An HR Professional’s 5 Biggest Mistakes

In preparing Daily Advisor, we read a lot of material by outside HR consultants. It’s good stuff, but because most have always been HR professionals, their view is largely from one side of the fence. They’ve almost never seen HR from the client side … the viewpoint of the line manager or senior manager who has to deal with HR.

Not so Lonnie Pacelli.

Pacelli currently runs his own HR consultancy, Leading by the Edge, in Sammamish, Washington, and was a consultant with Accenture for 11 years. But it’s his experience before that which makes him different. He spent 9 years as a line manager with Microsoft and was its head of corporate procurement. In that role, he proudly declares, he managed the spending of $8 billion of Bill Gates’ money (Don’t worry, Bill has more.). He also had constant dealings with HR.

That’s why, when Pacelli listed “The Five Biggest Mistakes an HR Professional Can Make” on the website, BuildYourOwnBusiness, it caught our eye.

Here’s a summary of those 5 missteps, as seen by someone who’s been on both sides of the issue. He refers to dealing with “clients”—an outside consultant’s term, but clients can be internal as well … the line manager in the next office, for example.

1) Unfamiliarity with the Client’s Business. You know HR, but you need to know what your client does, too. Pacelli feels you can’t serve adequately without knowing things like the person’s goals for the next fiscal year, whether their product is emerging, stable or falling, and other key issues. “Being a team player means spending time with the team,” is how Pacelli puts it.

2) Overeducating the Client in HR. You can spout chapter and verse on Title VII, FLSA, FMLA, and a whole string of other acronyms, so the urge may be strong to “educate” your client. Pacelli’s says don’t. “If the HR-ese is not material to the client getting the job done, then skip the education session,” he writes. “Help the client with what is need-to-know and keep the rest in your bag of tricks.”

3) Not Knowing When to Call the Lawyers. Working with lawyers is time-consuming and expensive, but not bringing them in, when needed, may cost far more. Knowing when to make that call comes from fully understanding the basics of employment law, says Pacelli. “My most valuable experiences with my HR partners,” he recalls from his client days, “were situations where [they] advised me on courses of action to minimize legal risk.”

4) Showing Bias. Technically, you report to management, but Pacelli warns strongly against showing bias to their side in HR issues. The reason? Loss of credibility to employees. Conversely, management must not feel you are biased toward employees, lest you be accused of being on a perennial “witch hunt.” Rather, base your decisions on solid business or legal reasoning, says Pacelli, and “don’t become a ‘yes man’ or ‘yes woman’ for either side.”

5) Not Establishing What’s to Be Done. What does an HR professional do? You may think you know, but client perceptions can be radically different. “One client may see [you] as a recruiter, another an employment mediator, a third as a generalist,” writes Pacelli. That’s why it’s important to set in advance what your role will be, what the client commits to do, and in what time frame you both will do it.

Do you agree that these are HR’s 5 biggest mistakes? Would you add others? Use the Share Your Comments button and let us know.