Work Wonders
Back in late 2021, we decided that instead of chatting to each other about the challenges and triumphs of people management in small businesses, we should invite you to join the conversation. And the Work Wonders podcast was born! Managing people is serious business. We bring you all the latest, practical advice without the pain. The podcast is brought to you by Aster HR https://www.asterhr.com.au/ and your hosts are Angela Gauci and Susan Rochester
Work Wonders
S5 Ep 12: HR mistakes you can make without even knowing it
In our final episode of the season, we again explore some HR mistakes you could be making...without even knowing it!
We discuss 5 recruitment themed things and we'll tell you how you can avoid it going too far.
- Overlooking internal talent
- Not asking the right interview questions
- Not being aware of bias (both ways)
- Not planning the onboarding process
- Not being specific about expectations
You don't know what you don't know...so we're here to help discuss these with you so your business isn't at risk of not being compliant.
You can find the show notes for this episode here
Would you like to submit a question to the show? Let us know on our website or via LinkedIn.
Brought to you by Aster HR, the Work Wonders Podcast is hosted by Angela Gauci & Susan Rochester and is recorded at Launch Pad at Western Sydney University.
All information or advice included in this podcast is general, has been developed as a starting point for your business, and should be tailored to your specific requirements. It should not be considered legal advice. We have made every attempt to ensure the accuracy and currency of this information at the time of recording. However, references to things like employment laws are subject to change. For specific advice relating to your business, please get in touch with us.
Welcome to the Work Wonders podcast brought to you by Asta HR, where we simplify the human side of business. I'm Angela.
Speaker 2:And I'm Susan. Let's dive into today's episode and find out what you've been wondering about.
Speaker 1:In today's episode, we're going to be talking all about HR mistakes that you could be making without even knowing it and, of course, how to fix them so you can avoid it going too far. This is an episode that we've done in previous seasons, so we're carrying it forward again to today. We hope you enjoy it. So let's get started. This is the Work Wonders Podcast. Hi, susan.
Speaker 2:Hi Angela, how are you going? I'm going well, good. Looking forward to another episode about HR mistakes you could be making without even knowing it.
Speaker 1:Oh so hidden mistakes. We have talked about this before, but we found that the list was rather big that we could come up with, so we've decided to do an episode like it again. Decided to do an episode like it again and it just so happens today's few that we've got on the list seem to all fit under the idea of talent or recruitment and bringing people into your business they do.
Speaker 2:There's definitely a theme and I was just thinking, you know, this is really one of the reasons we started the podcast, because we could see people making mistakes.
Speaker 1:You're right. Some of the things that we'll talk about. You'll see how it's so easy to think you're doing the right thing.
Speaker 2:Well, this is it, because everyone wants to do the right thing, right, of course.
Speaker 1:Yeah, of course. But yeah, it's worth knowing what you don't know. You don't know, is it?
Speaker 2:So it's worth pointing it out. That's why we're here. So I think, as you observed, is where a business is maybe overlooking internal talent. Oh, yes, first of all, what do we mean by internal talent?
Speaker 1:Well, what we mean by that is the people that are already in your team, already working for you, and might have been for a while. You know, when you first brought them into your business, you might've had a thought, thinking you know I need them to do X job, but is that what they do forever, or can you move them around? You know, and businesses change, so why not thinking about teams as well?
Speaker 2:Yeah, businesses change, but people change, you're right. So if someone's been, you know, maybe started from school on an admin traineeship, something like that, don't always pigeonhole them as admin. Over time they may have developed skills that might be useful to you in sales, for example.
Speaker 1:One of the most attractive things for candidates I know that they're certainly looking for now is the ability for the role to be, I'm not going to say movable, but over time, for that opportunity to keep coming to them. So whether it is changing, their career or growing their career. So that's one of the wonderful things you can offer as an employer, and it also makes your recruitment easier too if you can look within your current teams and see where that skillset might already live.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I've always believed that you should try and grow your own. I think also in terms of career paths, what can often put people off working with a smaller organisation is that they can't see that there's a defined career path from job A to B to C, which may or may not mean promotion. But if you start to think like we're saying and look for your internal talent and develop them in different areas, then you'll have examples that you can give someone when you're interviewing If you get asked that question is there a career path here for me? Well, yes, this is what we did with you know, whoever?
