If your company is remoter hybrid than, you know, how hard
it can be for employees to build meaningful connections with each
other. While this week's sponsor is
here to solve that and they are called, mystery mystery has
changed the way that I even think about Employee Engagement,
they use the power of data and virtual events to drive employee
connections. I actually recently attended a
mystery demo and let me tell you, I learned so much about the
potential behind Employee Engagement and how Mysteries
events Drive connection and belonging.
So I'm excited to share that. There is a special promotion for
listeners of my podcast. Thanks to mr.
E. You can get your first two
mystery events for the price of one that is right to events for
the price of one. So if you're looking for a way
to improve Employee Engagement and drive Connection in your
organization, I highly recommend.
Checking them out. Go to try mr.
E.com h, r, Dash podcast. That's T Ry mr.
E.com h r Dash podcast to get this special offer.
Plus I've added The link in the show notes so you can just click
there. Now, let's get back to the
podcast. Welcome to the bringing the
human Back To Human Resources podcast.
I'm Tracy turn off. And I've spent my entire
professional career in a jar, each week, we'll explore the
delicate balance between people and business with the aim to
reconnect the two and create meaningful outcomes.
Listen in, as I share my own experiences challenge, the
status quo and chat with guests from various Industries about
our mission, to bring the human Back To Human Resources.
Hi everyone, welcome back to the podcast.
Thank you so much for being here for another week.
Don't forget to rate review, subscribe wherever you're
listening to the podcast or if you're watching me on YouTube or
Spotify, I'm looking right at you.
Right through the camera which is really hard to train myself
to do, but I'm working on it. Well anyway, this is probably
one of the first solo episodes that I'm recording after having
a ton of guest episodes. Normally, I kind of like, do
this Lows and then I have to guess but I figured you know
what? Let me let me get some guests
episodes in for the year and then let's chat.
So we've heard a lot from guests this month about how we can
focus on humans, right? How we can think about what
we're doing to provide resources for them, how we're you know,
supporting them in business and an industry and of course, as HR
people or if you're Going to break into HR, that's always
going to be like front and center or so it should be right.
But I wanted to take the opportunity to talk about when
HR gets involved because I think that sometimes we have these
conversations which are obviously really important we
have to talk about what business needs and how we support people.
But we don't always then loop back around as to the timing and
when a char Kind of steps in and gets involved.
So, I kind of wanted to use this episode to talk through that.
Now, what I will preface with is that in every episode toward the
end of every guest episode, I should say, I'm always asking in
some way, shape or form. How can HR apply this, or
sometimes? It's not even, it's not even.
At the end of the episode, sometimes, it's in the middle of
the episode where I say, hey, like, how are we, how can we
advise HR people too? To jump into this type of
situation, right? But this episode specifically is
about how and when we like have that trigger, that light bulb
moment in our minds to say, oh now is the time to get involved.
So, let's first talk about one scenario, which is the most
common for us to get involved in, which is, like
interpersonal, conflict conflict, between two,
individuals may be more or, as we would call it in the industry
employee relations. If you haven't heard the term
employee relations before, I've talked about it, a number of
times on my podcast. But basically, employee
relations is just that all of the the details and things that
employees are experiencing, but with the specific and fine-tuned
focus and detail on interpersonal issues, that's
usually what employee relations is kind of involved with
everything from you know just like an argument between two
people too. Harassment between people.
So that's when I reference employee relations.
That's what I'm referring to. If you're not an HR and you've
not heard this term now, you know, if you are not in HR and
you have heard this term but you've always wondered now, you
know. So let's take, for example, like
I said, a pretty common one, which is interpersonal conflict
when you have two people in an issue or in a situation where
there is some sort of issue the ideal Be for those individuals
to work out their issues together between between one
another. Let's assume that it's just two
people in this in this scenario. And the reason why I say that is
because when one person has an issue with another person and
is, or there's a situation where a person feels that the other
person has an issue with them, there's a need to Clearly Bridge
communication gaps and potentially build some trust.
But on top of that when we as HR professionals, don't just jump
in and get involved and instead we empower the person who is
feeling some kind of way about these communication gaps or
about these situations that are kind of taking place.
We are empowering them to feel more confident in their own
voice to use their voice. We're empowering them to solve
their own problems and challenges.
