Special from SHRM Employment Law and Legislative Conference
Washington. DC
HR managers want to “get invited to the table,” says attorney Jonathan Segal, but asking isn’t the way to get the invitation.<
Segal, a partner with Duane Morris law firm in Philadelphia, offered his tips for dealing with the C-suite at SHRM’s Employment Law and Legislative Conference, held recently in Washington, DC.
shared his tips for working with the C-Suite.
1. Stop Asking To Be At Table
Asking only reinforces the perception of your subordinate role, Segal says. Instead, demonstrate why you should be at the table. Give feedback before the meeting: Here’s what the issues are, here’s what you should consider. Maybe the CEO will say, “We need you in the room.”
2. Avoid HRese
Overuse of terms like these won’t help your cause, Segal says.
- Proactive
- Value added
- Synergy
- Outside the box
Maybe if we synergistically create value added in a proactive way, we’ll be thinking outside the box, Segal quips.
3. Learn the Business of Your Business
If you are not aware of the basic elements of your business, you won’t be perceived as serious. Find out about:
- Finances
- Products or services
- Short-term and long-term goals
- Competitive concerns
4. Learn Basic Business Terms and Concepts Used by C-Suite
In a similar vein, learn about business terms and concepts.
- Accounting
- Business matrices
- Other business tools/terms
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5. Link HR Goals to Corporate Goals
One client proudly showed Segal the company’s new HR Dashboard—it had great information but it wasn’t linked to the corporate goals. That’s what makes the CEO view HR as an expense, Segal says. Be sure you’re focused where the C-Suite is:
- What talent will the business need?
- Where will you find the talent?
- How will you grow it?
6. Re-Recruit Top Notch Talent
No matter how bad the economy, top talent can always move, Segal says. And when a key person leaves, HR often is blamed (and blindsided). You have to be proactive to retain key people. What can you do?
- Recognition and appreciation
- Non-competes, etc.
- Payments contingent on current employment
7. Recalibrate Your Time
Many HR managers spend about 85% of time on the “favorite” 15%–the troublemakers. You can’t totally reverse that, but you can move along the continuum to focus more time on the good employees you want to retain.
8. Say No to GOMOs
You need to learn how to say nicely: get out of my office. HR cannot be friend to the friendless—it is not in job description, says Segal.
9. Be Careful of Being Seen as Employee Advocate (or a Management Tool)
You are a member of management, says Segal, but you often play a mediator’s role. The key is to explain concerns about treatment of employees in terms of impact on the organization. For example, this will affect retention, encourage unionization.
10. Never Say: “But the Policy Provides”
This reduces your role to reader (not a high paying job), Segal says. Begin with the policy, but don’t end with it. Be especially careful of policies that lock in management (e.g., we will post all vacant jobs, we always offer progressive discipline, we always complete an investigation in 10 days).
11. Be Careful of Consistently Focusing on Consistency
Executives often want to act outside of policy or in an inconsistent way. Sometimes that’s OK. You can consider (and document) legitimate, non-discriminatory factors for actions, for example, length of service or mitigating circumstances. That means you don’t have to treat a 6-month employee the same way you treat a 20-year employee. And you might excuse an employee guilty of a normally terminable offense if she just found out about her son’s cancer hours before.
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12. Don’t Inundate C-Suite with Minutia
The boss’s goal is to make the problem to away. Figure out what your boss needs to know and what he or she does not want or need to know. Too much information is as bad as no information.
13. Don’t Send E-mails That Protect You But Set Up the Organization
You need to protect the organization, but you also want to protect yourself. Be wary of warning the C-suite about risk in such a way as to open the organization up to a claim. Segal suggests focusing on the “jury’s window” when explaining risk. (“The jury may interpret this as …”)
In tomorrow’s Advisor, more of Segal’s tips for dealing with the C-suite, plus an introduction to the all-HR-in-one website, HR.BLR.com.
I agree about avoiding HRese, but what is funny about that is that, as noted in #4, the C suite types have their own jargon, too. At any rate, it is always best to use the language the other party will understand.
I’d add “strategic” and “business partner” to #2. My advice for HR is to stop talking about being strategic and being a business partner and start talking about new entrants in your industry, competitors, buyers, suppliers and products your company makes that can be substituted (Porter’s 5 Forces).
What gets lost during these discussions – “the table” is not infinite. And….HR basics can be understood by many C-levels, enough that they can call upon HR to do the heavy lifting and details after the fact, making HR what it is – a second level staff support function and not a key decision making function.
Like it or don’t, but that’s the reality. No disrespect is intended. But not every function, not every discipline can have a seat at “the table.” The proliferation of C-level titles has already left little elbow room and the discussion process lengthens exponentially every time you add somebody who thinks he needs to be heard.