Make HR about humans, not management
Three steps to hack your HR
At Professional Rebel we believe that innovative professionals are the pioneers of the changing world. Every week our publication ‘Arming the Rebels in Business’ provides tools and insights for you to join the professional revolution. Get in touch to find out more.
Working in B. Amsterdam - a building with a unique mix of startups and corporate big wigs hoping to learn from them - you pick up a thing or two about what’s hot in the world of work, like HR. And not just any old HR policy, but one that shakes free from top-down, rule-enforcing thinking and where people not management create your staff culture. That’s why we bring you three steps to put the human back in human resources.
Live up to your promises
It sounds like a no-brainer, but start by creating an HR mission statement. It can be as simple as “we want all our employees to be happy and healthy”. A mission-statement has huge benefits for your company and can help your employees know how much you value them.
Of course you also need to live up to your promises by measuring them (check out Healthy workers for one way to do that) and by being transparent about your progress. You can get feedback from your employees with tools like TruQu, Impraise and Happy or Not.
Try, try, try
Experiment with new ways of working. Try out lean, scrum, dev.ops or sprints. Steal ideas from others, like Google’s 5th day, Springest’s Holacracy, or Booking.com’s strong social network.
Or how about you hack your office? Create an open atmosphere. Break the rules. Change the decoration. Pin posters on the wall where you’re not supposed to. Inspire your people to be autonomous and creative and put them on a steep learning curve.
What’s the big idea?
Align HR with your big ambitions and goals. Make your people part of what you want to achieve. You need to use their power instead of asking them to blindly follow the rules. Better yet, give incentives to employees to participate. If employees organize football games for the office or cook for others, they could earn points and end up winning prizes.
Don’t control HR, let it go and be a part of your company. Then, and only then will your company not only grow, but also have a serious impact.
Ultimately, you need to stop managing HR, and start doing it.
Melissa Marijnen is the founder of Professional Rebel. With her huge network she spends most of her time creating new opportunities by making unusual connections. She’s part of the Amsterdam Economic Board, Startup Fest Europe, Amsterdam Capital Week and the Oil List. She also likes to tweet, just discovered SnapChat and loves good (Indonesian) food.
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