Now is probably a great time to review where we are at in HR.
There has been a lot going on since we entered a new decade three years ago and no doubt there will be little let up across the next 12 months. Some thinking and planning right now might set us up well for what lies ahead.
The foundation of every HR function lies in its policies and procedures and the fair application of those.
As we tell all our clients, you are free to choose your own culture. It’s never for us, as an HR consultancy, to dictate what your culture should be. Your policies and procedures will often create the internal understanding of what your culture and expectations of your people are.
And whilst we won’t tell you what your culture should or could be, at Jaluch we can highlight opportunities and risks and provide a little of our insight gleaned from working with hundreds of organisations. Ultimately though the commercial decision making, in respect of what policies you have and what goes into them, is up to you (albeit we expect with a little guidance from ACAS too!).
6 key areas for HR focus in 2023
All of the key areas listed below have a number of policies and procedures (and other kinds of paperwork) as their foundation:
1. HR foundations
We cannot afford to work in chaos or disarray when things are so challenging. As a rule of thumb in business … chaos = ineffectiveness. Having clear, professional and up to date policies and procedures in place hugely reduces the potential for errors, dropped balls, legal foul ups etc. The required paperwork could include:
- Forms
- Policies
- Procedures
- Guidance
- Safeguards
2. Change management
How do you grow or sustain during a global recession? It’s going to take skill to manage the necessary changes whilst maintaining a positive workplace that can grow and build. The required paperwork could include:
- Redundancy/redeployment policy
- Company strategy document
3. Personal and career support
It’s our view that those employers that think a recession means we can switch back to a world where employers have all the power and can do as they like are headed for a bust! Whatever the other pressures, our advice is to continue to focus on how you can provide both personal and career support to your employees. Secondments continue to be popular too and what your website says or suggests about the development of its staff will be critical. The required paperwork could include:
- Employer value proposition (EVP) statement
- Development opportunity guides and statements
- Formal training agreements
4. Recruitment
While there is a degree of calm after the 2021/22 recruitment storm, with its starting salary and other pressures, recruitment of the right staff for the right jobs will continue to be critical. The required paperwork could include:
- Recruitment policies and guides
- Job descriptions
- Statements on monitoring/analysis of recruitment practises
- Policy statements about ED&I
5. Employee relations
Employees nowadays have high expectations and low patience levels. It remains critical therefore that employers do not take their foot off the accelerator when it comes to employee relations. The required paperwork could include:
- Dignity at work policy (or similar)
- Documents relating to employee relations including grievance policies, whistleblowing, harassment and bullying and monitoring at work
- Statements on wellbeing and culture (including vision and values)
- Any required reporting such as gender pay gap
6. Great leadership
Holding all this together is the need for good leadership, seeing what is needed today, understanding the needs of tomorrow, adaptable, confident to act as role model, confident with tech, able and interested to grow and develop. To support leadership teams, the required paperwork could include:
- Up to date contracts
- Clarity of job roles and responsibilities
- Clarity of expectations around competencies/behaviours
- Corporate governance docs such as anti-bribery
A focus on time and priorities
When considering where best to spend your time, as a timely reminder of priorities, the most recent employment tribunal stats have just come out. The average unfair dismissal award in 2021/2 was £14K, while the highest single pay-out for discrimination was £228,000.
Strong HR management that protects the business so often arises from having sound policies in place and fair application of those policies across the organisation. Most of our clients review and update their policies once a year, but what factors determine the introduction of a new policy?
A case study: recruitment policy revision
No doubt you will have seen in the press (Dec 2022) the announcement by the Royal Free London NHS Foundation Trust that it has put in place a policy requiring interview panels to justify themselves whenever a shortlisted ethnic minority candidate is not appointed to a role.
Many are asking if this is a good policy, whether it’s needed, whether this is positive discrimination, whether this is a good use of managers time etc, so using this as an example, how do you decide which policies should take priority?
A rough guide to deciding policy priorities
To begin…
- What problem are you trying to solve?