I know that there is sometimes a misconception that someone comes
to HR with their problem and HR sends them to go and deal with
it. And that HR doesn't help right.
This is a misconception. This is a stigma instead,
actually, if HR if an HR person is saying, hey, here are the
tools to go and solve this problem and they're sending that
person back out into the world to go and handle their Challenge
that actually is helping them and it's our responsibility in
these moments when someone potentially comes to us with an
issue that we think about, okay, what is my absolute need to get
involved? Like is it obligatory for me to
get involved or is this an opportunity for me to empower?
This person who's come to me to handle things amongst
themselves? Most of the Time.
It's going to be the ladder where the person can handle it
between, you know, themselves and the other person in the
instance where they can't, this is where obviously we would have
to jump in. But before I get to that when
you have conversations with someone that lead to you one or
lead you to wanting to empower them and solve this problem for
themselves, it is really important that you are clear
about that and clear about why you are not Jumping in because I
think part of the reason why there is a misconception and a
stigma around people go to HR in h.r., just sends them to go and
deal with it anyway, is because we are not necessarily taking
that extra effort to explain the decision making.
So I'm going to role play with myself, for example, if someone
comes to me and says, hey Tracy, I have this issue with my
manager or my Pierre and I don't really know what to do about it.
Can you help me? And maybe the situation is that
this person feels like their manager takes away,
responsibilities from them, and makes them feel undervalued.
Let's just say, and it could be a totally different scenario,
but this is, you know, the for that person, this is their
reality. So for me, my best decision to
make here or the best outcome that I can have from a decision
that I make here is for that employee who has come to me to
feel empowered and confident. Aunt because already they're
not. So to send them back out,
feeling empowered, feeling more confident, feeling more
established in their voice is not only going to help them to
continue to build confidence, but it's actually going to help
improve their relationships. Not only with themselves, but
with the people around them. So because everyone wants to
feel empowered and confident. So the more good we can do in
building up people, the better it's going to be.
So for me, what I would say to this person in this Situation in
this example is, hey I'm so glad that you have come to me and
that you're, you know, you're choosing to talk through this
because it's really important that we have a good
relationship. I want to make sure that I'm
here to support you and that goes for everyone.
Here's my best recommendation. Here's my best advice and this
is where you can kind of start to paint the picture.
I would not be doing you any good if I just stepped in, and
Solve this problem for you because it's likely that you are
going to continue throughout your career.
You're going to continue to have these moments where you're going
to feel some kind of way about the way in which someone has
interacted with you. And I want to make sure that you
feel empowered and that, you know, that you're empowered to
address these concerns whether you bring them to me or not but
to address them on your own. So I I want to give you the
tools to be able to do that. And I want you to know that you
are empowered to confidently and appropriately and professionally
handle this issue. So now you've set the stage with
that, right? With that verbage, now you can
kind of go into some advice for how to deal with this and the
advice I usually give is make sure that you walk through it,
if you whether you want to role play it with me or with someone
else, I would make sure that if Roleplay with someone else that
it is not someone in the organization, or that would be
negatively impacted by your feelings, around the situation.
Because we want to, we want to make sure that we are not, you
know, coloring outside of the lines with things that can be
sensitive about someone else's leadership or someone else's
involvement in this situation. So, you know, naturally, I would
invite this person to role play and practice me and I also
always Sighs that they work to actively remove emotion from
their feedback because really, this is a, this is a feedback,
practicing moment. And I kind of take the
opportunity to boil it down to that.
Also that, you know, this employee is in a moment of
needing to provide feedback to the person that they are not
happy with at present and that the only way to really give
constructive feedback that has you know, an Um that they're
looking for is to really focus on providing facts and not being
emotionally or reactively driven in sharing this information.
Now the third thing and certainly not the last thing
that I always focus on to is that when giving the feedback or
what going into I should say, when going into this type of
conversation, the person should always have a clear goal in
mind. So in this scenario, if I were
to actually actively say this, This person, I would say hey,
when you, you know, are ready to practice this, make sure that
you're like, writing down three bullet points of what you need
to cover. What are the things that, you
know, you want to address? How did it make you feel?
And what do you need from that person?
That at the, very top of that page, you should have the goal.
If the goal is to have an apology, right?
