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The 5 Biggest HR Sins that Managers Commit


The Plight of the Manager...Sigh

Managers have tough jobs. If you lead people, you know what I'm talking about. Your job becomes even more complicated when you work for a small to midsize company.

Larger companies tend to have a full service human resources team to ensure you are hiring the right people, staying within the bounds of employment law, firing the wrong people, and keeping everyone happy with benefits and development. Hooray for them!

For smaller organizations, managers typically get handed the gift of figuring out the HR job as they work their regular jobs. The company may not see the value of bringing on an HR person or team, so the manager ends up struggling through the people issues and constantly searching for answers in all the wrong places. This approach can end up costing big dollars for the company through high turnover and even lawsuits.

According to Rocket Lawyer, over 100 million lawsuits are filed every year against companies, and over half of those end in some type of monetary compensation. The costs of lost productivity, time spent on dealing with employment issues, and morale have an even greater effect on the profitability of the company.

"But I did my best with what I had..."

It doesn't matter what your intentions are to do a good job, People will leave what they perceive to be a sinking ship. They will also fight when they feel they've been wronged. It may or may not be in the form of a lawsuit, but they can damage a company's reputation fast.

I have my team of HR consultants and contractors out in the trenches with companies at this very moment, and they all empathize with the managers who live in these tough situations. The stories they tell of how they handle HR issues are frightening and messy. When our team comes in to help, it's amazing how managers instantly feel that sense of relief.

"Thank you for being here. I did the best with what I had. Can you fix it?" This is a common theme we hear. Of course, we come in and fix things. We also know that experience and education of compliance, employment law, and overall human resources creates a tighter safety net. Not only do we fix things, but we also help organizations learn from their mistakes.

So what are the biggest sins that managers commit?

I put out a post to my local HR community about what they thought were the biggest boo-boo's, and I got comments like:

"We could write a book about this!" and "I would be here all day!"

The truth is there are a bunch of ways you can commit human resources errors, so I am going to put out my team's top 5 HR Sins: