Hi all,
As a HR team of one for a relatively small charity (up to 50 perm staff with workers) and in a leadership role, I am wondering how other lone snr HR managers balance operational duties with strategic goals.
What tools do you use for productivity and Wellbeing while ensuring that you still maintain complete oversight of everything from policies to maintaining relationships with employees and being visible?
I once was the sole HR in a company which ran around 550+ staff, in 25 different locations.
Each location had its own management team of 3 - one manager and two line managers. The 25 different locations were managed in turn by one of 3 'Area managers'.
If your are on your own, the best thing you can do, is concentrate on strategic stuff. So I rarely got involved in R &S and other admin work. That was up to the managers on their own sites. Managers made their own arrangements for managing holidays, etc., I might get involved if I was asked for advice on issues of absence, sickness and or disciplinary investigations etc., In difficult cases I might suggest the right wording in correspondence when we were dismissing staff, but it was always the responsibility of the area or site managers to 'own' this so I obviously discussed this with them so they knew what to do in future. Because the managers knew me and trusted my judgement/advice etc., they sometimes run things past me before taking action. But I rarely got involved directly with their staff.
I helped the senior management team in issues such as contracts, employment, disciplinary IF they needed assistance or help. In turn I'd often visit the sites to chat about any issues I wanted to individually discuss with each manager or if I felt individual input from me was appropriate.
I also wrote things like the company 'handbook' - with a lot of input from the other senior managers; I wrote applicable policies/procedures etc., ie regards to disciplinary, absence, recruitment and so on if updates were needed, and ran the follow up training for the site managers on these when necessary.
I hope this helps give you an idea of how you might wish to have a 'helicopter', approach to things you currently do?
I once was the sole HR in a company which ran around 550+ staff, in 25 different locations.
Each location had its own management team of 3 - one manager and two line managers. The 25 different locations were managed in turn by one of 3 'Area managers'.
If your are on your own, the best thing you can do, is concentrate on strategic stuff. So I rarely got involved in R &S and other admin work. That was up to the managers on their own sites. Managers made their own arrangements for managing holidays, etc., I might get involved if I was asked for advice on issues of absence, sickness and or disciplinary investigations etc., In difficult cases I might suggest the right wording in correspondence when we were dismissing staff, but it was always the responsibility of the area or site managers to 'own' this so I obviously discussed this with them so they knew what to do in future. Because the managers knew me and trusted my judgement/advice etc., they sometimes run things past me before taking action. But I rarely got involved directly with their staff.
I helped the senior management team in issues such as contracts, employment, disciplinary IF they needed assistance or help. In turn I'd often visit the sites to chat about any issues I wanted to individually discuss with each manager or if I felt individual input from me was appropriate.
I also wrote things like the company 'handbook' - with a lot of input from the other senior managers; I wrote applicable policies/procedures etc., ie regards to disciplinary, absence, recruitment and so on if updates were needed, and ran the follow up training for the site managers on these when necessary.
I hope this helps give you an idea of how you might wish to have a 'helicopter', approach to things you currently do?