That if your goal is to improve the working environment for
yourself, or the relationship between the two of you, Have
that as the goal, whatever you do, every single part of that
conversation has to be bookended by the goal.
So, this is an example of where we're getting involved by
equipping someone with really, hopefully, really strong tools
and resources, but actually, the best way that we're helping them
in this way other than those tools and resources is Again, by
empowering them and building their confidence.
I think that is hands down one of the most important roles that
play as HR leaders is knowing when not to step in and knowing,
when to take the longer route, the harder route and going
through all of those practice scenarios walking through or
role-playing the situation, giving them tools, equipping,
the person with, you know, things measures for Success so
that they can continue to have successful conversations but
also so they go into their career with A better
understanding of what can help them to be more successful
because every single person is going to have an interpersonal
conflict. So the more people we can equip
with this knowledge and that we can empower the the stronger
organizations will be in my opinion.
So let's take a different situation where maybe it's a
little bit more murky as far as where HR gets involved.
Let's say for example someone comes to us and says I'm really
stressed You know, the work that I have, the workload that I have
is really stressing me out, and I'm just like, feeling so sick
over it. There are a couple reasons why
someone might be coming to you with this one.
The obvious could be that. They need a leave of absence or
they need some resources. Time off, they need to know what
those resources are. Maybe the less obvious is that
they're looking to just kind of vent it out and see you know, I
don't know how they can work through this.
The third maybe even less obvious option is that it could
be like I don't you know for a lack of a better term or phrase
a cry for help in that be there's something deeper going
on within their Department within their team, with their
manager that they are not fully comfortably sharing.
So my recommendation, when someone comes to us with kind of
like an open-ended vague, this is how I'm feeling and you know
I could really use some help is to ask a lot of questions.
So this again, it doesn't necessarily mean that you're
going to get involved right away or that you're going to get
involved directly in solving this.
Um but you don't know that until you find out through like a
question answer moment, I don't want to say segment because this
is not like a theater thing or a script but you know there is
it's kind of like building your muscle memory so and building
your skill set as well to know. When you have to dig a Little
Deeper, I personally don't believe in taking anything at
face value. I always try to uncover like,
you know, peel back the onion and uncover what Else there is,
and sometimes there isn't anything and that's okay, but
you have to do the due diligence in asking those questions.
Now, from one perspective, you have to ask more questions
because now someone is citing stress and potentially, this
could be, you know, a work-related thing and could
result in this person needing to hear leave of absence PTO
options that are obligatory for us to share and inquire about.
So I N2 when someone sites, something like stress, or things
like that or their health, I tend to lead with that.
Like, hey, we have options. Like, if you, if, this is
something that you need, here are the things that we offer.
And I kind of go through that. And I would say, most of the
time people are like, well, you know, I don't know, I don't know
if I need that. I maybe I just need to take a
day off and this is a good opportunity for you to dig
further. Even if someone says, oh, this
is really great to know. Thank you for those options.
Like, I'll let you know, Don't let them run away.
Don't let them hang up the call. That is still an opportunity for
you to dig in and provide them support.
People are coming to us with things and we have to make space
for them to feel comfortable in sharing this information.
If you're listening to this or watching this and you're like,
well no one comes to me. You might have an opportunity to
improve the relationships that you have within your
organization relationships, are everything.
I've talked about this a million times.
Is over relationships are the most important thing that you
build and focus on as an HR professional because the better
your relationships are the better, you'll have the better,
the pulse you'll have on the organization and on teams which
is really one of the best ways for us to be able to positively
influence and affect, you know, the organizations that we work
for. So anyway in this opportunity to
ask more questions, this is where you're going.
Need to figure out how involved you need to be.
If someone, you know, as you're digging if you're asking, well
you know, when did this start have you?
You know, have you shared this with anyone else?
Does your manager provides specific resources?
For you? Have you shared that you're
feeling this way? With your manager?
Some other questions might be, what do you do to prevent
burnout? Is there anything that you do
today to manage your stress levels?
Because of course, stress is always going to come with work.
Work was is Not meant to be fun. A hundred percent of the time,
that's why we call it work. However, we want to make sure
that there are, you know, opportunities for you to feel
like you have Harmony in your work and your personal life and
then you can also ask questions like well is there something
else? You know, going on is whether
you know at home or at work you obviously don't have to disclose
anything personal but you know if there's something else going
on I would love to be able to support you, right?