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, that's great. And you said developing people. So taking that one step further, giving it some forethought, so thinking about what you can be doing even when there's not a vacancy to be developing people you know thinking about. Can I develop a person's skill in that area because maybe one or two years down the track I'm going to need another manager, or that person's going to retire and I want to replace them, or whatever it might be.
Speaker 2:And having a bit of a thought to that is really smart, and one thing we can guarantee is that change is constant. You need to be able to be ready to adapt. So we've talked about using, or making most I don't like to use the term using your internal talent, but obviously you're not always going to be able to fill every role internally.
Speaker 1:No.
Speaker 2:Because the numbers just wouldn't add up that way. So let's move on to talking about when you're in a recruitment situation and some of the mistakes we've seen people make there.
Speaker 1:Okay, do you remember that episode we did very early on, susan, about the quite comical, very wrong interview questions that a person can use.
Speaker 2:Oh yes, that was a popular episode, if I remember, we certainly enjoyed it.
Speaker 1:Well, look, with that in mind. There's probably plenty of examples like that, but there are also other sort of interview questions that you might be using and thinking well, that's just what you do. Isn't that what you ask in an interview? But it's not giving you the value that you're looking for. So I'm always telling our clients that you can't really expect an interview. What if you got 45 minutes an hour with someone to tell you everything you need to know about them?
Speaker 1:and how they're going to do in the job. But if you are strategic about the types of questions you're asking, you set out to ask a person a question to get the right sort of answer from them of what sort of information you're after being really purposeful about that, yeah, and so you can make that time that you spend with them as efficient as possible.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, so look, practically, I'm thinking of behavioural style questions. Yeah, a behavioural question is really the difference between a yes or no answer and a really concrete, lived example answer. So I could say to you, susan, have you ever used Microsoft Word? Yes, right, okay, tick. But what if I'd said to you can you tell me a time that you've used Microsoft Word and what did you use it for? That's good, that's an example of using a behavioural style question.
Speaker 2:Instead, and if I answered, I use it to produce a transcript of the podcast, then you'd know that my skills were pretty good.
Speaker 1:Yes, and then I'd want to ask you about a podcast and other things. You see how the conversation sort of flows. It gives you much, much more than just the smaller questions.
Speaker 2:That's a simple example, but hopefully it gives you some thoughts there. Yeah, so what you're after is, as you said, concrete examples and not just a yes or no answer.
Speaker 1:That's right.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:You really want to dig into a person's aptitude and you might even want to go to a tough question sometimes. What's your opinion about? This happening in the community or you know that sort of thing if it's really important to the role and you want to understand their ethics, their values. That might be important as well.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we've used that, haven't we?
Speaker 1:have. Yeah, yeah, when we were assisting a client in finding a manager for a community services organization, and so it was very, very important. They're a feminist organisation, do a lot of great work in the community and it was very important that the leader of the organisation obviously live and breathe their values. And, yeah, we did ask some really challenging questions.
Speaker 2:If I remember there were, it was a list of statements and it was designed to get a discussion going really, or to get a reaction from the candidates. So do you remember what? Any of the statements?
Speaker 1:were, I think from memory, one of them was around homeless people in the community, okay, and the question was quite confronting if you should or should not give a person that's homeless money. Now it was very telling what sort of happened and what discussion happened after that, whether a person said yes or no, neither of them are right or wrong. Everyone's entitled to their opinion Exactly, but it was the discussion afterward that was really valuable.
Speaker 2:So that was a way of finding whether candidates were aligned with the values of the organisation Exactly, Both in their answer but also in their explanation.
Speaker 1:Yes, yeah.
