I think somebody might have been having a bad day. You don't sound like you are on your high horse at all. I think maybe that they were trying to point out that sometimes, what can seem on first inspection a really serious issue, can upon investigation reveal itself to be of fairly low impact/consequence and therefore require a less serious outcome. I'm not saying that is necessarily be the case here because only you know the full facts/your culture etc and you are perfectly correct in considering all options. It's actually the only way to be fair to everybody involved and also avoid putting the company at unecessary risk. There's absolutely nothing wrong with asking questions and talking things through.
Regards, Another Sarah
PS The manager's response is a different thing altogether!!
We have a policy in place which states that people must complete their initial probationay period (six months long) before being considered for other roles within the organisation.
I completely agree with the posting above. Additional qualifications are not a guarantee of a job in HR and as you have already experienced, may in fact become a barrier. If you have your heart set on further study then of course that is your decision but I would advise that you focus that time and attention to finding unpaid work experience in HR if you can or looking for administration roles which will place you in good stead for a HR Administrator position. I realise that I was extremely lucky but upon leaving university (I have a psychology degree) I started temping as a HR Assistant. I now have 10 years experience behind me and work as a Senior Advisor and I don't have any formal HR related qualifications. They are not necesarily the only way into HR so don't give up just yet!
I agree with the post above that it is the responsibility of the employee’s line manager (and their line manager) to pick this up with her but using the example that you are able to provide. You should trust that the manager will do this. However in the real world this does not always happen and the lack of willingness to learn anything new may be something that you have to live with as strictly speaking it lies outside of your direct responsibility. If the employee’s manager does not tackle the problem your own line manager should be able to support you, if necessary escalating sideways and upwards. If still nothing happens it might be time to think”you know what? I’m just going to carry on doing the best I can and leave her to it”. It’s not a very satisfactory outcome but it is an approach that can help stop frustrations building up.
From a HR perspective the questions running through my mind are: Does the employee receive feedback? Have one to ones or appraisals? If so, during each of these she needs to be consistently told that her behaviour is unacceptable in that it is rude and disruptive (she also needs to be told on the occasions that she does her job well). If she claims that she does not understand the training you need to let it wash over you and consider another way of getting the information across e.g. buddying her up with the colleague who understands the system. I know that it seems unlikely that she will suddenly respond but she will have no argument to make if you try this first. Who knows, this might be all she needs (unlikely I know, but it does happen) However, I totally agree that there is a limit and if after a reasonable period of time (fairly short if there has been prior feedback given) she has not improved the next step is to have a formal (disciplinary) meeting. During that meeting her manager needs to have an honest and open conversation with her - is this the way that she wants to end her working life; in the disciplinary process? Eventually being dismissed if she continues and remembered for all the wrong reasons? I’m sure none of you want that to happen and again I would tell her that but at the end of the day she needs to perform to an acceptable standard regardless of what stage she is at within her own career. Again though, this is for her manager’s to deal with. As hard as it may be, your responsibility sounds like it ends with raising it to their attention. Regards,Sarah
I would suggest that you need to speak to the individual about his pattern of behaviour going back over the years and his failure to show consistent improved behaviour. Based on his response to this I would consider taking him to final written warning stage if your policy allows you to jump to whichever stage you deem reasonable. I would personally advise his manager to put him on a personal improvement plan, encouraging the manager to identify exactly what the employee needs to improve on, support they will be given and then to give consistent, honest feedback on his progress. At that point if there has been no improvement he could be escalated through the disciplnary process and you will be able to look him in the eye and know you did what you could to help keep him in his job...the rest was up to him! Plus and of course extremely importantly you have reduced the risk to the company yet still achieved the aim of removing somebody who is underperforming. Having said that, given his history it does seem likely that he will improve in the short term so his improvement plan should last as long as the warning (I'm guessing that will be 12 months for a final written warning). There are different ways to handle every situation but that's what I'd do! ps Although its very tempting to assume that his back pain may not be entirely genuine, I have learnt from bitter experience not to jump to conclusions, to slow down a little bit and discuss this with the individual with an open mind. I hope that I'm not stating the obvious too much, I just want to include everything in case it is of use to you.
We put a clause in our Time Off policy a few years ago which stated that individuals could cash in any untaken holidays above the statutory minimum. This was designed to ensure that people who had genuinely been unable to take some of their holidays due to the needs of the business did not lose out. However in practice it meant that the vast majority of our staff saved up to eight days of their holidays and cashed them in during the month of January when of course it’s nice to have some extra income! We had a large cash pay-out to make at the start of each year (which grew significantly along with our headcount) and we felt we were moving away from the correct work/life balance we try to encourage. With this in mind we amended the clause from ‘holiday cash-in’ to ‘holiday buy-back scheme’ to imply that it wasn’t just an option to earn some extra money each year. We also encouraged line managers to actively encourage appropriate use of holiday entitlement. So you may wish to consider what the motivation is for offering the scheme to start with (the need to have staff in more often or an opportunity to give people the opportunity of a lump sum payment) and word your policy accordingly right from the word go. Unfortunately I can’t offer any advice on schemes offering additional holiday days but I hope the above is of interest.
Two in favour and two against, I knew it wouldn't be straight forward! :-) I'm now thinking that we'll continue with one policy but give the managers more training about the language to use and the approach to take before we get to formal meeting stage in each instance. Thank you for taking the time to respond. Regards, Sarah.
My discussion replies
Hi John,
Thanks for taking the time to reply, I really appreciate it and that really helps.
