I am always amazed that businesspeople spend such volumes of time and money planning for new equipment, developing market plans, and negotiating with suppliers, yet pay such little attention to their human resources—their only unique asset! Products can be duplicated and the same equipment can be purchased by every competitor, but no one else can duplicate your group of employees.
Despite the above mentioned truth, employers continually ignore many aspects of good employee relations, instead preferring to hope—often in vain—that nothing will go wrong. Reviewing the business landscape, one sees managers continuing to make the same risky and often foolish decisions about their human resources.
Succession Issues Go Unaddressed
Fallacious though they may be, most employers exhibit at least one of the following qualities as regards succession issues:
i) belief in his own immortality
ii) being too busy to plan for her successor
iii) ignoring the succession issue in order to maintain an autocratic position
Those who fail to address succession issues often do not realize the time needed to prepare for such an event, instead preferring to believe that they just know who their successor will be. Such an approach often ignores the question of whether the assumed successor has the necessary competencies to take over the reins of the business. Another often–faulty assumption is that the successor an executive has in mind will actually want the position when the owner is ready to retire or dies. It may be that the candidate’s lifestyle desires do not align with the duties and responsibilities of being the chief executive.
Regardless of who a successor is, long–term planning and preparation is vital to succession success.
Safety Measures Ignored
Few managers want to put their employees at risk, though managers do take risks in their quest for greater efficiency.Safety policies are not strictly enforced. Short cuts are taken to speed up processes. Working conditions that have been in place for years are maintained even when they do not comply with regulations. Safety committees and their required duties are ignored as a nuisance.
Managers are again foolishly playing the odds, betting that no one will be injured, and thus no one will complain. If injury does occur, though, the company may face criminal charges and fines.
Proper Discipline Process Ignored
In the years since I became involved in human resource management, managers’ failure to properly administer discipline is one fact that hasn’t changed. Managers continually complain about poor performance, dysfunctional behaviour, and incompetence, but complaining is the extent of their action.
Without fail, the situation worsens until it culminates in the manager firing the offender, an action often followed by a visit from the terminated employee’s lawyer, who of course wants to know the employer’s justification for the firing.
Management justifies their action with multiple anecdotes of mistakes, malingering, and exhibitions of insubordination, but without a written record of said anecdotes, management has no legal justification for the firing.
Training dollars wasted
I am a strong proponent of training, but I am simultaneously appalled at the money wasted on it.
Too often, an employer’s approach to training is like throwing down a fifty–dollar bet on an event that she knows nothing about. Training dollars are spent on courses or seminars that sound worthwhile but do not contribute to employees being better able to perform their tasks.
When spending money on training, employers should determine how they can get maximum payback. Can other employees benefit from what the person taking the training learned?
Pay increases and performance are not aligned
Shockingly, many employers fail to see why they should align pay increases with performance. Increases are too–often given out on the basis of length of service or favoritism, rather than for proven performance.
With limited funds for pay increases, the manager that does not tie increases to performance is herself not performing well.
Looking forward
My above list of human resources errors is by no means all–inclusive, and I recognize that most organizations do not have the ability to fix all their human resources problems in a single year. But you can easily pick at least one problem to change in your organization this year, and the payoff will be greater than any rewards you get from foolishly playing the odds.
Fred Pamenter
PPBDconsulting@aol.com