Chapter 11 Practicing Human Resource Management

Hiring Bias at ABC Cars & Trucks

ABC Cars & Trucks is a large, locally owned dealership in a medium-sized city with approximately 45 employees, including eight mechanics. It sells and services a major car brand. The owner resides in the community but is semi-retired and has turned over day-to-day operations to a general manager. There is a significant level of staff turnover in the service division, particularly among mechanics, often lured away by higher wages in the oil and gas industry. On average, ABC hires four new mechanics per year. Hiring is normally done by the general manager and the manager of the relevant area. As the organization’s sole HR practitioner, you attend the hiring meetings to take notes and answer questions. You also report directly to the general manager and handle all HR tasks except payroll and benefits (outsourced to a payroll agency).

The most recent advertisement for an automotive mechanic yielded 10 applicants, including (unusually) two qualified women. The general manager and service manager winnowed the list down to four applicants to interview, all men. One of the women who applied called your office this morning and left a message wondering why she was not short-listed. She indicated that she suspects she was not interviewed because she is a woman and that such behaviour is discriminatory. A quick review of hiring records shows that approximately 5% of applicants for mechanic positions (roughly 10 of 200) over the past five years have been women, but no women have been short-listed for an interview. Overall, employment at ABC is highly gendered, with all mechanics, sales staff, and managers being men, whereas women hold most of the (lower-paying) support and administrative positions.

This phone call seems to require some action since your job description includes ensuring that ABC Cars & Trucks is compliant with relevant laws and that employment issues are resolved discreetly so as not to damage ABC’s reputation in the community. Your first instinct is to call the applicant back. But you are not sure what purpose that would serve or even what the issue is. Feature Box 11.1 outlines some basic steps to take when confronted with a difficult employment-related issue.

In applying the issues analysis checklist in Feature Box 11.1 to the situation at ABC Cars & Trucks, you find several intertwined issues.

• • The general manager and/or service manager are sexist (perhaps unconsciously) in their selection practices.
• • The company discriminates against women.
• • Raising this issue with your direct supervisor (the general manager) might have negative consequences for you (including possible firing).

Unpacking the situation and writing down the different issues helps us to think carefully through the situation. It also helps us to identify who is affected and in what ways. In this case, those affected include the following:

• • prospective women workers who might be denied jobs for which they are qualified;
• • the general manager and service manager, who might face discipline or termination as well as harm to their personal reputations, both inside and outside the organization;
• • to the degree that sexism extends beyond the hiring process, women workers who might be discriminated against in other ways;
• • the company, which might miss out on hiring qualified workers;
• • the company, which might also face both legal and reputational harms for allowing discrimination against women, perhaps making it harder to fill future vacancies and driving away customers; and
• • you as an HR practitioner who might be implicated, albeit innocently, in potentially discriminatory hiring practices, causing you to face reputational harm or even employment termination for exposing the misconduct of the general manager and service manager.

Thinking the issues through, you conclude the following.

• • The behaviour of the general manager and service manager is sexist in its effect. It is harder to draw conclusions about their intentions. This could just be an example of similar-to-me bias (see Chapter 6).
• • Regardless of their intentions, both direct discrimination and indirect discrimination on the basis of gender are prohibited (see Chapter 2). Repeatedly failing to interview and hire qualified women suggests that discrimination is occurring. It can have legal, financial, and reputational costs.
• • It is likely that the general manager will be discomforted by the implicit criticism of his behaviour. He might also fear consequences should the owner of the business be made aware of his behaviour. Your contract of employment allows the general manager to fire you without cause in exchange for six months of notice or pay in lieu (see Chapter 9).

Given all of these factors, probably the optimal framing of this issue is that

• • there has been an accusation of gender-based discrimination in the hiring process;
• • a cursory examination of records suggests that there might be some basis for this accusation;
• • this accusation poses significant organizational risk; and
• • addressing this issue will require navigating some interpersonal politics.

The potentially serious consequences of this allegation mean that you are obligated to take some action to protect the interests of ABC Cars & Trucks. The most pressing issue is the potential for organizational harm if the caller files a human rights complaint, goes to the media, or simply complains to her friends and family members. In the short term, there are several ways in which this issue can be resolved.

• • Take no action and hope that the applicant loses interest.
• • Offer the applicant an interview. This might satisfy her and undercut her claim of discrimination. If she is not the successful candidate, however, this approach can increase her dissatisfaction and heighten the risk of reputational harm.
• • Redo the selection process in a way that gives the applicant an equal chance at being selected for an interview and the job.
• • Offer the applicant a payment to pre-empt her complaint of discrimination in exchange for a non-disclosure agreement.

