You often hear: HR is an easy job. For certain personality types, it can be charming enough that they begin to abuse their position. These are some of the many very common stereotypes you may encounter as a HR professional. However, with the right tools and strategies, these stereotypes in the perception of your department can be overcome and convince colleagues that your main goal is caring for the needs of the people in your organization and striving for collective success.
Why are there so many negative stereotypes in the perception of HR departments?
As with all other stereotypes, those about HR are based on negative personal observations. The bad experiences that people have with HR professionals often shape their negative attitudes. Here are some examples of what these negative stereotypes can look like:
HR is a corporate racetrack
HR professionals have a dual mission: to protect the organization from employee problems and to protect employees from unhealthy, dangerous, and unpleasant experiences on the job. Ideally, the two mandates overlap at the point at which employee protection strengthens the organization itself.
However, if it happens that the protection of the organization comes first, then some employees begin to see the company negatively, and their main opponent in this struggle will naturally be HR Department. If the situation escalates into a sharp dispute, most employees perceive it as a struggle between an ordinary and reasonable worker and heartless HR managers.
HR professionals are incompetent
There are many anecdotes on this topic: “Why would someone with real talent want to waste their career in HR when they can become an expert in government regulations or be a coach or a top manager.” Many people see HR as a place where it is simply impossible to excel. Another typical stereotype is the perception of HR professionals as people technically behind: “Dealing with people working in human resources, that's like dealing with cave dwellers. “
These stereotypes arise mainly from the bureaucratic processes with which some personnel departments are significantly burdened. However, this is already a thing of the past, today most organizations recognize HR as an important strategic partner with great influence on employee performance and satisfaction.
HR managers are incompetent or desiccated
Do you know the British sitcom “The Office”, in Czech Kancl, which chronicles events in the office of a paper company? The boss is an incompetent joker and is surrounded by lazy or underperforming employees. One of these minor characters is Jim, a serious cracker who always does what his boss tells him to do. This is another typical role that employees often attribute to HR managers.
How to Overcome Stereotypes?
Negative stereotypes affect the perception of HR department performance, regardless of whether they are true or not. If, as HR professionals, you want to get both company management and employees on your side, focus more on helping them understand the benefits of good HR, don't stick so much to the rules.
Emphasize corporate values, not regulations
A personnel officer may be able to list a hundred reasons why a certain action is dangerous in terms of compliance, but employees may still doubt his words. At this point, it is important to have the company's values, vision and mission set correctly. This will help HR managers in building a positive compliance culture.
Collaborate with managers
Most employees rarely communicate with the HR department, but they meet daily with their managers and supervisors. The HR department can systematically guide the organization of their communication and thus help create a good culture within the company. But it is up to the managers and employees themselves to actively build that culture. Developing clear and consistent communication between HR and managers helps ensure that employees in your company have the right information communicated in the right way and in a timely manner.
Use the right tools
Modern technologies will help the HR department to ensure that employees consider HR as a capable, competent department that contributes positively to the fulfillment of the company's goals. Technological solutions include the transfer of originally paper work to an online environment, as well as easier management of holidays, days off, offering e-learning training or faster and more flexible communication within the company through shared calendars. Try out in your company a personnel software that can automate all these activities and will naturally become the right hand of any HR manager.
Pinya HR is a software that will help you overcome stereotypes and make your HR department a strategic partner for all employees.
