GUEST COMMENT: A letter from Mrs Busybody in HR to the business
Dear 'The Business',
We in personnel received your letter last week and have been considering the, no doubt entirely reasonable, requests you made. As a result, we have agreed to do things differently:
As 'the data' is so important to you, we will try and provide it to you. To help us with this, it would be useful if you or some of your super smart business colleagues could agree on a few things.
Some standardisation would be nice, for example. Can we agree what a 'Director' is before handing titles out like confetti because you can't pay someone that year? If that's possible, then we could consider implementing standard salary bands to fit people into, thereby avoiding the potential law suits sitting out on the floor right now where person A and person B are doing the same job and are paid completely differently (can we also add here that if one of these individuals is a man and other a woman, then there's a whole other dimension to the problem).
Also, would you mind telling us when people move jobs, departments or countries? Just a little thing but our mind reading skills are not what they used to be. You might also want to tell The Business on the other side of that transaction rather than playing pass the long distance parcel with your underperformers.
On interviews and hiring in general, we'd be delighted to leave you to it. I'm not sure you can imagine how very, very dull it is to meet three of four of you for every vacancy?
As a friendly piece of parting advice, however, I would suggest that when you're managing this on your own that you refrain from some of the more questionable language occasionally utilised in these situations. I'm not thinking of swearing here, although not swearing is just good manners, I'm thinking of the trouble you could accidentally get into by asking a female candidate if she's married, for example, or suggesting that any candidate bring information with them from their current firm or perhaps accidentally making a verbal offer that has to be rescinded down the line.
Just a thought but I'm sure you're entirely cogniscent of European Employment law as you mentioned it in your letter.
As we've wandered into the choppy waters of grievance procedures and the potential for nasty scenarios between individuals to appear out of nowhere and suddenly suck all the hours from your day, I assume you'll be handling these as well.
When Lady A finds out she's earning less than gentleman B, I'm sure you'll be fully up to speed on the processes the company will employ? I know you are very pleased with the new joiner information and I feel confident that I can assume that you've read it and will be able to deal with the situation before it hits the papers (we know how you feel about banker bashing headlines, after all).
That's just about it then, we'll get on with managing the data and you'll carry on running the business while also giving career advice, supporting people who've suffered a bereavement or a breakdown, reporting to the regulator on competent individuals, filling in forms, implementing new legislation, dealing with HMRC and writing policy for the new joiners pack.
Enjoy!
Yours,
Mrs Busybody and the HR Data Team