A complicating factor here is that the decision about how to proceed likely belongs to the general manager (your boss and one of the accused). This places him in a potential conflict of interest (i.e., his personal interest in avoiding consequences can conflict with his organizational duty to take action). Essentially, you have two options here.

• • Figure out a tactful way to introduce the issue to the general manager and get him to take action to address the pressing aspect of the issue. For example, you might identify the risk, his potential conflict of interest, and suggest a solution that you could implement to address the problem. This approach is most likely to preserve your relationship with your boss and generate a measured response, but there is no guarantee of that.
• • On the pretext that the conflict of interest and risk are significant, you could contact the owner directly and lay out the issue and recommend solutions to both the immediate issue and the underlying problem. This approach is riskier for you: the owner might not appreciate you end-running your boss, and your boss is unlikely to be happy to be end-run.

It is also possible for you to exercise these options sequentially, starting with the boss and, if you are unsuccessful with him, escalating matters to the owner. In the longer term, there are several potential solutions to address the issue of gender bias in hiring.

• • Implicit bias training can help individuals to identify and correct implicit biases that shape their decisions (e.g., sexist attitudes resulting in women’s applications being discarded). This can result in more women being short-listed and hired. The evidence that such training can change behaviour, however, is limited.1
• • Gender-blind hiring processes remove information (e.g., names) that can be used to infer gender and other personal characteristics. This should result in more women being short-listed for interviews. The efficacy of this approach appears to be limited by the tendency of managers to infer characteristics from other clues on resumés.2
• • Hiring quotas seek to compel the hiring of workers in proportion to their representation in the workforce or society. For example, approximately 5% of automotive mechanics are women. An organization might then mandate interviews and/or hirings to include a similar percentage of women. Quotas can stigmatize new hires (e.g., “you were hired because of your gender, not your skill”) and do not necessarily result in long-term changes in representation because hires might leave hostile workplaces.
• • Eliminating those with known biases from responsibility for hiring might reduce bias in hiring if those who replace them are less biased. Removing duties can cause hard feelings and result in managers claiming constructive dismissal (see Chapter 9). An alternative is to ensure that hiring committees are representative of the general population (e.g., gender balanced).

There is no perfect solution to this problem. You might prioritize containing the immediate risk (e.g., reputational harm) to the organization. This could entail identifying to the general manager the risk posed by the caller and proposing to mitigate it by offering her a financial settlement in exchange for a non-disclosure agreement. This reduces both the immediate organizational risk and the personal risk to the general manager as well as signals to him that you are his ally. The general manager’s resulting goodwill might then be used to generate buy-in to the implementation of gender-blind applicant screening and gender-balanced hiring committees to eliminate the risk of future complaints via a process that both is and appears to be unbiased.

It is notable that this approach offers no real justice to the worker(s) who might have been discriminated against. That fact (rightly) might sit uneasily with many people. But the role of an HR practitioner is to advance the interests of the employer. Sometimes that requires countenancing (or just politely ignoring) bad behaviour by powerful organizational actors to achieve the best outcome possible for the organization.

If this approach is not effective (e.g., the general manager refuses to act), then you can choose either to escalate the issue to the owner or to take no further action (i.e., hope that the issue goes away). In either case, savvy HR practitioners will carefully document their efforts to address the problem and record the general manager’s reluctance to take action on the issue. Although this paper trail will not necessarily prevent future problems (e.g., retaliation by the general manager or a human rights complaint), a clear paper trail documenting his behaviour can be useful if you need to defend the organization or pursue legal action yourself for being wrongfully dismissed.

Pay Raises at ABC Marketing & Advertising

ABC Marketing & Advertising is a mid-sized national media company that specializes in creating print and online advertisements for major brands. The company employs approximately 100 non-unionized workers in a large urban centre. You are the compensation specialist in the three-person HR shop, and you report directly to the managing partner. You often work with department managers to set compensation and administer benefits. ABC has adopted a differentiation business strategy based on carefully cultivated client relationships, high levels of client servicing, and creative advertising campaigns (see Chapter 1). Account staff, who bring in clients, maintain their loyalty, and pitch new advertising ideas and campaigns, are central to this strategy, whereas the work of everyone else is focused on supporting them.

