Good Morning, Here's Your Dumpster Fire

If you're in HR, you've had multiple dumpster fires placed in your lap. Or thrown through the door while the thrower runs for their life.

If you haven't had a dumpster fire in your lap, you are either very new to HR or an incompetent executive nobody trusts enough to bring the fire to you.

And how do you handle dumpster fires? You use the principle of "yes, and" of course.

Yes, and the dumpster fire

The thing with a dumpster fire is that by the time it's in your office, it's already burning. You can be mad that someone started the fire. You can get your knickers twisted about fire safety in the dumpster region. You can terminate (or, I suppose fire) whoever started the fire, but the fire is still burning.

The only proper thing to do with a dumpster fire is put it out.

In order to put it out, you have to accept that there is, indeed, a dumpster full of fire, and it's your lap right now.

Yes, there is a dumpster fire in my office and this is what I'm going to do about this...

Duh, of course, I'm going to put out the dumpster fire

Are you, though? Or are you going to focus your efforts on punishing the person or persons who started the fire? Or are you going to leave the fire blazing so as to not make the people currently roasting marshmallows on it uncomfortable?

You can do that (and you should!) to prevent future fires, but right now, you need to put out this fire.

In The Gift of Fear, by Gavin de Becker de Becker shares a story of a company that had a threatening and very scary employee who wanted severance to go away.

The company balked. We can't, they reasoned, give severance to someone who makes threats! That would be giving in!

de Becker pointed out that they had a real dumpster fire--an employee who had made credible threats because he felt he had been wronged. Holding fast to the principle of not giving unworthy employees severance just ignored the very real and very dangerous dumpster fire.

Fortunately, the company listened to the security expert, gave the man severance and they never heard from him again. Dumpster fire: out.

Day to day HR dumpster fires

Hopefully, you won't have anything quite so scary, but I always see similar things like this.

• John continues to make obscene jokes, but he's our top salesperson, so let's try to pay off the people who complain to make them stop complaining.
• Heather is such a mean gossip, but really, everyone should just grow a thicker skin.
• Jane is asking for a raise, and she's right. Her salary is below market rate, but the market is tight so it's unlikely she'll get a new job. Besides, it's really unlikely that Bob will tell her he's making more money than she is. I told him to not say anything when I hired him.

In each of these situations, companies ignore the actual burning dumpster in favor of doing something easy. What should happen?

• YES, John continues to make obscene jokes AND we need to discipline him up to and including termination. Let's conduct an investigation, and do what it takes to put out the dumpster fire. If we just offer a transfer and a promotion to the latest victim, the dumpster fire keeps burning.
• YES, Heather is a mean gossip, AND she either stops right now or we fire her. The dumpster fire she causes will lead many more people to quit. We need to put out the gossip flames immediately.
• YES, Jane is asking for a raise, AND because she's earning below market rate and less than her teammate Bob, we need to give her a raise. Paying her below market rate is a smoldering dumpster that will flare up when she does find a new job. And it will become a full-fledged-flame-filled dumpster if she sues for gender discrimination because of the unequal pay.

Yes, there are many other things you need to do. Perhaps you should conduct some respectful workplace training, do a comp analysis, and plan how to prevent these things from happening in the workplace. But right now, you've got a fire to deal with.

Accepting that the fire is important and that you need to solve it is your first step toward a flame-free life.

Doing all that other stuff is good and should be done, but you have to handle the fire that is currently burning.

But wait! This is reactive management rather than proactive management!

"Yes, and" doesn't require you to skip the proactive part. Yes, we need to stop John from sexually harassing anyone again and hold respectful workplace training. Yes, we need to give Jane a raise and conduct a comp analysis.

You need to be proactive. Proactive HR prevents a lot of fires. But if you don't deal with the fire in front of you, you eventually can't do anything proactive.

So, put those fires out.