HR Amateur Hour

I was in Drome Sound purchasing a piano primer for my son Noah on New Year's Eve, and some funky purple guitar picks caught my eye.  As he added the guitar picks to my purchase, the owner asked if I performed locally.  I chuckled briefly.  "No.  But if you count Amateur Open-Mike Night at Folk City at midnight when I was a senior in college, I did perform once in New York City."

In the spirit of leading the examined vocational life (and walking my own talk thereof), I possess enough self-knowledge at this writing to understand where I am a subject-matter expert (SME), and where I am not (Amateur).

As you've already surmised, I'm a Human Resources (HR) SME, among other subjects.  I am not an Accounting SME, among other subjects, and therefore an Amateur.  In an odd and decidedly fleeting savant moment today however, I found the root cause of the low water level in the upstairs toilet tank and unkinked the rubber hose blocking the inbound water flow.  Although his preceding toilet troubleshooting did not identify the root cause issue, my husband Joel continues to be the house maintenance SME, so no worries:  I will not be usurping his role anytime soon, as I don't even rise to the level of Amateur in that area of expertise.

On the subject of Human Resources, I have witnessed many performances of HR Amateur Hour over the years. Particularly by organizations who don't have HR SME resources internally or even available on an outsourced basis, and who figure they'll just wing it to save some money on the front end, and hope for the best. ("Hey," they think to themselves:  "I'm great with people, how hard can HR work be?")

Gentle colleagues:  hope doesn't pay for the compliance violation fines / judgments on the back end.

Here is a small sampling of HR Amateur Hour performances (a.k.a. Compliance Juggling or Reputation Roulette) for your edification and education:

• Deleting earned yet unapproved overtime pay to save money;
• Failure to investigate and discipline ass-grabbing managers;
• Failure to respond and intervene on sexual harassment or other compliance complaints;
• No sexual harassment awareness training to teach managers not to grab asses in the workplace;
• No employee handbook or policies;
• No documentation in the personnel files;
• No personnel files;
• No performance goals or feedback;
• No compensation strategy or structure;
• Firing an employee on Worker's Compensation leave without cause or documentation;
• Failure to file and post required OSHA reporting;
• Failure to display required state and Federal labor posters;
• Asking for applicants' Social Security Number (SSN) on employment applications;
• Firing employees via the phone, email, etc. - a la Juan Williams abrupt termination from NPR; 
• No progressive discipline process (see previous item, above);
• No established and documented due process for employees to bring up issues or concerns;
• Asking job applicants:
• How old they are;
• If they're married or have children.

Employers aren't the only performers during HR Amateur Hour:  prospective, current and former employees get into the act, too - here are a few examples:

• Falsifying your C.V. / job application, e.g. college degrees you haven't earned, etc.;
• Filing false Sexual Harassment or other compliance complaints;
• Stealing your organization's time, money or goods;
• Filing Worker's Compensation claims when you haven't injured yourself at work, in order to get a financial settlement;
• Filing for Unemployment Insurance when you've resigned or you've been terminated for cause.

When our 1959 upstairs toilet finally gives up the ghost, we'll turn to a plumbing SME, like my friend Andrea's company. However, we have another toilet downstairs, so we have our backup plan.

What's your HR backup plan?  In-house, or outsourced:  an ounce of HR SME advice on the front end is worth and saves you (and your organization) potentially thousands of dollars that would otherwise be lost on the back end through compliance fines and judgments, lost reputation and turnover.

HR work is not an Amateur's stage.  If you don't have an HR SME as a strategic and compliance resource, please get one.