As a result, the organization has developed a two-tier HR strategy (see Chapter 4). ABC Marketing & Advertising emphasizes retaining high-performing accounts staff through competitive compensation because their personal relationships with clients are central to the company’s business strategy. This HR strategy incentivizes accounts staff to maximize the revenue that they generate each year. In practice, this means that they are paid a modest base salary and receive the standard benefits package. Most of their income is earned through a generous commission on overall revenue from the accounts that they manage. Performance-based pay via commissions is an industry-standard practice that incentivizes the recruitment and retention of clients (see Chapter 8). Earned commissions can double, triple, or even quadruple the base salary provided to the accounts staff. There are significant differences in their annual commission earnings based on the sizes of the accounts that they handle and the rate of commission that they receive. New accounts staff are generally hired through word of mouth and based on their ability to bring in new clients with whom they have pre-existing relationships.

Other workers, whose work is less directly connected to revenue generation, are compensated with a base salary plus benefits. Every employment contract at ABC Marketing & Advertising includes a requirement that workers keep their compensation and benefits package confidential or face discipline. In theory, this policy is designed to limit conflict among workers over compensation. In practice, the company uses it to make it harder for workers to argue that they deserve a raise by comparing their performance and compensation with those of their co-workers.

Over the past five years, existing clients have begun shifting to online advertising and away from traditional print (e.g., newspapers, magazines, billboards), and new clients are almost entirely interested in online advertising. It is cheaper for clients than print advertising, and this has reduced the revenue generated by each account. Consequently, accounts staff commissions have declined by an average of 5% per year over five years, and this decline is accelerating. These accounts continue to require the same amount of effort to maintain, so accounts staff cannot just add additional clients to make up the difference in commissions.

A number of newer accounts staff have been discussing declining commissions and appear to have nominated Ashok Kumar to approach their manager about them. They indicate that they would like their income stabilized at the level that it was five years earlier and suggest increasing either their commission rates or their base salaries. Their manager immediately comes to your office and says that she feels like she is being ganged up on and pressured. From what you can tell, the workers’ request was made very civilly. She suggests that the accounts staff have clearly violated the policy on discussing their compensation and wants to know if she can terminate Kumar as a lesson to the other workers. A few hours later the managing partner sends you an email indicating that he would like you to brief the partners on this situation and propose a way to resolve “this issue.” He does not specify what the issue is, and your past experience suggests that asking him for clarification will be both unpleasant and unsuccessful (“You’re the HR person; figure it out”).

You decide to spend some time discussing the matter with managers as well as some employees with whom you are friendly. You then sit down to apply the issues analysis checklist (see Feature Box 11.1) to this problem. You begin by trying to decide how to frame the issue. As is often the case with thorny HR problems, several intertwined issues have different impacts on different groups.

• • A change in the industry is eroding the revenue of ABC Marketing & Advertising. This suggests that the business strategy adopted by the company might no longer be viable. Declining revenue is also threatening the organization’s ability to retain revenue-producing staff, suggesting that the compensation plan might require adjustment. Other staff are watching the accounts staff’s demand and might seek salary adjustments of their own if the accounts staff are successful.
• • The manager of the accounts staff believes that her authority has been undermined. She might also be worried that her unit’s performance will suffer (because of either worker attrition or declining effort) and thereby raise questions about her management skills.
• • The accounts staff see the pay system as unfair because their income is declining for reasons unrelated to their performance. They are quietly discussing what to do if their concerns are not taken seriously (see Feature Box 11.2).

You decide that the compensation plan adopted by ABC Marketing & Advertising for its accounts staff no longer motivates them to seek new clients (they all have full client lists), and declining commissions is causing dissatisfaction, which can result in attrition. This poses a significant risk of future client loss if accounts staff quit and then use their relationships with their clients to woo them to a different agency. You see three main options to address this risk that you decide to present to the managing partner.

• • Status quo: ABC Marketing & Advertising should take no action and let the accounts staff decide how they want to proceed. The key risk with this option is that the staff will exit the company and seek to take their clients with them. The likelihood of this outcome is not clear.
• • Compensation change: The compensation of accounts staff could be altered to address declining commissions. The options include a one-time payment or short-term increase in their commission rates to fully or partially to offset their decline in income. The cost of this option is modest, but it does not address the underlying and seemingly systemic problem of declining accounts revenue. Alternatively, accounts staff could be offered a fixed salary, and the company could use performance management techniques (e.g., sales targets) to maintain revenue levels. Such a contractual change would require the agreement of the workers or their termination without cause and the hiring of new accounts staff (see Chapter 9).
• • Fire Kumar: The company could fire Kumar for violating the compensation confidentiality clause in his contract. This would make it difficult for him to get another job. This action could be combined with status quo or change compensation options in the hope that his firing will discourage further demands by the accounts staff. This approach might alienate the remaining staff and trigger neglect and/or exit behaviours.