Regards,
Sarah
Hi Sarah,
I think somebody might have been having a bad day. You don't sound like you are on your high horse at all. I think maybe that they were trying to point out that sometimes, what can seem on first inspection a really serious issue, can upon investigation reveal itself to be of fairly low impact/consequence and therefore require a less serious outcome. I'm not saying that is necessarily be the case here because only you know the full facts/your culture etc and you are perfectly correct in considering all options. It's actually the only way to be fair to everybody involved and also avoid putting the company at unecessary risk. There's absolutely nothing wrong with asking questions and talking things through.
Regards,
Another Sarah
PS The manager's response is a different thing altogether!!
Hi,
We have a policy in place which states that people must complete their initial probationay period (six months long) before being considered for other roles within the organisation.
Hi Amy,
I completely agree with the posting above. Additional qualifications are not a guarantee of a job in HR and as you have already experienced, may in fact become a barrier. If you have your heart set on further study then of course that is your decision but I would advise that you focus that time and attention to finding unpaid work experience in HR if you can or looking for administration roles which will place you in good stead for a HR Administrator position. I realise that I was extremely lucky but upon leaving university (I have a psychology degree) I started temping as a HR Assistant. I now have 10 years experience behind me and work as a Senior Advisor and I don't have any formal HR related qualifications. They are not necesarily the only way into HR so don't give up just yet!
I agree with the post above that it is the responsibility of the employee’s line manager (and their line manager) to pick this up with her but using the example that you are able to provide. You should trust that the manager will do this. However in the real world this does not always happen and the lack of willingness to learn anything new may be something that you have to live with as strictly speaking it lies outside of your direct responsibility. If the employee’s manager does not tackle the problem your own line manager should be able to support you, if necessary escalating sideways and upwards. If still nothing happens it might be time to think”you know what? I’m just going to carry on doing the best I can and leave her to it”. It’s not a very satisfactory outcome but it is an approach that can help stop frustrations building up.
From a HR perspective the questions running through my mind are: Does the employee receive feedback? Have one to ones or appraisals? If so, during each of these she needs to be consistently told that her behaviour is unacceptable in that it is rude and disruptive (she also needs to be told on the occasions that she does her job well). If she claims that she does not understand the training you need to let it wash over you and consider another way of getting the information across e.g. buddying her up with the colleague who understands the system. I know that it seems unlikely that she will suddenly respond but she will have no argument to make if you try this first. Who knows, this might be all she needs (unlikely I know, but it does happen) However, I totally agree that there is a limit and if after a reasonable period of time (fairly short if there has been prior feedback given) she has not improved the next step is to have a formal (disciplinary) meeting. During that meeting her manager needs to have an honest and open conversation with her - is this the way that she wants to end her working life; in the disciplinary process? Eventually being dismissed if she continues and remembered for all the wrong reasons? I’m sure none of you want that to happen and again I would tell her that but at the end of the day she needs to perform to an acceptable standard regardless of what stage she is at within her own career. Again though, this is for her manager’s to deal with. As hard as it may be, your responsibility sounds like it ends with raising it to their attention. Regards,Sarah
This is really useful, thank you.
Regards,
Sarah
Hi,
I would suggest that you need to speak to the individual about his pattern of behaviour going back over the years and his failure to show consistent improved behaviour. Based on his response to this I would consider taking him to final written warning stage if your policy allows you to jump to whichever stage you deem reasonable. I would personally advise his manager to put him on a personal improvement plan, encouraging the manager to identify exactly what the employee needs to improve on, support they will be given and then to give consistent, honest feedback on his progress. At that point if there has been no improvement he could be escalated through the disciplnary process and you will be able to look him in the eye and know you did what you could to help keep him in his job...the rest was up to him! Plus and of course extremely importantly you have reduced the risk to the company yet still achieved the aim of removing somebody who is underperforming. Having said that, given his history it does seem likely that he will improve in the short term so his improvement plan should last as long as the warning (I'm guessing that will be 12 months for a final written warning). There are different ways to handle every situation but that's what I'd do! ps Although its very tempting to assume that his back pain may not be entirely genuine, I have learnt from bitter experience not to jump to conclusions, to slow down a little bit and discuss this with the individual with an open mind. I hope that I'm not stating the obvious too much, I just want to include everything in case it is of use to you.
Regards,
Sarah
Hi Juliet,
We put a clause in our Time Off policy a few years ago which stated that individuals could cash in any untaken holidays above the statutory minimum. This was designed to ensure that people who had genuinely been unable to take some of their holidays due to the needs of the business did not lose out. However in practice it meant that the vast majority of our staff saved up to eight days of their holidays and cashed them in during the month of January when of course it’s nice to have some extra income! We had a large cash pay-out to make at the start of each year (which grew significantly along with our headcount) and we felt we were moving away from the correct work/life balance we try to encourage. With this in mind we amended the clause from ‘holiday cash-in’ to ‘holiday buy-back scheme’ to imply that it wasn’t just an option to earn some extra money each year. We also encouraged line managers to actively encourage appropriate use of holiday entitlement. So you may wish to consider what the motivation is for offering the scheme to start with (the need to have staff in more often or an opportunity to give people the opportunity of a lump sum payment) and word your policy accordingly right from the word go. Unfortunately I can’t offer any advice on schemes offering additional holiday days but I hope the above is of interest.
Regards,
Sarah
Two in favour and two against, I knew it wouldn't be straight forward! :-) I'm now thinking that we'll continue with one policy but give the managers more training about the language to use and the approach to take before we get to formal meeting stage in each instance. Thank you for taking the time to respond. Regards, Sarah.