Speaker 2:Actually, the next mistake that we're going to discuss goes back to part of it being before the interview, so avoiding bias. Sorry, that's not the mistake. The mistake is being biased about who you interview in the first place, who you put through to that stage, but also what your expectations are of that person when you actually meet them face to face.
Speaker 1:So the reason why this is a hidden mistake or something you could be, doing without knowing. It is because bias is something that's so sort of. It can be really innate and you're not really aware of it unless you're thinking about it.
Speaker 1:But if you think of the way that you might converse with someone from a different culture or a different gender than you, or something like that, or even the age Age yep, you know, bias fundamentally comes from our background and our history and all of that, and it's sometimes involuntary, isn't it? Is that fair to say?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it is, and I think I've written a blog post about this, but if not, I'll add the link, because there isn't actually an online test where you can find out what your biases are. Ah right, like it's a global inventory that they're collecting, and when I did it, I was very surprised to find that I was biased against women.
Speaker 1:Oh, is that right? No, that's funny, it is very funny.
Speaker 2:I hope our listeners think that's funny too. Anyway, but the thing for me was, you know, I'd worked in HR for so many years and, you know, consider myself very professional and all the rest of it, but these questions were able to pull out that really deep-seated bias that I wasn't aware of.
Speaker 1:That's interesting. Yeah, because I guess being aware of it then gives you the power to know to adjust for that or make allowances for that.
Speaker 1:I've got an example for you from my history.
Speaker 1:I remember a time when I was supporting a manager in recruiting and we were interviewing. It was for a disability employment service, so the role was something of like a case manager, you know, supporting clients who were disabled in finding work, and the panel was made up of at least one person in there who was a client of the service. The particular person there that day was in a wheelchair and the reason why we had that person in the room was very intentional, because the candidates that were coming in the room didn't necessarily expect a client to be on the panel. But it was very telling and unfortunately we did have one example where a candidate was caught off guard. They weren't inappropriate in any way, but it was clear that they were awkward and would say things that were, you know, things that were a bit awkward and you'd think, oh no, I wish you didn't say that or they feel uncomfortable, and it was very telling then to see. Well, I wonder how they would be in the workplace then with that particular person.
Speaker 2:So that's looking at bias in the candidate. It's such an insidious thing and so important in that role.
Speaker 1:Yes, absolutely. Another example I've heard it said the idea of removing names off of a resume.
Speaker 2:Yes, we were talking about how you might judge by someone's name whether they maybe have English as a second language or you feel that they might not be able to cope with the role, or you may have had a bad experience with somebody with a name like that before, or you might look at their name and go oh well, they're obviously flaky.
Speaker 1:There's so many judgments that we could make, or even just simply assuming the gender based upon a person's name. Yeah, that's right you know that sort of thing, yeah, so how do?
Speaker 2:you get around with that.
Speaker 1:Well, the interesting thought is taking off the name off the resume. So instead of having you know Amanda Jones, you might just have Candidate 1 and Candidate 2, candidate Amanda Jones, you might just have candidate one and candidate two, candidate three, and it takes away completely that element of having to have your brain think about that.
Speaker 2:You're just looking at it for what it is yeah, Although I have to say Amanda Jones is probably not likely to have many biases against her, except from people like me, obviously.
Speaker 1:Poor example.
Speaker 2:If any.
Speaker 1:Amanda Jones is listening. Apologies, that's just an example. Are you looking to hire staff for your business, but fitting it in around your other work is tough. Have you struggled to find the right people before, but it ends up feeling like more work than it's worth? Well, our team at Asta HR can help you, from advertisement to offer. We can guide you through the entire process just as if we were your HR manager, and you benefit from our decades of experience to find not just anyone to fill your vacancy, but someone that you'll love to work with. You can choose a package that suits you and you pay a fixed fee. Let us take care of the time consuming stuff and we'll fast track you straight to only the strongest candidates, so you can spend your time growing your business.
Speaker 2:Schedule a free call with either Susan or I right now at asthrcomau. Now it's back to the episode. Well, angela, we've talked about biases against certain classes of people when we're going through the selection process. What about biases towards certain classes of people like family and friends?
