Depending on the crowd I’m in, it sometimes feels as if my dirty secret is that I work in Human Resources. Exposing this secret usually comes with a lot of prefacing— I promise I’m one of the good ones.
I think HR and management can share a similar reputation. These are both roles that claim to look out for employees but are more often than not agents of corporate bureaucracy. They’re known for talking out of two sides of their mouth, the first trying to be friendly and gain trust with staff, and the other directly in the ear of higher ups the moment an employee acts against policy. I understand the distaste for my role and others in similar shoes, especially to individuals who have been on the receiving end of seemingly harsh or unfair treatment. I think the issue stems from one phrase, something anyone making a decision has heard countless times. Err on the side of caution. If you are to make a mistake in your decision making, and you will, ensure that mistake will…
Will what?
That’s the issue. When we err on the side of caution, we interpret that caution to be for our interest, our stakes, our cause. For the driver, they will not merge unless the road is visibly clear. For the accountant, they will budget for less than needed and estimate spending for more. For the manager, they will fire instead of reform employees acting against policy. They are protecting themselves, their jobs, and their employers. It’s natural human instinct.
But what if we changed the phrase? What if jobs that primarily affect other humans weren’t treated like jobs that only affect numbers? What if instead of erring on the side of caution, we erred on the side of compassion?
Luckily, unlike many of my philosophical musings, this is something we can test. We have two HR individuals in our company. When we were hired, we had been given the same goal. Serve the company and employees by completing HR tasks including payroll, benefits, recruitment, onboarding, hiring, and employee engagement. The individual who had been with the company almost twenty years handling all of this herself became my manager when I was hired in and we split the role as such. She handles payroll, benefits, timeclocks, file management, and all the other boring things and I do all the fun employee relations stuff. This was because we had complementary skills in that she is detail orientated and I lose the pen in my hand or that she’d prefer to communicate through a screen and I rather in person. After a few years, we have a developed a dynamic that was not originally intended— she serves the company and I serve the employee. She errs on the side of caution, and I compassion.
We have seen a culture of erring on the side of caution, so excuse me for not giving many examples. What I’m really interested in are the results of compassion in the workplace. There are probably numeric metrics I could list here, increase in employee satisfaction or production, but that’s entirely what I’m uninterested in. I’m interested in the anecdotal. The one off. The special case. Because that’s what compassion is, treating everyone as an individual with individual needs and wants and goals and fears.
So this means that the person who’s out of dress code doesn’t get a write up, they get new clothes. The person who is unfulfilled in their role doesn’t get replaced, the person who doesn’t have reliable transportation to work isn’t marked late, they’re given a ride. The person who doesn’t hit their goals isn’t fired, they’re sent to training. The person who makes a mistake admits isn’t punished, they’re given help to fix it.
It goes against everything we’ve been taught about being cautious. What if I’m wrong? What if someone is taking advantage of me? What if they don’t learn the hard lessons and they make the same mistake again? What if they are true underperformers and never hit their metrics? What if I lose time or money?
I’ll freely admit that in doing my job with reckless compassion, I have been wrong. I’ve been taken advantage of. I’ve watched people make the same mistake a second time. There are people who are genuinely unfit for their job. I’ve spent countless hours and funds on people I won’t ever see again.
So why do I keep doing it? Simply because I’d rather be taken advantage of while trying to do something good, than to be right and do something hurtful. The truth is, bad things will always happen. It takes someone to make an effort to put good into the world for good things to happen.
Because what if I’m right? What if I helped someone? What if someone’s kids are happier, healthier, more secure because I gave someone a chance? What if they were going through a slump and kindness brought them out of it? What if I invested in someone who’s going to do great things? What if I made someone smile or laugh or feel safe or confident? What if I gave someone a sliver of hope that good people exist?
This is not a call for every person in an organization to jump on the compassion bandwagon. I could advocate for every employee to make a million dollars, but there would not be a company to employ them at the end of the day. There has to be the ‘company man,’ the one who cares about the rules and the budget and that all the files get put away in alphabetical order. But everyone at an organization needs to know who they serve, who they fight for. It must be a singularity or else we all only fight for ourselves.
That being said, who are you? When you walk down the street, when you clock in, when you get home to your spouse or roommates or kids, where do you err? Who do you fight for?
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