Your thoughts please....
Khuseman_mpfcak_com
2 Posts
I have been in my position with my company for a year. Prior to my hire, this company has never had a "true" HR office. I am having difficulty with a few managers who refuse to include me in department decision for discipline, change in employee job duties. For example I just found out from an employee the two managers held a discipline meeting with her and had her sign a statement. She was not given a copy of the statment, and obvously I didn't know there was a meeting.
I have copied out of the Alaska Law 2008 BLR book for discipline, which states I should have been at the meeting and the meeting should have been documented. This is the same manager that gave eveyone in the department a flat raise except this one employee. I had to fight with her the clinic administrator and then call EEO to have a written statement on discrimination which I felt this cleary was. After two weeks of arguing the clinic adminstrator finally agreed the employee should be treated the same as the other 12 employees in the department.
Can anyone send me something in writing that states what type of meetings and Personnel issues the HR office should always be involved in, so I can once again show the managers and the clinic adminstrator what my role as the HR manager is?
Comments
I have found that HR is as involved as the top management thinks it should be involved. There are days when the COO doesn't want me to leave his office so that I can be a witness to everything that is said and done, other days - weeks - months he doesn't even tell me they are purchasing a new company. The way I have attempted to handle these situations, and other more experienced HR professionals may correct me, is by explaining to the managers and/or the COO that if I am not involved then when it comes time to defend the company in a law suit (for any reason), or an unemployment claim that I will be unable to do so since I have not been informed of what is going on. For example, I recently had an unemployment claim come across my desk of which I was not involved in the discipline of that particular employee. When that former employee appeals the DOL decision I will have nothing with which to defend the company. The COO did set up a policy that all employee discipline goes through me first. This has helped in a tremendous way and the most recent former employees who applied for unemployment were unsuccessful because of the wonderfully documented paper trail that the managers provided me with.
I feel like I'm rambling so I'll stop now. I hope this helps. Have a great day.
I agree with Uga...that is, it depends on your corporate structure....
I am not involved in every meeting, but I do ask that they keep me informed. And that they pass any unusual disciplinary issues up the line. And that they have written documentation that gets passed to me for the meetings I am not in on. I often ask for more details when I don't feel the documentation is enough.
Honestly, I would HATE to be in every disciplinary meeting. I would not have time to do all my other job responsibilities. I want my managers to handle issues without me. But I want the paper trail to back them up. I was able to successfully defend an EEOC/discrimination charge with only the documentation to back me up. I had never met the ex-employee who made the complaint. But luckily I had trained the onsite manager about verbal/written documentation and consistency between employees.
It depends on the corporate environment and setup on how much an HR person needs to be in every meeting. I would rather be in the strategic meetings (like when we are about to buy/start a new company ) than in disciplinary meetings. I would rather train/coach the managers to do it correctly without my presence being needed.
You might start by explaining that several areas of employment law now include a very serious threat of personal liability and that it's very easy to break those laws in ways he/she might not have considered.
Keep in mind that HR means different things in different companies. Are you defined as a support person or as a strategic business partner? Is HR benefits, paperwork, and all that stuff "real business people" can't be bothered with? If they've never had a HR department, they may well never have dealt with an employee relations expert. They may not feel they need one. Their lack of buy in to your participation essentially means that they don't have one unless/until they buy in or get forced. Given your situation, I think it would be valuable to find out why the decision maker decided to have HR representation and what that person has envisioned for the role. With that knowledge, you can then work toward a concrete goal that is backed from above. Once accomplished, it will be easier to work to enact your vision of HR within the Company as you show your value.
