I’ve been a People person for over a decade. So it might surprise you to hear that I completely understand if your instinct is to steer clear of People and HR teams as much as humanly possible.
Whilst the profession has (thankfully) changed a lot whilst I’ve been in the game, there is still an enduring perception that HR is a glorified admin function there to do the company's dirty work, whatever the cost.
In some cases, that perception is absolutely justified. I’ve seen some truly horrific examples of People teams' complicity in unethical behaviour. It’s also true that HR teams can be defensive, siloed and create process that’s either unnecessary and unhelpful, or both.
However, there are also lots of great People professionals out there working very differently. Great People people thrive when given the freedom to (co) design things that people use and find helpful. They see it as their duty to challenge leadership decision making when it matters and take their responsibility as cultural guardians seriously. They want to be there to support you through the tough stuff.
To do that… they need you! People teams work most effectively in partnership. So in this article, I’m going to share some tips to help managers keen to get the best out of working with their HR colleagues.
People are complex. This means, despite the proliferation of ‘best practice’ floating around the internet, the best advice to help managers tackle tough interpersonal challenges is nuanced and personalised.
People teams have the most impact when they work systemically.
Take the classic and slightly amorphous aim of ‘building a high performance culture’. Implementing a new review system simply isn’t going to cut it.
A good People person will take on this challenge holistically, starting with the question of what high performance actually looks within this specific context and then looking at what needs to change in terms of strategy, comms, training needs and more. Practice and process design comes last.
People teams are often chronically underresourced - and companies also aren’t great at defining HR roles or understanding what hires are needed based on their stage of growth.
All of this can mean that People teams are incentivised to prioritise reactive work and take shortcuts on the stuff that matters, even if they’re not proud of the resulting output.
Critique without a willingness to engage in co-design isn’t particularly helpful.
People people bring significant technical expertise, but the magic really happens when they can genuinely partner with the business. We want your unfiltered feedback, but we also want to bounce around ideas. We want to understand what you think will work and why. We want to design prototypes and pilots, so we can test together, get feedback and refine.
Whilst many People people are good in a crisis, given the chance, they can be even better at de-escalation.
If you need advice about how to open up conversation with a team member who seems distant, or how to give some important feedback, don’t wait until it becomes a burning issue, just reach out and ask.
The vast majority of People issues can be dealt with quickly and effectively if they’re tackled early, without resorting to long drawn out, messy and painful formal processes. But in order to deploy our skills in this way, we need to know what’s happening as soon as you see it emerge.
Many managers I know have had difficult experiences with HR teams or found them simply unhelpful. However, if you can overcome your (valid) scepticism and experiment with different ways of partnering, you might be surprised at the level of support your People team can offer.
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