What’s new in HR?

We’ve been reflecting on the recent suggestion on HR Zone by Rob Catalano that an employee handbook could be reduced to just one sentence.

The idea being that we put too much effort into managing the tiny minority of difficult employees. Instead we should focus on building a relationship of trust with employees which empowers and motivates them.

What might this mean for employers?

We are certainly advocates of reviewing HR practice to see if things can be done differently and not being bound by a traditional approach. There is an interesting point here; just how much time and energy should be put into creating detailed handbooks? Could the business message and expectations be more succinctly communicated to employees?

Well worth giving some thought to, while ensuring that employees really do understand what is expected of them (remembering the case in our Legal Comment of 8 June 2015  where requiring employees to report actual misconduct, did not impose an obligation to report allegations of misconduct). Can you be confident that your managers understand how to address challenging HR issues in a fair and consistent way without guiding policies?

We agree that over engineering policies and procedures isn’t helpful (and also probably means they’re not read!).  Doing away with them completely though is a brave step and, in our view, only worth taking if your managers are properly trained and confident in addressing a broad variety of challenging HR issues.  A little guidance is sometimes invaluable.