So these questions all have Deeper purposes.
When I ask a question like well how long has this been going on?
It can help us to potentially point out if it's a result of an
organizational change management, change a change in
the team, a change in their job function.
If I ask a question like Have you shared this with your
manager and they say no that might point to.
Well why not? And that might be we might not
ask why not to that person you could but this could send a
message for us. That really says.
Well maybe there's an issue there that we need to dig into
and then aside from that if they haven't told their manager.
If you can encourage them to tell their managers so that the
manager is aware of that this need to further or more
effectively support their employee.
That's also beneficial kind of going back to the initial
situation or the first situation I shared and then other than
that if I even asked a question as far, Far as well you know
what are you doing to manage your stress if someone's like,
well I'm working 10 12 hours a day, six days a week because you
know, there's so much to do not only could this point to, you
know, an organizational need as far as like headcount.
And and the way that the organization is structured but
it also could point to the the effectiveness of the operations
within a team or an organization and how Businesses are ensuring
that there is Harmony in the day because meetings are rough.
When you're back to back in meetings like you're not looking
up and you're doing that, you know, five days out of the week.
It's rough. And there is an operational
opportunity there for an organization to improve their
operations. So, you know, you can get a lot
out of questions that help that person feel better because
they're now sharing it, and they feel that this is and they know
that it's a safe space. Ace.
But then on the other side of things it's going to help you.
Kind of diagnose the situation a little bit better.
The questions are so important and the more you do this the
better your questions are going to be the better.
Your questions are the the more intrinsic and intuitive these
moments will be for you as an HR leader.
So from those conversations or from I should say, from those
answers, you can then decide and discern where you have to get
involved. If Any point, the conversation
goes to my managers doing this. My manager is doing that.
I'm really unhappy and it's like a disgruntled thing.
You're probably going to have to get involved more directly
because that employee is probably not going to go to
their manager directly if they haven't already and there's
likely a need for you to step in.
Now, I say this with an asterisk because you do have to be
transparent if you get involved in that way.
And so in those situations when I I've decided that I'm going to
step it in some way or if I'm trying to decide if I'm going to
step in directly, I will say to the employee.
Hey, how do you want this to be resolved?
Do you want me to step in? Do you want to go to the
mountain, to your manager directly?
How can we resolve this? And you kind of keep the ball in
that person's Court rather than you know, taking on all of the
ownership? Because at the end of the day we
can only kind of like support both.
People in this and we also only know one side of the situation.
So we don't want to immediately, you know like defacto go to the
person who's coming to me first, is the one in the right.
And the person who hasn't come to me yet is the one in the
wrong that is the wrong way to go about things.
We have to take things with a grain of salt.
Actually at face value at first to dig in and then we have to
really get another perspective. Especially if the person says,
well I want you to be involved. So when you ask that question,
you kind of pose that that opportunity to the, let's say,
the complaining party or the person coming to you, that
person that has a decision to make, is this serious enough for
them to say? Yeah, I need you to get
involved. I need you to step in or is this
not serious enough where they still want HR Support because
they don't really know how to handle it.
That's also okay or on the other side of things is this something
that they feel they are capable of Calling themselves if someone
says oh, you know what? Actually, I want to manage this
on my own. Sometimes what I will do is I'll
still say hey I would love to just connect on this further.
I want to hear how the conversation goes.
I also do want to stay close to the situation so I might speak
to your manager. I'm not going to share
necessarily that you know the contents of our conversation.
Unless this you know there's a serious issue that this person
obviously shared with you but sometimes Times, I will say that
or sometimes I will go to the manager and say, hey, how are
things going like, you know, I want to, I want to understand,
you know, a little bit better, what the working relationships
are like, and also, I want you to be open if anyone on your
team, kind of comes to with some feedback because this is
probably going to take a lot from them, right?
So there is some caressing that you can do.
When there is like, you know, some sort of situation with a
manager going on and the better your relationships The more
casually, you can have these conversations and it won't feel
like so awkward. But anyway, in this situation,
if someone's like, no, I don't want to address this on my own,
I don't know what to say. I don't want to do the wrong
thing. Can you just support me
sometimes, you're going to make a decision to have like a trio
call or meeting where you're connecting with all parties.
