Is HR trusted enough?

Despite the myriad of challenges facing HR amid the COVID-19 pandemic, trust in human resources has grown.

Thirty-two per cent of 1,000 respondents say their confidence in HR has grown with the pandemic, while 54 per cent say it stayed the same. Only 14 per cent said they had less trust in HR, found a survey in the U.K. and Ireland.

“Historically, we don’t think employees have really seen HR as a supporting part of the business; rather, they’re operating for the interest of business, which is correct,” says Paul Bauer, head of content at Cezanne HR in London, U.K., which did the survey.

“At the same time, when you’re protecting the business, you should also be protecting the employees because when they work at their best and feel trusted, then it’s more than likely they’ll feel more engaged, be more productive, and want stay in their roles longer.”

The survey also showed that 53 per cent of workers trust HR to manage conflict between workers, but 47 per cent aren’t sure.

“HR teams need to work on resolving that stigma and saying, ‘Look we’re not working against you, we’re working for you to make the business thrive and to help the business, because you’re an important part of that,’” he says. “Good HR teams will remain impartial and look at trying to resolve things by taking both sides of story.”

Trusting, knowing HR

But there are some troubling signs to consider. Almost one-third (31 per cent) of the respondents aren’t sure or don’t trust their HR team to respect their privacy and confidentiality, and 48 per cent aren’t sure or don’t trust HR to make them aware of internal promotion opportunities.

And just 45 per cent trust HR to act impartially.

When Cezanne asked respondents who they considered most truthful, HR was rated lower than line managers and colleagues.

“To build effective HR in any of our organizations, the foundation is trust. Building relationships and the foundation of any type of leadership that we do, whether it’s HR, whether it’s IT – it doesn’t matter what the department is, trust has to be the foundation,” says Sofia Arisheh, principal at Upskill Consulting in Langley, B.C. “Otherwise, how can we have anybody follow? How can we have people adapt to all of the changes that we’ve experienced during the pandemic? And how can we have people continue to be productive, accountable, collaborative and engaged in our workforce?”

The ongoing health crisis has changed people’s way of life. And 43 per cent of HR professionals feel the role of HR has changed because of COVID-19, according to a previous survey from ADP Canada and Maru/Blu. 

Connecting with HR

In addition, while 55 per cent of respondents say they could recognize a member of the HR team, almost 18 per cent were unsure and close to 27 per cent said they wouldn’t identify someone from HR.

This represents a “great opportunity” for HR professionals to reach out more often to teams, says Arisheh.

Paul Bauer

“Connections could be anything: it could be via an email, although that’s not so personal; it could be a phone call, which is even better; and even better than that, if we have a lot of the hybrid-type teams where some are working in the office and some are working from home, video calls are a great opportunity,” says Arisheh. “In HR, we really do want to mimic as much as we can the face-to-face… you could be very creative with those Zoom calls, so it’s not a stagnant one-voice only.”

It starts with having a good communication plan, says Bauer.

“Silence is not always golden but when it comes to showing that you’re there to support your workforce and that you’re not just closed off, it’s always about having a good communication strategy. Having regular internal comms that keeps people updated as to what’s going on within the business.”

It's also about hearing what employees are saying, says Arisheh.

“It’s more listening; it is really coming from a place of understanding the challenges that people are facing,” she says, which will become even more key in the coming months and years.

“We need to prepare ourselves for more accommodations coming up. Whether that means we have to look at rejigging the way in which we operate as a company, looking at the way in which we rejig how we service our people, within our companies, it’s going to shift. I don’t see a lot of organizations going back fully to the traditional-type workplace of we all work under one roof [and] we physically see each other every day. All of that is not just a temporary change and so how can we in HR support that and support the accommodations and be a little bit more flexible with what we do for our people so that we can better attract and retain them?”

A recent survey by ADP showed that the more contact employees have with HR, the better the retention.

Employee recognition matters

Besides regular contact, it’s also key for HR to trumpet employee successes, says Bauer.

“HR teams can promote the good stuff that their employees do because the more that they recognize that, the more encouraged people [are to] work harder and keep being productive. Just as a touchpoint and recognizing success stories from people in the business or for smaller organizations in particular, it’s really good to focus on stuff that people have been doing well and recognizing that, because it’s really disappointing when someone puts a lot of work into a project and they feel it’s not reflected by the rest of the business.”

Employers will have to make changes all around to account for the “new normal” according to one expert.