Speaker 1:for example oh, that old chestnut. Yes, I've known plenty of people that have hired friends or family and sometimes it works, but unfortunately more often it doesn't. It's really hard to split that.
Speaker 2:It is hard because it's a comfortable thing. I think we spoke to one of our interviewees about this. Yes, family very heavily involved in his business.
Speaker 1:Oh, that was James. I remember James' interview. He was actually doing it quite well, so go, james.
Speaker 2:Yes, go, james. But I think in his case, and in a lot of cases, you hire the people you know, because you know them, you trust them, it's comfortable.
Speaker 1:Yeah, also in the case of promoting people. I've seen it done plenty of times where you know, let's say, a management position or a coordinator, whatever it is, is up. Plenty of times where you know, let's say, a management position or a coordinator, whatever it is, is up for grabs, and you know, the person that gets the role might just be someone that's been there the longest, not necessarily someone who's the wellest equipped to do that.
Speaker 2:That's right, which is unfortunate when that happens, or been there the longest and gets on well with the boss.
Speaker 1:Yeah, or does things the way the boss likes it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's right. So is that playing favour? I suppose it is.
Speaker 1:It's a comfortable thing isn't it. And it plays on the idea of how do you balance when you're in an interview and you're assessing, you know, is this the right person, isn't it the right person? Or even after the interview, how do you balance? You know, do I like this person? Can I work with them? You know they're good to have around in the team versus are they competent? Will they do what they say they're going?
Speaker 2:to do.
Speaker 1:Exactly, and sometimes that favourite sort of comfortableness of going. I know you, I know what you're going to do is some assurance, and so I can see why people might go down that path.
Speaker 2:Oh, and I'm just thinking also about how many times both of us have heard somebody say but they interviewed really well, I knew that would make you laugh.
Speaker 1:We've heard that quite a few, but it's a classic, isn't it? Yeah, yeah, all the time.
Speaker 2:And then you know, two months down the track, they're on the phone to us saying didn't quite work out.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's so unfortunate.
Speaker 2:So much can be done in recruitment, but it's so tricky you know, trying to assess a person based upon what you have in the recruitment process, yeah, and I have to say I've seen candidates who do interview really well. They can sell themselves. You know they could sell ice to Eskimos. But this is why, coming back to the questions that you asked, why that's so important to actually dig down and get the truth about what they can do instead of just being, you know, sucked in by their smiles sort of thing.
Speaker 1:Yeah yeah, what's that saying? Recruit slow, fire fast. Which sounds a bit deadly, doesn't it? It does. In essence, that's right in terms of take as long as you need in recruitment to make the right decision. Don't just choose the best from a bad bunch. Take the time it needs.
Speaker 2:Actually, it made me think of something else that we weren't going to discuss, but that's taking care of the candidates during the process. So a mistake that does happen, particularly in slightly large organisations, where it might be. People think oh well, someone else is looking after that.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Candidates are sitting in there in the dark not really knowing what's going on.
Speaker 1:If it takes a long time and you need to keep those candidates that you're interested in interested, yeah, and you know, in the world that we live in, people are expecting that sort of fast communication, even if it's just an email, to say, hey, we haven't forgotten about you, we're still working on this, you know, because even if they're not your person in the end, they might tell someone hey, I had a really bad experience with that place. Don't go there. You don't want that to be happening.
Speaker 2:Imagine waiting around for weeks to be told that you didn't get the job, after you've been for an interview maybe more than one interview. So just take a look at it from their perspective and treat them with the same sort of respect that you'd expect.
