Human Resources is Like Coaching a Youth Hockey Team

Once Upon a Time all the princes, princesses, ogres and witches were children.  Those children were involved in team activities.  The queen was away with the little prince at a hockey tournament. I explained to the Little Prince that his hockey team is like life.  There will always be those that break the rules and sometimes they will get away with it.  Life is not fair or a fairy tale, sometimes it’s a nightmare…

In a land that was frozen there was a hockey team…the natural talent, the lazy one, the cherry picker, the trash talker, the bully and a handful of worker bees.  These people are in every group you will be involved in for the rest of your life.  We had a bunch of kids break some rules, it happens. Then we had parents complain about being punished. One parent said to me, what should I tell my kid?  Well…being the HR person and mom, I said, tell him there are consequences and should not worry about everyone else.  He broke the rules. I have to explain to my kid that all those punished are going to ruin the chances of us winning the game, when he followed the rules.  Life isn’t fair!  That’s a hard thing to teach your kids.  But the rule breakers are going to grow up and be in the office down the hall.  Unfortunately, you may even work for them.

How do we as business owners deal with those kids when they grow up? The cherry picker will lay back, add a sentence and take credit on a project.  The trash talker will talk about how amazing he is and put everyone else down.  The lazy one is late all the time, but it’s not her fault. The bully will be a sexual harassment nightmare. The rest of the team doesn’t say much, but gets their job done every day. 

Human Resources is like coaching a team.  It’s the balance between being too nice and too strict/evil (there is a reason we are in a Dilbert comic strip). This is why consistency and rules are so important in the workplace.  I’ve been talking about the “Laws of the Kingdom” (the guidebook) for weeks. It’s your playbook for the team, each play designed for different issues. Here are some examples…Attendance, what is the most you will tolerate? Make it reasonable.  It’s usually the first day after they've exhausted the vacation/sick days.  Dress Code, design a policy for summer and winter. Have you seen what people do on casual Fridays? Be specific. Internet Policy, is it allowed to check Facebook and Twitter at work? How often?  Safety, Sexual Harassment, Discrimination, FMLA, Vacation, Sick Policy, Benefits etc, these are all issues you will eventually have to address.  We’ll be hitting on each one in the coming weeks.

 A Guidebook is designed to have the rules all laid out so your best employees can follow and understand the boundaries at work.  If they can’t follow those rules, the consequences are designed to give the employees several warnings and the opportunity to change or else they will be written up, suspended or terminated.  If you maintain the Laws of the Kingdom equally, the team will realize the rules apply to everyone. They can complain all they want (and they will) but this Kingdom is fair and a wonderful place to work, if you follow the rules! Go Team!

Once upon a time...there was a boring HR person sitting in a back office filling out paperwork spouting sections from the handbook. I’m not that HR person. Work is a scary and sometimes funny place with lots of lessons to learn along the way. People don’t follow the rules, its HR’s job to steer them in the right direction. My name is Denise Benages, president of HR Midwest, Inc.

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