Hi all

Actually looking for a bit of advice on how to handle my MD and another Senior Manager.

I work in a standalone HR position as an HR Manager (for the last 2 years).   My job responsibilities can be very varied and I can be one day doing significant amount of admin tasks, the next leading on a redundancy programme or assisting with a restructure of the company or encouraging the business plan to be reviewed.   The impression I have always got from the two people at the subject of this discussion is that this breadth of responsibilities is what they want and the fact that I push for more strategic HR responsibiltiies as well as just keeping the function ticking over is a breath of fresh air in comparison to previous HR Managers they have had.

However, when it actually comes to getting them to collaborate on things outside of their day to day operational workloads, it is like banging my head against a brick wall .    

An example -

There is a major issue in the company at the moment in regards to staff morale.  They don't see it, but it exists.  We recently went through a redundancy process and a decent percentage of employees left (the company had less than 80 staff to begin with, now we are down to about 65).  Since then, there has been no clear business plan communicated (something I have been banging on about for 18 months).  People don't know where we are going as a company and all we get from the MD is that we are now smashing budget in comparison to last year and we need to recuit because we have potentially won some new business so will need the resource, only 6 months after making redundancies.  So, people are getting mixed messages and are feeling nervous that history is repeating itself. 

I have felt for some time that our vision, mission and values need to be re-visited. In fact this is also one of my objectives for the year.  They were cobbled together by the MD and Ops Manager only a few years back (before my time), there was no feedback from the general staff population and they were put on our website and that was it.  So when staff are rated against their knowledge and understanding of our values, mission and vision in their appraisals, it feels a little unfair.  I also think doing this exercise will put him in the right mindset to actually start pulling some form of business plan together so people start to feel that there is some direction.  My plan (as a starting point) was to have a session with senior managers to get them to think about the company, our culture, what we actually do and where we want to go.  I've put this in the diary and raised the importance of this a couple of times in the Board meetings.  However, he has cancelled this meeting twice (so far) basically because he swamped with x client.   He has now asked, can I pull something together (basically set a new vision, mission and values) for us to dicuss next week instead of this week.  This is so he can get the meeting done and dusted in 30 minutes.  I have pushed back and said I don't belive it is the right way to do this, that it requires collaboration and even input from the rest of the company at some point and that it's not something that can be decided in 30 minutes.  I am basically left with feeling that he can't let go of the day to day, bringing in sales, closing deals and as an MD he should be thinking long term, stabilising the company and the workforce.

This is just one example, I face these types of scenarios on a weekly basis from him and another Senior Manager (who is in fact my manager but not an HR professional).  I have no meetings wth my manager, if I try and grab some time with her I am often faced with "I'm too busy".  She has become a bit of a gate-way to the MD so often she re-lays messages from him instead of letting me speak to him directly.  It seems that when it comes to anything along the lines of HR/Business strategy related, they say all the right things but as long as it doesn't require much input from them.  Yet when it comes to sacking someone or making redundancies, they often wade it over my head and either do it without my knowledge or just tell me what to do without listening to any advice from me.   Everything feels really knee jerk, anything that requires discussion, planning and input outside of their normal roles just falls to the bottom of their priorities.

I know looking for another job if I am not happy is the easier option and I have looked into this, but I really want to make this job work as I feel I could add real value and gain some really good experience.  I need to find ways to get them more on board and get them to understance the importance of the work I am doing. I am also a working Mum and they have offered me part time hours, location is good so in terms of work life balance it works for our family, however I still want to be fufilled career wise. 

Does any one have any advice on how to handle these types of Senior Managers/personalities or has anyone faced a difficult MD before and can suggest any strategies they came up with to handle them?

Many thanks