HR "Let Ops Run Ops"

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So many times the People & Culture team overstep their mark and in turn disempowers the Operations team.??

P&C Team suddenly become engineering, Technical or Clinical experts when they have had no training or experience in the area. Another example is chiming in without understanding the whole landscape or scenario.??

A typical scenario we see is that employees don't get the answer they want from their manager or one up but font bother to discuss it so try and get the answer they want from the People & Culture team. Listening is fine but a simple question,? have you spoken to your manager about this? If you find their manager has already given them an answer rather than try and provide a solution,? empower the manager by sending the person back to them. There are of course exceptions to this in terms of bullying, harassment,? safety and whistleblowing.?

Creating a a leader once removed policy to help define how you want staff to escalate issues is a handy tool.?

The danger of the P&C team getting too involved here is two pronged. It disempowers the manager in question and in many cases creates unnecessary work and blows things out of proportion but it also creates a lot more work for the P&C team as they will be seen as an easy way to get their issue heard / resolved.

I am however not saying don't go back to the Ops Leader and discuss,? coach and partner to get an outcome if it's needed but do direct the staff member back to them.?

But do arm Ops with data, trends and insights you can draw from analysing Ops data alongside people data?

?Challenge them on communication and reporting.

Review their KPIs to ensure they are driving to the right outcomes and behaviours are not distorted.

Give ops feedback on turnover trends and engagement information and partner with them to get to the root cause and draw up an action plan.

?Coach and support ops with people issues but empower them to take commercial risks consistent with the risk tolerance matrix .?

?Remind Ops whilst it's important that people issues are managed that we should not spend 80 % of our time on bottom performers. Top performers and those reliable middle performers should be focused on 80% of the time to drive positive outcomes.?

?The People & Culture team is not their to blame leaders, they are there to influence,? coach and partner with them to drive organisational outcomes. If we are saying " you should have listened " you have failed as a People & Culture professional.?

If you want advice on how the People & Culture Team can empower Operations contact us on [email protected] or 02 8667 0783