
professionals are generallygoing to be more similar to the
perspectives of the leadershipteam and, on top of that,
(05:57):
they're going to be spending alot more time with the
leadership team generally, andthat's going to also be
cultivating relationship.
And what does this mean?
I have spoken with a lot ofemployees who feel that their HR
are friends with the managementteam, with the leadership team,
and that they might shareinformation with leadership or
be more likely to take the sideof leadership if an employee
(06:19):
brings a challenge forward.
And so, as much as it'simportant to cultivate that
healthy relationship betweenmanagement and HR, it needs to
be done in a way that doesn'tfeel like it takes precedence
over the relationship withemployees, and even that you're
conscious of what perspectivethe employees might be having
about this.
What is the appearance of therelationship between management
(06:42):
and HR, between management andHR?
That all being said, finally,there's a sad situation that
also layers onto this, but alsosome leaders unfortunately use
HR to take on responsibilitiesthat they don't feel comfortable
with or they don't feel skilledin, and something I've heard
about probably more often isleaders who use HR to deliver
feedback.
They're not comfortable givingconsistent, constructive
(07:05):
feedback, and so they'll gostraight to HR for the paperwork
side of things and they'll havethem write out employee plans
and plan this, and then HRpresents it to this employee.
They might not have even knownthere was any issues at all and
suddenly they're getting a planthat says you need to correct
these things or you might loseyour job.
That's big, that's a really bigresponsibility that now, in
(07:26):
that employee's mind, they'reseeing coming from HR, when it
should have been a healthyprocess that was engaged with
their management, that wentthrough all these different
steps.
On the extreme end of this, I'vealso talked to fractional HR,
who have talked about beinghired by companies to come in
and do mass layoffs becausetheir leadership team isn't
comfortable with doing a lot oflayoffs at once.
(07:48):
They want to save everyone'smental health in the
organization and so they'llbring in someone external to do
that, to do the dirty work, asit were, for that situation.
And it's understandable howleaders want to keep mentally
healthy in their roles and theywant to be supported and they're
trying to protect their ownmental health.
And this all being said, thisalso really creates this
(08:09):
experience that staff have wherethey're going to their next
company and all they're going tothink of is how much they can't
trust HR, how much HR hasrelationship with management, is
on the side of management andis not safe for them to go to.
And really, this culminates inthe two perspectives that I hear
about HR, and either HR isthere to serve the company and,
(08:30):
in fact, are working againstemployees as almost the enemy,
or that HR is there to supportand advocate for their employee,
even if they might need supportdifferent or against what
management is going with.
And so these really two big,conflicting pieces of how people
perceive HR.
You really want to decide whatthat looks like for your
(08:52):
organization.
And if you're an HRprofessional, you are now
hearing and you probably alreadyknow a lot of these things
about what you might have toovercome when it comes to
building up that trust and thatrelationship with those staff.
And if you want to look atbuilding trust and relationships
(09:12):
, you can listen to some of ourother episodes that focus a
little bit more on that or reachout.
I'm happy to share some tipsand ideas.
And if you're a leader that'snot an HR professional, it's
really important that you'reconsidering how you can be
supporting your whole team to beinteracting in a healthy way
with HR.
How do you ensure that you'renot prioritizing the
relationship between HR andmanagement where it might be
disadvantaging the employeerelationship with HR?
How would you best support yourteam while leveraging the
(09:36):
strengths of HR and make surethat it's a healthy experience
for everyone, because it can beextremely beneficial?
If your culture and yourorganization does focus on the
employee, does focus onrelationship and how you're
cultivating this, then you'rebuilding that into your HR team
and you're building a kind ofsituation where your employees
not only have a management teamthat they can trust through your
(09:58):
culture, but also have otherpeople that when they are
struggling, they have someone togo to.
They have that.
External support can be sopowerful and such a great way to
keep great employees, as always.
If you want to discuss this alittle bit more, we don't have
time to go into all of the waysthat you could potentially do
this, but please do feel free toreach out and I would love to
have a conversation with you, sd, I am very excited for our
(10:20):
conversation.
Let's make sure that you aregetting the best results from
all the work that you're puttingin to build trust and build
those relationships.
And, as a reminder to all ourlisteners, if you have a story
or a question that you want toshare, we would love to have it.
You can send that using thelink down below in the
description and, as a thank youfor that, I'll follow up with a
session to make sure yourquestions are fully answered and
(10:43):
as a way of saying thank you,and I want to thank you so much
for listening, for learning withme.
There are so many relationshipsgoing on in the workplace at
all times.
There's so much complexity andI appreciate you taking the time
to consider how these might beaffecting other pieces of your
work and how they might beaffecting your employees.
And, as we close, remember toask yourself what kind of
(11:06):
ripples am I going to createthis week?
Speaker 1 (11:09):
We hope you enjoyed the episode.
Make sure to subscribe, commentand connect with Leah at
meetleahca.
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