Speaker 1:And it's not that hard, no, no, you can automate things. You can, just you know. Yeah, it's not that hard. No, no, you can automate things. You can, just you know.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you can even send a BCC email to everyone you know Exactly. It's not that hard to let people know what's going on. Yeah, so you know we've spoken about onboarding before you know. It comes up every time we talk about recruitment, and a mistake that I would say I may have even been guilty of myself is bringing someone on and feeling like you've given them all the information they need and they can just get on with the job. But basically, what you've done is different to what they do need.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so it's that gap between what they need to know, or what their experience is, versus what you think their experience is yeah exactly. I wonder how many of our listeners can share in this example. I think it's unfortunately too familiar. But you know, when you've started a new job and you're sitting there on your first day, maybe, if you're unlucky, your second and third day and you're just sitting there with a 300-page policy and procedure manual to go through.
Speaker 1:Wow that's exciting. Well, you know, it's been done to me before where you think you know you need to know those things. Sure, but is that the most effective way to do that? And what sort of experience was I having? Well, not a great one, because I'm on my own, I'm feeling like I'm not part of the team yet.
Speaker 2:I've just got to get up to scratch with all this info Plus, I'm reading about all the things I might get into trouble for. Yeah, not exactly a positive experience.
Speaker 1:No, no, but I can understand it, because as managers, we're time poor.
Speaker 2:Oh, we do yeah.
Speaker 1:You know. So it just requires a bit of thought beforehand of what you're going to do. It doesn't always have to be you. Depending on the size of your business, you can find other people that they could shadow or be with or whatever Exactly. But yeah, leaving them alone is not always a good thing.
Speaker 2:No, that reminds me of a statistic and I can't remember where it came from, so don't quote me on this, but it was something to do with. I think 50% of people who leave a job decide to leave in the first week.
Speaker 1:Wow, the first week yeah.
Speaker 2:Wow, I thought you were going to say month. It might have been first month, okay. Well, yeah, it could have been first month, but in any case, it just shows how critical that first little period is.
Speaker 1:Well, that's, I think, why we link it so closely to recruitment, because really the onboarding is the end of the recruitment process.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly it's so crucial.
Speaker 1:I know some of our clients will have used or started the onboarding process before the person is actually having their first day. So they might have access to information, or they might have a quick phone call or go and meet someone of the team or whatever it is which can have a nice introduction for them.
Speaker 2:It's funny, isn't it? We do generally, organisations do farewells pretty well. You know someone retires or something and leaves for another positive reason. You know we have a farewell but we don't necessarily welcome people.
Speaker 1:Yeah, another mistake that can be made is not being really clear about expectations and an onboarding process and recruitment is the time to do that. Yeah, this is the way I the time to do that.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:This is the way I put it to someone the other day If you think about your goals you might set for yourself or for your business, they're often SMART goals you might be familiar with that acronym and measurable, and objective and specific. You know those sorts of things. The same, I believe, is for expectations. So I might say to you, susan, I have an expectation that you will attend a team meeting every week. That's very clear, right, because it tells you the time, it tells you what it is, and I expect you to attend. Whereas if I'm not that specific, if I just say, well, yeah, we do have team meetings, I was just thinking.
Speaker 2:I've been in situations where team meetings I'm not there because I didn't know I was supposed to be in that team meeting.
Speaker 1:So yeah, perfect example. It's those sorts of things. I find some people forget to be specific, especially when someone's having that influx of information, because onboarding is usually a time where you're trying to ingest all this information.
Speaker 2:Oh, that's so true, and we'd recommend having a schedule in that case. Wouldn't we Like really planning it ahead and thinking about what you want to achieve in that time? And there's more information about that in earlier episodes.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we'll link to our onboarding episode. Yeah, well, I think that's quite a list to go through. It is so. We thought about internal talent. I wonder if you're thinking about your internal talent and what you do with them. We talked about interviews. Whether it's the question or the bias, or who you hire. Yeah, and then the onboarding process. I wonder what you might do to improve your onboarding process.
Speaker 2:We're always happy for feedback. We'd love to hear if this has changed anything or made you think about anything that you would do differently, but also send us your questions. Yeah, please do.
Speaker 1:Thanks for listening to the Work Wonders podcast brought to you by Aster HR. Hit the subscribe button now to never miss an episode, and if you'd like to continue the conversation with us, you can find us over at asterhrcomau. See you in the next episode.
