End of the year… what (should) we do with people?.

At the end of the year, we won't recap. We'll let time show how well or poorly we've done. All of us. We're ending the year with mixed feelings among people towards those who chose human resources management as a profession. While we can agree that money is the basis of everything, it's hard to agree that money is the one and only important thing in life. So, here are a few examples from HR practice.

Case One

Although the sample size isn't large, and therefore not scientifically relevant, we've observed that the reading comprehension ability of most younger employees (Generation Z) we've conducted psychometric assessments on is below average. This finding gave us pause for thought.

At the same time, a colleague, a LinkedIn marketing expert, naturally from his own experience, recommends listening to podcasts. Reading a book is only mentioned as a nice-to-have option. Of course, we can't avoid digitalization, and that's not the goal at all, but the evolution of our cognitive abilities still lags behind the digital revolution. Much research shows that using “digital” devices leads to weaker reading comprehension. And functional specifications, requirements, and user complaints… will still be in written form for some time.

Case Two

When creating employee development plans, we start with a disclaimer that goes something like this: "Unlike the cognitive spectrum, we acquire skills throughout life and can improve them. They largely depend on our experience." With this, we want to communicate to employees that this is something they can work on themselves, i.e., develop.

Along these lines, I'll also refer to a LinkedIn post. It roughly says: Praise people, tell them they have nice hair, that they've done something well. And that's fine. Commendable. However, this is also a skill. We older generations have lost some skills. It's simple, if you don't practice them, they will slowly disappear. And it's a fact that today, we older individuals sometimes struggle more in moments of "social connection" than we did a few years ago. And we had that experience. How much harder must it be then for young people who haven't had the opportunity to develop that skill, who, because of digitalization, lack the experience of "live" social connection?

Case Three

For years, I've exchanged a few sentences with an acquaintance over coffee. Sometimes it's about the weather, sometimes work, sometimes politics… In any case, I often used to describe him as someone who loved his job immensely. He was a shining example of dedication to work for me. You simply couldn't find a trace of dissatisfaction in him or that he tried to cut corners. And I had that impression of a happy and satisfied person until recently, when by chance he went through our recruitment process. The complete assessment was by the book until we saw Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Physiological needs, salary, and job security were highly satisfied. However, belonging, self-esteem, self-actualization. Non-existent. We were taken aback. To my question of how that was possible, he explained it quite vividly. "It's like being a black child in a white family. You have everything, love and attention… but you're still black." He simply wasn't satisfied with what he was doing, but he was characterized by boundless optimism that created a fine facade of "everything is fine" around him. But it wasn't.

Case Four

Remote work is another novelty brought by the COVID-19 pandemic, enabled by digitalization. It has long been a viable option for freelancers, but freelancers, first and foremost, are not employees of a single company, and thus hardly an integral part of it.

However, what happens when permanent employees are primarily teleworkers?

Among them, a reduced sense of community and team cooperation is noted. Consequently, employees may not feel they are part of something larger, and thus may have difficulty understanding the company's mission and vision. The question is whether they recognize their role.

Maslow

Maslow's hierarchy of needs is a model for understanding human motivation. It maps different motivations into a pyramid, with each level representing different human needs. These include physiological needs, safety, love and belonging, esteem, and self-actualization. The highest need on Maslow's pyramid is self-actualization, which involves knowing oneself, understanding one's full potential, and achieving it.

Maslow believed that self-actualized individuals possess the following characteristics:

• realistic perception of reality
• acceptance of imperfections
• flexibility and spontaneity in achieving goals
• autonomy and responsibility
• consistency and morality
• respect for others
• possess creativity

Failure to fulfill certain needs can have its consequences.

Physiological needs – various physiological disorders, illnesses. Safety – anxiety. Belonging – loneliness, antisocial disorders. (Self-)esteem – feelings of inferiority, invisibility, low self-confidence, depression. Self-actualization – loss of meaning in life, boredom, cynicism.

And finally

There. In the end, all of this can go unnoticed. We can pretend it didn't happen. And it won't. Someone will have trouble understanding what needs to be done because they simply don't understand what they've read. Based on the second case, we can pretend it's not important to praise someone, to give them feedback. In the third case, we'll lose an, apparently well-paid, employee because we "believed" in what we saw. In the fourth case, projects may be delayed because we didn't identify problems in teamwork.

Or… some companies don't have HR, some companies have HR but consider assessments unnecessary, some companies believe assessments are only needed for hiring.

Some companies, however, send people for an annual medical check-up, and perhaps there's also room for assessment alongside the check-up. A 360 feedback isn't hard for us to do, but checking how people really feel sometimes is.

Ultimately, whether we hate HR or not, there was work here for a learning and development specialist, and a coach or human skills trainer, and someone might have even needed to instruct an employee to read more, to increase their vocabulary, improve their eloquence and communication skills, and thereby their reading comprehension.

Could we have paid employees well enough and hoped they would do all this themselves? Or could we have paid them well enough and helped them do this? Summa summarum, you need to work with people. Day in and day out. Whether that person is called an HR professional, or we invent some other name, is less important. Whether they do it through team building, birthday celebrations, training… let's leave that to them.

HR isn't just processes, it's how to help people.