- Is your problem a real problem? Ie can it be quantified, demonstrated, proven in respect of business need/business strategy etc or is it just a matter of perception or even media ‘trend’?
- Is a policy the right way to solve this problem? Is there a more informal or different way to solve this problem?
- How much money (time) will applying this new policy cost the organisation? And is that a good use of resources at this moment in time? Cost vs gain analysis.
- If you don’t put this policy in place, what is the projected commercial and/or financial risk? Be specific.
- If you don’t put this policy in place, are you in danger of ignoring the long-term needs/strategy of the organisation? HR can exert influence in order to change the business strategy but should never deliberately undermine it.
Wider consideration of needs…
- If you ask 10 internal customers of the HR Department what they would identify as priorities, would this be included? If not, what is your justification for your approach and how will you explain it in a way that does not damage employee relations?
- If you ask 10 directors/trustees, what would they identify as priorities? If this is not one of them, what is your justification for why this is critical?
- If you have external customers, what 10 HR priorities would they identify this year? If this is not one of them, what is your justification for why this is critical?
- Is this a policy that HR wants or a policy that the business needs?
Measures of success and other ways to crack the egg…
- How does the HR team measure its success? Commercial acumen, strategic thinking, attendance and productivity figures, retention of staff, legal costs associated with staff complaints, numbers of grievances raised … whatever your internal measures of success for your HR team, does this policy/procedure deliver what is required for success?
- If you save 50 hours by not writing and introducing this policy, how could you spend those 50 hours differently to better deliver what the organisation needs/what we have told our employees we will deliver?
- Will creating this policy solve one problem but as a result create another? If so, is there a better solution?
What we have learnt in recent years is…
- Time is precious – we have to focus on the right things.
- The ‘right things’ are not only those things advised to us by the leadership team, but also encompass our understanding of what our employees (collectively not individually) are telling us is important to them, what the law expects of us, what shareholders/customers/trustees might reasonably expect of us and in consideration of the public/societal expectations of us too … an amazing juggling feat for us all!
- Employee relations and employee goodwill can turn on a dime. Most employees will only give you one chance before they leave for something better.
- A limited definition of inclusion (include those who used to be excluded) fails to address the issue that, with an eye on the future, we cannot afford to be selectively inclusive … time to rethink what is including versus what is tick boxing and potentially excluding?
- While staff often have no intention of staying for long, they do expect us to invest in their career and development. We have to find a way to reconcile that if we are to recruit and retain great staff.
And finally…
When you announce your new policy, put loads of effort into explaining the ‘why’ rather than just the ‘what’.
For example, why has the Royal Free introduced this new policy? What is the data that backs up the fact that this is important in the hospital and good for all round employee relations and good recruitment practise? What are the markers of success/what are the targets? What is the costs/gain analysis? If you don’t tell us the ‘why’ then we may well just assume it’s HR just filling in time, desperate to get in the media, failing to understand the commercial context of what they do or just trying to make themselves look important and/or good!
Let’s all make sure we focus on the right things in 2023 and together we will build the credibility of the HR Function.
Thoughts, opinions, comments? Leave them in the box below, we’d love to hear from you …
How we can help
If you need help getting the paperwork right, our team at Jaluch provides commercial and practical HR advice, please contact us to find out if we can support you. No lengthy contract required and many of our clients pay us for actual usage on a monthly basis. Friendly, plain English, commercial and always supportive. We have huge numbers of very loyal clients. We’d love it if you became our next very valued client. Call our head office on: 01425 479888.
If you want to create your own documentation, but don’t have time to start from scratch, our template HR document website, Docs Wizard gives members instant access 500+ fully editable contracts, policies and letter templates to assist with issues covered in this article and lots more. Annual membership starts at just £199+VAT.
The information contained within this article is for general guidance only and represents our understanding of employment and associated law and employee relations issues as at the date of publication. Jaluch Limited, or any of its directors or employees, cannot be held responsible for any action or inaction taken in reliance upon the contents. Specific advice should be sought on all individuals matters.