Common HR problems and how to deal with them

Cornerstone Resources have been in business for nearly 4 years now. Over that time we’ve helped our customers with many HR issues. Many of these are common HR problems so we’ve pulled some themes together in this, the first of a series of blogs. We hope you find these useful but please don’t hesitate to contact us if you want to chat through your HR issues in more detail.

1) Common HR Problem – Sick pay

Many contracts of employment and Sickness absence policies that we see state that employees will receive Statutory Sick Pay only. However, once we start digging into the detail, we find that the contract hasn’t been followed. Often for very laudable reasons, full pay has been maintained during periods of absence. The problem is that once you deviate from policy, it is very hard to get that genie back in the bottle. As we are often engaged whilst an issue is live, stopping sick pay during a period of absence leads to some very difficult conversations and some level of risk. It’s also hard to get people back to work when they have indefinite sick leave.

How can you resolve this? The best way of dealing with this common HR problem is to set a policy and stick to it. If you don’t want to pay SSP, find an affordable level of Company enhanced sick pay that you are happy to stick to. SSP is not particularly generous so if you can afford to pay some level of sick pay, it will be appreciated.

2) Common HR problem – Poorly defined roles

Another common HR problem we see is around poorly defined roles. Lack of clarity leads to either poor performance or stress. Poor performance often is a result of a lack of shared understanding about what is expected. We get a call to say employee X isn’t performing, how can I get rid of them? Our response back is to explore what the role is, key accountabilities and whether they are skilled or trained to perform the role. If the answer to that is no, we look to fix those issues first. The other response is stress. A lack of clarity can also lead to additional requirements being placed on capable people. This can result in underperformance due to the sheer volume of work.

How do you deal with this issue? Don’t jump straight to thinking about dismissal. Instead take time to look at the way work is allocated. Sure, in smaller organisations there has to be flexibility, but if 60% of the work is falling on one person, is that fair? Recruiting someone else won’t solve this problem as you’re putting another person in to the same badly designed role.

Common HR problems and how to deal with them

3) Common HR problem – Poor recruitment

Often, especially in fast growing organisations, there is the pressure to fill roles. This leads to accepting whoever is available rather than looking for what is actually required. Then 6 months down the line, we get a call to say that it isn’t working out and how can I dismiss the employee? The first thing we would ask is did you define the essential skills, experience and qualifications before you recruited? If the answer is yes, did you assess those skills during recruitment? Where gaps exist, have you put a training plan in place to close them off? If you knowingly recruited someone who didn’t tick all of the essential boxes and then didn’t train them, you’ve set them up to fail.

When you are going to recruit, look at the person specification before you start. Then assess anything that is essential. This doesn’t need to be onerous. Making sure you ask questions around that area in the interview is a start. If you have a genuine development role, look at potential, not just what the person has done to date.

4) Common HR problem – Promotion based on capability in current role

Often because someone is a high performer in their current role, we think they will be great in a more senior role. Employees therefore get promoted purely on their merits in their current role. The individual could be a natural leader and fit into the new role well. However, if the employee has not been assessed on their managerial competence, this is often not evaluated. They may struggle with managing people and become demotivated, which can impact on the whole team. Managers are often surprised when this happens, as they see the individual was great at their previous role but forget to consider the different skills and behaviours required from managers / leaders.

The recruitment process can be useful to highlight any potential development gaps. If the new role is a leadership one, you need to understand their competency in that area. This isn’t to say that you don’t promote someone with no management experience, some people just need guidance and support, but the recruitment process can help you put together their development plan for the new role. This could involve coaching / direction from their manager, mentoring from someone in the organisation with a great reputation for leadership skills, or a more formal training course. The interview process can also be key to finding out their views – do they actually want to be a manager/leader or would they rather remain as a high performer in their current role.

Sometimes you never know how good someone will be until you give them the opportunity. However, with a well-planned recruitment process and focused development planning, the chances of success are massively improved.

5) Common HR problem – Allowing ‘toxic’ employees to continue unchallenged

We’ve all met or worked with these individuals, who spread negativity across the team. As they may be great performers, the issues often go unaddressed, as managers don’t want to lose their expertise. But the result can often be a demotivated team, bigger performance issues and often the toxicity breeds across others. Instead, line managers need to tackle these issues as they develop. Provide feedback ‘in the moment’ as situations happen. The challenge can be done in a coaching style to start with “how do you feel that comment/behaviour impacted on the team?” “how could you have said/done that differently?”. However, if it continues a more formal approach maybe need and eventually, if still no change, using the disciplinary process.

 If the individual has got a great skill set that you rely on, think about succession planning and train someone up to cover this individual. It’s never a good plan for an organisation to be too dependent on 1 individual.

Also don’t worry if this person was inherited by you and has ‘always behaved like this’, you can still address this. You need to ensure they know this behaviour is not accepted anymore and needs to stop.