Sometimes you're going to decide that you have to connect with
the manager first and understand their perspective.
And their side of things and then have like, what I would
call a mediation so that you can support the conversation as a
neutral, third party. And then other times, if the
situation is really bad, you might actually have to remove
the the manager from the situation in order to focus on
the person that is making you know or formalizing some sort of
complaint which we'll get to in this.
The third and final example but you know you might have to
remove that person. And really work to understand
what's going on. And then you're going to have to
kind of double down on a mediation and evaluate.
If this is a relationship that can be, you know, resolved or in
a problem that can be resolved with in maintaining the
organizational structure. Sometimes it's just not that
simple depending on the situation.
But obviously I gave a pretty benign, example of someone being
stressed in the workplace and it really could mean a multitude of
things. But the only way we find out is
by asking those questions. So In this example again, you
could be involved in directly by equipping someone and empowering
them and you can be directly involved in helping to resolve
the issue and actually mediating and mitigating the risk and
mediating the issues. So this is again, the questions
are going to be the most imperative and impactful part of
that process. Now the third and final example,
that I have for you is probably the most severe example that
there is, which is when Thing is illegally done or a person's,
you know, privacy or rights have been violated.
So let's take probably the most use example of a harassment
claim the way I typically approach these things is kind of
like the same way every time so that I'm consistent.
I always say, hey as a reminder, you know there is a there is an
expectation in good faith reporting.
So in reporting this, you are formalizing the complaint.
And you know, I I am trusting that you are making this
complaint in good faith because I do have to launch an
investigation. And then from there, I always
share that, you know, the contents of our conversation are
not necessarily going to be confidential because of the
severity of the situation. However, there is a, you know,
an anti retaliation policy and at no point will their name or
personal information. Be shared at risk for you.
No violating that policy you know, that policy is so
critical. Investigations that you know,
there is no retaliation at all and that it is prohibited and so
in order to maintain that policy and ensure that they are not
retaliated against you know their discretion is of the most
concern but that the contents of the conversation, can't
necessarily remain confidential at least within, you know,
appropriate parties. And of course there's always
like a, you know, a nervousness around that, but I try to
reassure Assure people that when it comes to situations like
this, I don't go to and I actually use this example, I'm
not going to go to the person that you're filing this
complaint about and say, hey so-and-so told me that you did
this. What are your thoughts?
Like, that's not how investigations are handled.
Instead it's hey, there was a report about this.
I need to understand what happened as of right now.
There is an investigation into you as a, you know,
participating party in this. And we need to understand what
happened. So, usually that tends to make
the reporting party fuel, you know a little bit more confident
in the situation a little bit less nervous, but I always say,
you know, transparency is really important and we have to be
upfront about what we can and can't do and depending on the
situation if it is harassment, and especially if there is, you
know, a level of harassment that can either be validated or is
Severe like, someone's physical space has been violated.
Their emotional space has been violated, your kind of again,
discretion is is advised here, sometimes people claim
harassment and it's not by definition harassment.
And I say this because sometimes with harassment claims that are
you know, more severe. You are going to potentially
have to suspend the party that is being complained about the
alleged aggressor, if you will. So, Not in every situation, will
you have that? Because again, if someone is
saying that they hurt were harassed but really it was just
an appropriate conversation or you know, disrespectful
conversation that's not necessarily harassment.
So you wouldn't necessarily have to suspend that person but in
cases where it is more severe, you might and I would advise you
to consider suspension if something is severe because it
kind of and elongates the time for you to be able to give a
fair and And thorough investigation because suspension
should be paid and have to be paid.
So you can remove that person. Pay them.
You don't have any risk there of any retaliation, you're removing
them from the situation and you're making the complaining
party, feel comfortable as well. Now, I've said this before on
podcasts, that kind of delve into this, and I'm going to say
it again. You should never suspend or
remove the complaining party that is victim.
Blaming you. I'm not going to go ahead and
say that every single person making complaint is a victim or
is always truthful. Obviously, that's not always the
case, but when it comes to how you handle these situations, you
have to remove the alleged aggressor, not the the
complaining party. It sends the wrong message, and
it's not the right thing to do. You can disagree with me all you
want, but that's where I stand and I and not willing to debate
it. That's where I stand anyway.
