I am new to my organisation but have already introduced many successful processes and actions. The problem is my HR director claims the successes. The benevolent side of me considers she may be doing it to protect me, but the other side thinks she is out to claim the glory. This has happened to me before. I am not averse to challenging the HR director – I have a very direct approach – but it doesn’t feel right.
You’re being relatively defensive, which is perhaps understandable when you’ve been burned in the past. But be careful this doesn’t develop into a big issue. Change is always tough, and it may be that your boss is deliberately shielding you from organisational politics by taking responsibility for delivering your good ideas.
But let’s assume she is being at least partly Machiavellian in her dealings. You’ve got two options. The first is to have a clear, evidence-based conversation with her about what’s happened, and to offer a solution – which could involve shadowing her as she presents your ideas, to gain you some experience of operating at a higher level and ensure you get your share of the glory. It’s possible your boss doesn’t think you’re quite ready to take on extra responsibility, and this could be a good way to step up gradually.
The second is to play the game by ‘socialising’ your ideas before you formally present them. If staff around the water cooler realise the innovations are coming from you, your boss will end up looking foolish for trying to take the credit. But it’s a confrontational approach and I wouldn’t recommend it until your other options are exhausted.
It’s worth thinking about your presentational style. You say you’re direct and I wonder if that’s hindering you? As a newcomer, the best approach is to show you are open, humble and willing to learn. Getting to the point is never a bad thing, but sometimes HR operators need a few other strings to their bow too.
Can we offload our sickly staff?
We are a small business with fewer than 100 employees. We have an ongoing problem with too many people being signed off with one thing or another, often stress-related. Our employment contracts don’t stipulate the number of days staff can be away before disciplinary action commences. Do we need to change the contracts before we can start taking action?
The contractual side of absence management is obviously important, but let’s take a step back here. How much time have you spent thinking about why this is happening? We ask employees to take on so much, and to change so fast and so frequently, it’s not surprising stress is on the rise. Forty two per cent of businesses reported an increase in stress in 2013, according to the CIPD/Simplyhealth Absence Management Survey. An organisation that isn’t tackling this issue is being short-sighted.
There are some senior people out there (including, perhaps, in your own organisation) who think anyone with stress should pull themselves up by their bootstraps and get on with it. We wouldn’t adopt that approach to a serious physical condition, and there’s no reason why stress should be any different. And while every HR professional will occasionally come across a bad apple who tries to play the system, I can assure you your employees aren’t sitting around thinking of ways to get themselves signed off work for spurious reasons.
All of which makes me wonder why you haven’t investigated what’s really happening with your staff, not least because by taking a confrontational approach you’re leaving yourself vulnerable to a legal complaint from anyone with an underlying condition.
Are you having return-to-work conversations, and if so does HR own them? Have you thought about offering occupational health advice? Are you talking to staff at risk of stress, and do your line managers feel confident having conversations about mental health?
None of this needs to be expensive. Much of the training required can be delivered by HR, and there’s a wealth of support out there from charities, the HSE, the CIPD and local doctors. The real cost lies in taking an unnecessarily tough approach with stressed staff – it’s a vicious circle, because those who aren’t already stressed will become agitated by what they see happening to their colleagues, which may well be why you’re in the situation you’re in.
Days off are quite an old-fashioned way of measuring absence – it’s more sensible to look at the effect on job output – but you can put certain trigger points around absence into your contracts, and you can probably do so retrospectively. My hope is that by taking a more holistic view of the problem, such sanctions won’t be necessary.
Samantha Sales is managing director of Cambridge Interim HR and is a former HR director of a FTSE 100 company with extensive HR and OD experience. Her replies are written in a personal capacity and do not reflect the views of People Management or the CIPD, nor are they a substitute for professional legal advice. Not all queries submitted can be answered, and personal replies are not possible.
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