This unit tests the Listening and Exchanging Organizational Information indicators as situational judgment. The keyed action is almost always to get the missing information, or to respond now, rather than to act, escalate or defend.
Welcome challenge
The indicators: welcomes the opportunity to hear competing points of view and does not take criticism personally, and seeks further information to clarify ambiguity.
When a manager criticizes HR's onboarding process in an open forum and names problems you had not considered, take the point and get the detail needed to act on it. Defending the process there is the defensiveness the indicator rules out; asking for concerns to be raised privately suppresses upward communication; suspending the process before the concerns are understood over-corrects.
Clarify before you act
"We need to do something about Dana's schedule before this gets worse," with no further detail, is ambiguity. Seek further information to clarify it, and interpret the context of, motives for and reasoning in received communications.
Pulling timekeeping records and preparing corrective action acts on an assumed problem. Escalating to the director escalates something still undefined. Going to Dana first approaches an employee without knowing what is alleged, which is premature and unfair.
Respond promptly
Promptly responds to and addresses stakeholder communications is what keeps stakeholders from routing around HR. When some questions need research, a prompt acknowledgment with a date for the fuller answer satisfies the indicator. Answering only the easy ones, adding a ticketing form, or batching into a monthly session all make the delay worse.
Feedback and enabling others
- Solicits regular feedback from employees and leaders, and adjusts as necessary covers both collecting the feedback and acting on it. The organization-wide version, establishes processes to gather feedback from the entire organization about the HR function, is advanced.
- Under Exchanging Organizational Information, HR helps non-HR managers communicate HR issues. When a manager is unsure how to explain HR's reasoning to her own team, build her ability to deliver it. Sending it from HR takes the message away from her; posting it on the intranet replaces her message; handing her a script to read verbatim leaves her delivering words she still does not understand.