Being Good to your People is Commercial

Commercial vs soft?

I find that in HR, you're either 'commercial' and 'business minded' or 'people focused' and 'soft'.

This whole duality concept is frustrating because it paints the world as black and white, when in reality, most things are more complex with a colouring more in keeping with heavy grey cloud.

In a bid to make sense of this grey, it's helpful to consider times when a balanced approach has been the best course of action. One phrase I've said a number of times in my career is: it is often the most commercial approach to be good to your people. A little bit of kindness, or a 'softer approach' pays dividends.

Example - pay the sick day

Imagine you've got a troublesome employee. They've been complaining about workload, rolling their eyes at everything you say, sending short emails when they used to be full of smileys. The employee resigns and you breathe a sigh of relief. The last thing you need is to manage an exit when you've got a million things to get through.

During the working of their notice period they call in sick. It's highly annoying as they were supposed to be delivering training to a client. You're suspicious they're doing interviews. The first thing you do is drop an email to payroll to say 'dock a day's sick this month.'

Fair enough - it's within policy, it'll save you £100 or so and they're leaving anyway.

What you are maybe not taking into account is the fact that you've let other people's sick days slide, so that's not particularly fair and could lead to a messy discrimination case.

You're also not taking into account the Sunday they worked a month or two ago to prep the deck for you. You're forgetting the fact this employee is exhausted from making a huge decision to resign and find another role.

You also may be forgetting the ripple affect this decision may have on your team. Your Payroll Manager may think.. hmm that's not very fair. The employee themselves might tell 5 people inside or outside of the company that they've had a really bad experience and you may lose potential future employees or customers as a result.

You're also forgetting the time it's taken to email payroll, for payroll to make the calculation and the amendment. Possibly the back and forth from the employee questioning it.

For the sake of a hundred pounds or so, it makes commercial sense to put pettiness aside.

You can't put a price on feeling

Increasingly, emotional intelligence is considered essential to effective leadership. It is partly because understanding how people feel, and being able to act sensitively to that, is what sets companies apart.

Your leadership team

Consider your leadership team and make sure you have at least one person who you're confident feels empowered to speak up, who has very high emotional intelligence and who is not so overworked that they lose their sense of what's right.

Keep these people involved in big decisions. They will help you navigate the waters when there is the potential for people to get hurt. They also may temper the reaction for if things get heated and help you develop an appropriate response.

Example: you've made someone redundant and they're refusing to handover their work

Firstly, expect this reaction, as it is so common. When you are taking away someone's livelihood, even if it is completely justifiable, even if you had no choice, even if you're paying out an amazing settlement fee, you need to allow that person to have their feelings and validate them where possible.

You might feel so angry; you may be a business owner and you're also having a rotten time of it. After all, managing these changes can be so exhausting and taxing on your own mental health.

Having your emotionally intelligent counsel will help you to pause, reconsider the context and make the best next step.

You might decide to allow the individual their time to feel angry, do as much as you can without them and then ask them over a heart to heart if they'd help with some essentials. On the other hand, you may decide to call the client and explain.

The most commercial step with this example, is to be human and understand their plight.

Practical approach

As a leader you have a lot on your plate and it's important to keep budgets, people, reputation, longevity, vision etc etc in mind. But if emotional intelligence doesn't come naturally to you, then one way around it is to ensure you surround yourself with people that embody this key strength.

If you are too small for 'Heads of Departments', you could hold 'decision meetings' where you invite individuals to come along and play a role to argue the case for different perspectives (e.g. one person defending the budget vs another thinking predominantly of the people's feelings and perhaps one mindful only of reputation amongst clients).

You can use the meeting to conclude the best course of action after some careful reflection.

In many cases, if it's a bit of a toss up over what to do, I always say err on the side of caution and do what's best for the individual. One small concession for you could be huge for them and their own self esteem. Which, in turn, will likely be favourable to your business.

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