Zen and the Art of People Maintenance

There seems to be such a myriad of thinking about how to manage people at work these days that some managers are starting to feel overwhelmed. Simon Lane takes a look at optimising what is becoming a modern management challenge.

I was reading some research last week published in the United States on how small businesses compared to big business in managing from a human resources perspective. The article drew some interesting conclusions from its findings, specifically that the advantage a small business has if it recognises its people management requirements early. The research suggests that it can effectively create both infrastructure and culture in the same breath. The question is then; “How so”?

There is a time in a business’s life cycle when it recognises it needs stronger parameters in guiding and governing its employees. If the company starts with a handful of employees, usually the people management process adopted will have been done on the fly or lifted from another source. This is very understandable as the goal in the early days of establishing a business focus on areas such as getting premises, furniture, computers, software, telephones, company image, business cards, licenses, financial backing, a small coffee machine and maybe even a customer. (OK, I was joking about the customer!) It is therefore understandable that the company views on recruitment and selection, or its policy on occupational health and safety are unlikely to get on the radar screen for quite some time.

When the people issues start to appear on the “radar screen” it’s usually because something is starting to go wrong, or at the very least, becoming an irritant. Questions start to appear on less than perfect recruitment decisions that are now performance management problems. Decisions to offer positions without contracts and with what you thought were appropriate remuneration attachments are now a burden to the company, financially and possibly legally. Skills you thought were evident in the interview of your star candidate seem to have mysteriously disappeared in the application phase. And lastly, your managers seem to be struggling to manage. Oh, if only we’d had more time! (The battle-cry of the start-up!).

Once, way back in the early years of my career when I whined to a superior that I didn’t have enough time, he replied; “You have all the time there is!” It kind of left me with nowhere to go. Therefore, my advice to those who haven’t got time to establish their people infrastructure effectively is “You have all the time there is!” When you seriously consider this issue, you realise the significance of the task.

For that reason, I suggest that for the cost of a day or so, that you make the following investments:

1.    Determine an overarching company philosophy that you want everyone to live and work by. It should be clear, simple and explain “That’s how things are done around here”;

2.    Set a clear series of expectations on the people management aspects of your company. These should be simple policy and philosophy statements of a paragraph or two. They should ideally include:

a. Recruitment

b.  Separation

c.  Remuneration

d.  Ethics

e. Performance Management

f.   Position descriptions

g.  Training and development

h.  Career development

i.    Payroll

j.    Communications

k.  Employee relations

l.    Occupational health and safety

         3.    Test your assumptions externally on what’s workable or not. Start with talking to your accountant, a                  human resources practitioner or even a solicitor. They will give you insights into legalities and                  practicalities that will impact your business.

4.    Test your refined outcome with internal stakeholders such as employees or contractors. See if the message is clear and that the expectation is transmitted as it is intended. Understand the impacts (both positively and negatively) of your decisions and frameworks on the end users.

5.    Communicate and train your framework into place. Set up a system whereby all new employees get immediate exposure to it.

6.    Get help from outside experts while you build your in-house expertise. Use their experience to transfer skills such as recruitment or performance management into your business;

7.    Keep your framework current and accessible. The most popular way of doing this is to host it in some form of web format so there is only ever one source and it has the latest information.

8.    Review the usefulness and practicality of the policies and philosophies on no less than a half yearly basis to ensure it continues to add value.

 Once all of the above has been created and implemented, at worst you have explained to all and sundry what it is your business stands for, what it won’t stand for, and why it says what it says. This as a minimum will:

      ·       Close down some risks (both legal and financial) where employees prior to this simply didn’t know                what the effect of poor or ignorant people decisions looked like;

·       Give employees and contractors some sense that you care enough about them to explain some people aspects to them;

·       Give you confidence to further expand the framework over time to include a “how to” guide, some templates and forms for use, an understanding of your legal obligations, and where more subject matter expertise can be found on each area.

·       Give you a framework as to how to attract and retain employees to your business, how to grow and manage them, how and why you reward them, and how to exit them from your business with safety and dignity;

·       Reduce the need to invest heavily in winding back poor approaches later on that have become “custom and practice”.

Having built your people management framework in a manner that actively contributes to your business and at the same time avoiding bureaucracy, you will find yourself close to on par with the big end of town. The research I mentioned earlier suggested that there was a positive correlation between HR practices and bottom line performance because productivity could be better enhanced. This was through defined activities such as clear job descriptions, performance systems, dispute resolution procedures and employment rigour, just to cite a few.

 I suppose that having presented the logic of having a people management framework it simply makes good business sense. After all, when you look at other aspects of your business and the logic:

·       You put time and effort into plans for production so that you produce on time, to specification and within budget;

·       You put time and resources into presentations to financial backers so that you continue to get or attract financial backing;

·       You spend time researching your marketplace so you can maximize your chances of converting sales;

·       You evaluate other competing products and competitors so that you can implement counter measures to protect you and your products;

·       You practice and polish your sales pitch in an effort to woo customers.

If this all makes sense, then why wouldn’t you invest in a people management infrastructure so you can attract, retain, grow and promote your most volatile yet valuable resource, your people?

The simple answer is, you should invest and the sooner the better!