The Golden Rule in HR
Personally, I think one of the most critical underlying goals in HR that extends to every aspect of HR is the Golden Rule.Every decision in HR should automatically be held to the Golden Rule: “One should treat others as one would like others to treat oneself” (from Wikipedia).
From interpersonal management to benefits planning, using the Golden Rule really makes HR management an intuitive function – that ultimately results in better HR, happier employees, and increased productivity / profitability.
Some examples:
Hiring: My resume includes doubling business for a company to $10M in one year and enabling the sale of another company for $26M after two years. I’m basically a rockstar in marketing and have won many awards, etc. I have passed on $120,000 jobs because the hiring people were inept. I don’t want to work for a company with bad HR people because you become miserable at the job. I’ve been there. I took another job instead and have increased business ten-fold in a year.Benefits: With one job opportunity, the hiring manager was argumentative. She was trying the Junior Level HR Technique of looking for red flags and was very clumsy at it, for lack of a better phrase. When we discussed remuneration and benefits at the end of the interview, the pay was fine – but she was extremely rude about my request for minor flexibility in scheduling. When you’re interviewing at that level, I consider it bad HR to not match somebody’s current benefits – and bad HR to be argumentative the whole interview just to look for red flags. Of course, I turned down that job despite the fact that it offered $20k more than I currently earn.
Interpersonal: HR can be a very draining job. The fact is that you’re usually dealing with people’s problems, and that can be stressful. But that’s your job in HR. When sitting down with employees to discuss the big problem of the day, it’s extremely helpful to consider how each person’s interpersonal respect may have been infringed by the other (on both sides of the table). Most problems can be resolved by determining how to restore an environment of mutual respect. Kinda sounds like the Golden Rule to me.
After time, application of the Golden Rule across HR functions will improve employee relations, morale, and company profitability.
The connections to employee relations and morale are obvious. And studies have shown that the companies with the best compensation and perks have the most productive and loyal employees.
In other words, give a little – and get a lot back.
