In recent months, I’ve spoken to many HR professionals about all things employee relations or “ER.”
What stood out was the challenging nature of the role of those in ER.
The role of ER has never been more valuable to Australian employers, whose workplaces have never been more regulated.
Yes, compliance is a must, but meeting business objectives is also a must.
ER is at the pointy end of keeping a business out of trouble and getting things done.
The passion with which some very experienced HR leaders spoke inspired our paper Navigating Employee Relations: The Advisor’s Role (available upon request here). This is based on that feedback.
It’s built on four themes: mastery, judgement, strategy, and influence.
Off the back of our paper, Navigating Employee Relations: The Advisor’s Role, I’m writing a series of five blogs. This is last in the series and it’s on “influence.”
You can have the best advice, but it’s useless if it doesn’t ‘land’. You can be right, but find yourself on your client’s “wrong” side. I’ve seen many examples of the same advice given but in a different way with vastly different outcomes for the advisor-client relationship. Indeed, when called upon to second guess an advice given by another law firm, I’m looking for how that advice was conveyed as a clue to why a second opinion has been sought.
The starting point is about building context. It’s about filling the void which otherwise sees you advising in a vacuum.
Navigating Employee Relations: The Advisor’s Role recommends adopting the “clinician mindset.”
You are embarking on a diagnosis. The diagnosis can only follow a solid understanding. Questions and the power of inquiry are your best friend here.”
– Navigating Employee Relations: The Advisor’s Role (point 39)
Great ER professionals listen well, address emotions, and deliver advice with empathy. There is the inevitable urge to “tell” early in the conversation. You are the advisor, after all. But the best advisors are great listeners first.
Decision-makers often seek a quick and binary answer: “Can I do this or not?” or “When can we do this?” Or they seek an inherently problematic pathway: “Tell me how I can do this.”
If your advice is counter to the stated need, you had better demonstrate your understanding of the problem first. If you don’t, your client will assume that your advice is flawed out of a lack of appreciation of what’s needed. This is why empathy is critical. Your client only has so much headcount, only has so much budget, is expected to deliver more with less, and is facing tougher competition in the market. Then you say, “Yes, we have to allow this flexible work request”, or “No, we can’t remove this poor performer,” or “No, the Award won’t allow you to roster in this way.”
Your advice may be right. But it’s ripe for challenge on the basis of “whose side are you on?”
As this blog series has highlighted, ER advisors are delivering complex advice. If there is a decision tree, the tree has branches whose pathways call for a degree of speculation about outcomes. It’s often difficult for managers who run operations built on clear and well-defined processes to understand the ambiguous and nuanced environment in which you advise. For example, it’s a legal environment where “reasonableness” is often the touchstone for what can or cannot be done. Reasonable minds can differ about where a decision ought to lie based on such a nebulous concept.
The complexity is compounded where: (1) you don’t understand the need, (2) they don’t understand the ambiguity, and (3) the balance of consequences is ill-defined. Point three takes us back to risk (see part three of this blog series).
Remember, empathy is key because emotions are involved. And in the most challenging advisory situations your relationship is fundamental. If they trust you, life is easier for you and your stakeholders. Build trust to be a better advisor.
This concludes our series aimed at the “ER” community looking to grow in their role. We hope you gained some valuable insights.
