Did I get your attention? Good. Did I give you whiplash? That’d be decidedly not good. Now that I’ve got you here, how about I chill out just a little and get to the content itself?
I’ve experienced some pretty terrible behavior from those I was told exist to protect me.
Basic Respect from an HR specialist is a lot like Common Sense: it just isn’t that common.
It’s sad that this article comes directly from my experiences in both Global & Fortune-100 companies who pride themselves on their Core Values and ethical excellence.
So I figured, maybe they just need some help, some pointers they could refer to. Here are 9 Rules-of-Thumb which would have made my encounter better:
- If the employee states a specific, explicit concern — they deserve a specific, explicit answer.
- Especially if your final verdict perfectly mirrors the very behavior they spoke up about.
- Regardless of the delivery, you must treat them and their concerns with the utmost respect. Excuses and “reasons” I’ve been given to disrespect me as a human and literally ignore my feedback or concerns include: lack of eloquence, lack of professionalism, showing too many emotions, not enough data.
- Do not belittle their style or choice of words.
- Do not insult their intelligence.
- Do not ignore the documentation they provided.
- Employees are your customer. You work for them.
- Always address your employee’s statements directly.
- Especially if their statements come in the form of an accusation.
- You should not, at any point, change the focus of conversation until you have sufficiently addressed the statement.
- Only the employee gets to determine whether your answer was sufficient.
- Treat all accusations as serious, real, genuine facts.
- Research every single accusation or concern, follow up on each one, and try to understand how existing data – or lack thereof – might validate their response.
- Only when you have exhausted all attempts to validate their accusation should you pursue investigating how their statement might be invalidated.
- Never speak in platitudes. Never provide non-answers. Never ask an employee to take your word for it. If an employee describes an ongoing, multiple-reported-instance situation – under NO circumstances should you brush them off with a non-answer.
- The absolute wrong response: “you just need to trust that sufficient discussions and behaviors have happened at the right levels.”
- You must be open to the possibility that your existing HR framework and past actions as an HR department have failed the employee.
- If an employee states that they have repeatedly spoken up about their concerns and have witnessed no action, don’t gaslight them into oblivion by stating you’ve already taken the correct action and done everything necessary.
- Do not ever use “canned”, scripted answers. They do not work. Vague responses do not work. Non-answers are garbage. Blanket statements do not work.
- If an employee makes more than one accusation, each and every accusation deserves a full discussion.
- Do not pick the easiest one to shoot down, then ignore all the rest.
- Treat every accusation as a genuine threat to the integrity of your company and a genuine lawsuit waiting to happen.
- Be aware of DARVO, and build systems to prevent yourself from engaging.
- Deny: deny the event actually happened. I have had nine years spread across seven positions, all of which claimed that nobody else has ever made the claims I made, isolated me by telling me I’d get in trouble for speaking to other employees, and sought to gaslight me by twisting the narrative so severely that I felt like I was going crazy and the things that happened never did.
- Attack: go after the victim by attacking them. In my case, my HR rep deliberately misinterpreted as many things as possible during our interview in order to twist my words and claim I was acting in bad faith. I literally watched their face change right before they did, and you better believe I called them on their BS.
- Reverse the Victim and Offender: my HR rep repeatedly claimed that I was the one attempting to engage in retaliatory behavior, that I had a bone to pick, that I was the one being aggressive. They had the gall to interrupt me and hang up on me when I refused to accept their narrative.
If you run a company with an HR department; if you run the HR department; if you are in the HR department? Please take note. Here’s a way to immediately take the pulse of your HR, and it requires hardly any resources.