How Can HR Shift from Firefighting to Building Trust and Communication in Companies?

Dear HR members,

I would like to seek your opinion on the subject matter. Nowadays, we can still see HR in several companies performing as an Administration Team more than as a Human Development Team. Every day they are firefighting to settle ad hoc issues to support the requests from all departments. This makes them pay less attention to important items in HR. I would like to have your suggestions on the following:

1) How to drive HR to be a channel of communication for the company to achieve mutual respect and trust?
2) How to drive HR to cascade down the Director's message throughout the hierarchy to all levels of employees in the company?
3) How can HR effectively drive their function to meet the company's direction and earn respect at the same time?

I would love to hear all and various opinions from all of you. Let's discuss this!

Cheers,
Rose

Ways HR Can Communicate with Employees

HR can communicate with employees in various ways, including both formal and informal channels, or semi-formal channels. These include:

• Online forums, discussion groups, and blogs for HR to share information, and for employees to provide responses or feedback.

• Periodic Department Heads Meetings that could be attended by all staff in that department and replicated for all departments.

• Meetings with the MD/CEO (an annual event) where the head honcho meets with all employees in groups or all of them (if the total number is less than 200).

• Having a weekly or monthly HR Open Day (for example, from 9 am to 2 pm) where anyone can walk into HR to raise issues, discuss any matter pertaining to their employment, or ask for help.

• Periodic broadcasting of HR or Director's messages through notice boards placed at strategic locations throughout the company premises.

I hope the above is enough to get you thinking and to inspire some suggestions of your own.

Best regards,

Venkat

Effective Employee Communication Strategies

The main thing in employee communication, especially in all cases involving HR communications, is to keep the employees engaged constructively. Communication can be formal or informal depending on the message communicated and how it needs to be said. You can look at any of the following (I am suggesting this as I do not know the size of your headcount or the type of industry you are in):

• Have online forums/discussion groups where employees can participate and respond to messages and share their feedback. You can use the same method to make important announcements, changes to policies, new policies, social announcements (like birthdays, sports arrangements, etc.). Once you get them to participate, then you have their attention. That is the most important first step.

• Have an annual CEO/MD meet. You can call it "Meet your CEO/Round Table with the CEO/10 minutes with your MD" or whatever name catches your fancy. It must attract attention. You can have a few sessions depending on the number of staff in your company. If there are fewer than 200 employees, you can have a single session where everyone is gathered in one place, such as a hall or an outside venue. Otherwise, you can organize it in 4 or 5 sessions separately with each group having about 20-30 employees. This event can be organized by HR. During this session, employees can raise issues directly with the CEO/MD and get responses from him, if not immediate solutions. This would give a chance for employees to raise their concerns to the highest level, which normal employees would otherwise never get a chance to do.

• Public announcements at regular intervals through notice boards/electronic bulletin boards or mass mailers/PA system.

• Surveys - either paper-based or online surveys. These can be conducted every 2 years to gather feedback.

It must be borne in mind that HR has to follow this with the required action to rectify or get the required things done in response to the employee feedback through various means with approval from the respective department heads or the CEO himself.

Opening or enabling communication channels through one of these methods allows HR to show that the company is transparent and communicative with employees.

Hope this was useful to you.

Best regards,

Venkat