We all know that bad habits in our personal lives can lead to issues: from trying to ditch the cigarettes/ chocolate/ alcohol through to taking up a healthier diet, most of us have experienced a time when we recognised that changes had to be made for our greater good.
But have you ever stopped to think about the HR habits that could be having a seriously negative impact on your business? Like many less than favourable behaviours, we sometimes don’t realise that they’re a problem until they’ve spiraled out of control. So here, we identify a few bad HR habits that you might be committing & what to do to .
Carrying Out Annual Reviews On An Annual Basis
Hang on a sec – why exactly is this a bad habit?? Shouldn’t you be making sure that performance discussions do take place?? Of course you should. But if they’re only happening once a year, then you’re missing a trick. Managing and improving performance needs to be built into your everyday working practices. If it’s not, then you can’t realistically expect to improve productivity.
Getting Stuck In The Filing Cabinet
You don’t need us to tell you that the world of business is moving faster than ever before. You’re probably using online tactics when it comes to your sales and marketing, for example, but what about HR? It could be time to ditch the notion that HR lives in the filing cabinet, and bring your business up to speed. Online systems with good security are as secure as any filing cabinets and will often save you time and hassle with your HR Admin.
Thinking That Training And Learning Are One And The Same
There’s no denying that training can be expensive. Send a few employees to a conference, book in some places on an external course, or bring in a professional trainer for a couple of days, and your bill will be hefty. Sometimes, formal training is essential and/or advisable: when you’re rolling out new software, when your team require a recognised qualification etc. But what’s arguably much more important is ongoing learning within the workplace. Nurturing your talent isn’t a one-off event – it’s about what happens in your business on a day-to-day basis. So get to it with those lunch and learn sessions, involve all the team in what they can all learn from each other and challenge your team to show what they’ve learnt on an on-going basis.
Hogging All The Decision Making
As the boss you may be thinking: but that’s what I’m here for! Obviously there are some key decisions that only you and your top team should be making, but imagine how much time you would free up in your life if others around you came up with a range of solutions to the things which had been stopping you from sleeping for most of the previous night, gave you ideas for your next product or sorted out problems they had about the office move between themselves…. Allowing and encouraging your team to make decisions (or at least contribute to them by involving them) inspires trust and confidence which can pay you back massive returns in terms of loyalty and engagement, not to mention the innovation which can come from a varied viewpoint.
Bad habits are often deeply engraved into a business’s culture, but that doesn’t mean that you should just ignore them and hope for the best. Tackling these issues head-on is the only option.
Need a little help for working out your next steps? Get in touch today at hello@thehrhub.co.uk.
Photo Credit: BadHabit by jadawin42
