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When you spend your day putting out fires, dealing with drama, and keeping up to speed on the latest compliance obligations affecting your business, it can be challenging to step back and assess the overall health of your HR. Fortunately, you don’t need to conduct an extensive audit or pore over detailed reports to confirm that your HR is in reasonable shape. A pulse check will do in most cases. Here are some signs that you’re doing HR the right way:
1. Employees Generally Adhere to Your Instructions
Getting people across an organization to follow policies, processes, and procedures is no easy task. “Herding cats” is an idiom for a good reason! If, for the most part, your employees adhere to your instructions for timekeeping, requesting time off, enrolling in benefits, and the like, you’ve communicated those instructions effectively. Give yourself an extra pat on the back if you’ve successfully implemented new ways of doing things this year.
2. Employees Are Comfortable Asking Tough Questions
Are your employees willing to pose challenging questions to you or other members of leadership? Do they ask you to explain the reasons for your decisions, justify a change, or press you on why you don’t offer this or that benefit? You might think these questions indicate a workforce unsatisfied with how things are — and that could be the case — but the fact that employees are willing to probe for answers is a sign that they trust you. They feel safe. They don’t fear retaliation for seeking answers or admitting they’re not entirely satisfied. Trust and psychological safety are very difficult to build and easy to jeopardize. You’re doing a lot right!
3. Employees Provide Honest and Candid Feedback
Take heart if you solicit employee feedback, and they don’t hold back giving it to you. This is good. It means employees trust you won’t retaliate in response to their candor. It also indicates that employees believe that taking time to opine on the state of their workplace is valuable. They understand you can’t please everyone and that not every insight or suggestion will lead to positive change. But they believe you take their thoughts and feelings seriously and will make reasonable faith efforts to improve.
4. Employees Seek to Resolve Mistakes Internally
As we all know, mistakes can be costly, especially when lawyers and enforcement agencies get involved. But even the best employers make mistakes. When a mistake happens and affected employees seek to resolve the issue internally, it means they don’t feel any need for that extra layer of protection. They trust you’ll rectify the situation. As we noted earlier, that level of trust is not easy to come by.
5. Employees Share Your Job Postings
Do your employees share job openings with friends or post the link to your careers page on LinkedIn? If yes, awesome. You’re an employer they recommend!
6. Employees Take Advantage of Perks and Benefits
In some workplaces, people hesitate to take vacation or personal days or devote time to employee groups, fun activities, or optional training during work hours. They fear falling behind or being judged less favorably during performance reviews. On paper, these workplaces may respect work-life balance, but in practice, not so much. If your employees happily take advantage of the perks and benefits offered by your organization, that’s a sign you have a culture that truly respects your employees and treats them fairly. Congrats!
How to Keep Up with HR Compliance
You may have noticed that we haven’t touched on compliance. There’s no straightforward sign that you fully comply with every federal, state, and local employment law affecting your organization. One easy way is through an HR audit. You’ll receive a comprehensive review of your organization’s human resources policies, practices, procedures, and systems to identify improvement areas and ensure compliance with legal and regulatory requirements.
Worried About Doing HR the Wrong Way?
If your employees aren’t doing any of the HR activities listed above, how do you determine why? Employees often hesitate to be truthful when meeting with supervisors or responding to internal surveys. However, a cultural review from GTM can provide you with unbiased insights. Our HR consultants will speak with your employees to gain perspective on the inner dynamics of your organization. The questions provide insight into what your workers are happy about and where progress can be made, and they can do so anonymously, encouraging them to be more forthright and honest.
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