When it comes to that, if you, you know, when you do step in
like this is obviously, whenever something like this is going on,
like this situation. You know, you have to be
involved directly. This is your most urgent part of
your day. When something like this
happens, everything else has to fall to the Wayside and if it's
not, or if someone makes you feel like this isn't the most
urgent, they are wrong like this handling, these types of ER or
employee relations issues is your top.
Priority as it comes up. And with, you know, top
priority, our issues employee relations issues, you are
absolutely directly involved. Sometimes you have to involve
other HR leaders, sometimes you have to involve the person's
manager depends on the situation of course, but again, your
direct involvement is required at immediate response.
And in this situation you're going to have to launch a whole
investigation. You have to You know, leave no
Stern, the stone unturned and your responsibility is to work
to understand what the situation is.
Not every harassment claim is going to result in someone being
fired. Not every harassment.
Claim is going to result in someone being suspended or even
put on corrective action in the event.
That there's a situation where harassment is validated and and
corroborated your likely, and you should be looking Corrective
action up to and including termination where harassment is
not so clear. But again, maybe it's kind of
like this recipe disrespectful communication, you can get
involved with some training for that person you can absolutely.
And I would encourage you to document or, you know, provide
corrective action to that person so that it is taken seriously.
But there's it's kind of like all this gray area.
It's like a rainbow, if you will that, you know what?
The way in which we have to deal with these things.
Most of the time you're probably going to take someone as a
partner in making these final decisions, whether it's your
leader or a legal representative, depending on the
severity, or the complexity of the situation.
But you definitely have to think through where your involvement
starts and stops. What really in this type of
situation, your involvement is going to stop when the
investigation concludes and everything.
You know, you've Taking your action plans and you've executed
them and and it's, you know, kind of resolved and done your,
of course your involvement starts.
The moment someone comes to you with this situation.
If you want more information on when or where, or how to deal
with this kind of situation, let me know.
I can absolutely dive into this deeper and go through kind of
like all of those Pathways when someone shares that they, you
know, feel they're being harassed or that.
They have been harassed in some way and there is a lot that is
covered by the harassment definition.
So you know even things like cyber bullying bullying in
general you know intimidation like all of those things can be
harassment. Sometimes people won't you know
sometimes actually people will come to you like let's take that
first example that I shared they'll come to you saying they
feel stressed and then they talk about things that actually would
fall under the definition of harassment and you have to be
able To hear and listen to what they're saying and then discern
from there, what that complaint is truly about.
So that kind of goes back to the point that I made about asking a
lot of questions and understanding where something
has now taken a different form and that maybe it's not just an
interpersonal conflict or maybe it's not just feedback for a
manager but actually it's it's deeper than that potentially.
So that is where you are going to play an integral role in
understanding. Standing where you need to
escalate, where you need to deescalate and how you have to
get involved. So as you continue to listen to
these guests episodes and if you haven't listened to the guests
episodes from this month just yet, really think with a
critical eye, like how have you been able to bring, you know,
this type of human centrism and focus on solving problems to
your job. It doesn't matter if this is
something that you deal with today.
You do have to be able to have this skill set at any level in
your career. If you are in h.r., or if you
are a people leader. Because people leaders also need
to know how to triage issues and how to escalate or deescalate
situations as well. So, I hope that this was
helpful, I absolutely can do a deeper dive, I can go into more
situations, I can give more examples, I have tons and tons
of stories that I can share. So, just let me know whether
Either you email me at contact at HR Tracy.com or you leave,
you know, a comment on an Instagram posts or DME can
message me on LinkedIn to you can also if you're watching or
listening on Spotify you can share what you thought about
this episode that will definitely give me some data to.
So I know if this is more. So what you want to hear a
little bit more of, but please feel free to reach out.
If you have a specific situation that I can support you with, let
me know. I'm happy to help as much as
possible. Well, I appreciate you being
here and I will see you next week.
Hey, just before you go. Don't forget to subscribe to the
show so that you are the first to hear when an episode drops
each week and maybe leave a five star review and a comment about
how much you loved this episode. Plus if you have someone in
mind, who would really enjoy this episode?
Make sure you share it with them.
Thank you so much for tuning in and I'll see you next week.