The BLR book will give best practices but I am not familliar with any state law in any state or territory of the union that specifically recognizes a HR role or decrees that someone in such a role must be in any particular kind of meeting. Whether or not HR presence is a good idea in a meeting depends a lot on the magnitude of the consequences of the meeting. Disciplinary meetings that involve statement signing should be documented. The employee is not necessarily entitled to a copy of the statement they signed. That is a state and circuit level issue. However, "statements" that employees are "asked" to sign often don't hold much value when the rubber hits the road if they aren't crafted properly. Did the employee have an opportunity to respond to the employer's statement such that they could clearly communicate whether they agreed with it or not? Did they have a chance to respond to it on that document? Did the employer statement contain any description of a warning (if this happens again...) or a specific disciplinary action (demoted, suspended, etc.)? The worst part about line supervisors and managers close to the work doing these things is that they're generally bad at it, so they cannot and do not support the Company's best interests.
It's not clear to me from your writing. When you wrote, " had to fight with her the clinic administrator and then call EEO to have a written statement on discrimination which I felt this cleary was[,]" did you mean that you entered a complaint with EEOC against your employer on behalf of another employee?
I agree with the others that how you are seen by managers/supervisors will depend on how the owners/President/CEO/top management sees you. I also agree that you need to find out what the reason is behind why you were hired. I have run up against many managers and even top level management that did not see the value in HR or respect what I did/do. You have to remember that many see HR as an expense. You are not like sales, who bring in the money, or service, who are taking care of the customers so that money continues to come in. What you have to show these people is that you are worth the money they are spending on you and your department. You also have to show them how you are saving money that other managers are letting go out the back door just as fast as they are bringing it in the front door. Show them in real numbers. Look at the cost of things like recruiting/hiring (are they using recruiting firms and spending 5k, 10k or even more per hire when you can use other recruiting sources and spend a lot less per hire), workers comp claims that were not managed appropriately so the costs got out of control, unemployment claims that were never contested even though the company would have won because the person was not eligible by state law to receive benefits for the enfraction, unemployment claims that could have been won had there been better documentation for the termination, and the list goes on and on. It will take time and energy to put all this together. You have to show your worth.
Let me give you an example to illustrate my point. At one time I worked for a large company based in many states. I was brought into one of the largest locations that was part of an acquision to help make the transition. The company also brought in a 20 year veteran of the company to run this location. He had never worked with anyone in HR before because he had said he never needed one. He flat out told me that he had never needed HR and didn't really see the need for me to be there. I just gave him the blank stare and nodded. The Senior VP (his boss) was there with him at the time and told him that he would need to reconsider his opinion and would understand after he started working with me (this VP and I had a good relationship and he got the need for HR). This General Manager just said ok but I could tell he really wasn't thrilled. From that day forward I made it my mission to prove him wrong. It was tough and we had some real battles. He tried to do things against policy (he really was a policy follower, he just didn't realize that these policies existed). I educated him on all things HR. I won some unemployment claims that he said I would never win. I helped save the company thousands of dollars by managing a WC claim that he said we should just let run its course because it was a lost cause. The most memorable battle was when a sales rep gave his two week notice. He wanted to just let him go and not pay out the notice. Corporate policy said that we had to pay him out. This GM decided that he wasn't going to pay him out so he had him work out the two weeks. I wanted to pay him out and let him go since the sales rep wasn't going to do anything of value in those two weeks (this person had not been performing and was on the way out the door with performance documentation). In my eyes the sales rep was a liability to us. He was on a car plan with us (meaning we were paying for car insurance, gas, etc.) and I didn't think it was worth it to keep him on board. Sure enough during those two weeks the sales rep got into an at fault car accident that ended up costing us over $15k. That two weeks of pay wouldn't have cost us anywhere near that amount. The GM came to me and said aren't you going to say "I told you so." My only response was to laugh and say "You just did it for me." From that day forward we had an understanding that we worked together on things.
Don't get me wrong, everything wasn't perfect after that. We still had some battles. But there was a mutual respect and he valued my opinion. Not much happened in that operation that I didn't know about after that. I was involved in lots of decisions that helped the operation grow. I wasn't involved in everything, you can't be, but I was involved in the things that I needed to be. I had a section in each staff meeting where I trained the managers on hiring, policies, documentation, and anything else that I needed to get out to them.