A key risk that you believe you need to address is the possibility that accounts staff will quit and take their clients with them at a low cost. An additional risk is that changing the compensation of accounts staff will cause other staff to make their own demands for wage increases. You also note the need to deal with the manager’s hurt feelings but decide to set that issue aside. How you handle the manager might depend on which option the management group prefers.

Maternity Leaves in the County of Fair Haven

The County of Fair Haven provides municipal services to a sprawling rural region. You are an HR practitioner employed by the county. It hires approximately 25 employees per year in entry-level administrative positions. These workers are not unionized and work a standard 8:30 to 4:30 work day in one of the county’s two main offices. The average age of these new hires is 25 (typically postsecondary graduates with one to two years of work experience), and approximately 56% of new hires are women. About half of newly hired women take parental leave within three years of being hired, necessitating the hiring of cover-off employees and redistribution of some tasks.

The chief administrative officer (CAO) of the county has expressed frustration with the cost and work associated with accommodating parental leaves. After three relatively new hires announced the previous week that they were pregnant, the CAO directs you to “do something about this problem.” You are expected to provide a memo to the county’s management team in response to this request by the end of the week. Although the CAO does not give you any direction on how to proceed, his past comments suggest that he would prefer not to hire young women because of the inconvenience posed by accommodating parental leaves and child-care demands (e.g., sick children, medical appointments).

As you sit down to draft the memo, you worry that the CAO and management team expect you to find a way for them to avoid hiring young women. You decide to apply the issues analysis checklist (see Feature Box 11.1) to this problem, beginning by determining the issue. As is often the case with thorny HR problems, several intertwined issues have different impacts on different groups.

• • There are financial and administrative costs associated with employing workers who have (or will have) families. These costs include additional hiring, training, and overtime to manage parental leaves and other absences related to social reproductive responsibilities (see Feature Box 1.3). Accommodating workers’ family responsibilities is also administratively burdensome to managers. The cost and irritation of doing so do not rise to the level of undue hardship (Chapter 2), but minimizing organizational costs associated with workers’ family responsibilities is a reasonable action for the county to take.
• • The CAO has attributed these costs primarily to young women. Your data suggest that family-related responsibilities affect workers of all genders and ages. Parental leaves, however, are the highest and most visible cost. A negligible number of men employed by the county use parental leaves, so clearly this is a gendered issue. Any recommendation that results in a negative effect for an identifiable group runs the risk of being found discriminatory (see Chapter 2).
• • Discriminating against young women entails financial and reputational risks for the county, which can affect its ability to attract and retain qualified workers. If the county faces accusations of discrimination, then the CAO might be directed by the elected county council to fix the problem. Doing so might include firing the staff member responsible for the discriminatory policy or practice. You do not wish to get fired for cause (see Chapter 9).

You decide that the issue to tackle is reducing the financial and administrative costs associated with accommodating workers’ family responsibilities by proposing changes to job design, HR planning, and training. You decide to address parental leave first because it is the issue with the highest cost and the one that the CAO has flagged as problematic. There are various options available to you.

• • Job design: Examining the job descriptions and specifications for entry-level jobs, you note that there is substantial overlap in requirements, duties, and working conditions (see Chapter 3). This suggests that it might be possible to have existing employees cover parental leaves via job rotation and/or job enlargement.
• • HR planning: Although the timing of specific leaves is unpredictable, in each of the past three years approximately seven staff were absent on parental leave at any one time. Slightly increasing the staffing complement to account for this level of absence (see Chapter 4) combined with job rotation or enlargement would reduce or even eliminate the need to hire temporary employees.
• • Training: For job rotation or enlargement to be effective, it is necessary to cross-train staff (see Chapter 7). Additional training would increase costs slightly, in terms of both additional training and lost productivity. But it would save the cost associated with training temporary workers and provide greater organizational flexibility should there be some sort of unexpected shock to the organization.

Overall, this set of options reduces the administrative costs associated with the parental leave, is likely financially neutral, and avoids placing the organization in legal jeopardy. These changes are likely to have a mixed impact on workers. Some workers will appreciate the opportunity to move from position to position in the organization. The new skills will make them more employable and better able to compete on more senior jobs. Other workers will not appreciate having to learn new skills and develop new work relationships and might see it as an increase in their workloads. It is hard to tell how this will affect overall rates of staff turnover or demands for wage increases, so it is difficult to assess meaningfully the risk of this option for the organization.

Complicating things is that some entry-level positions are viewed by workers as inherently better than others because of the working conditions and duties. For example, working in the public library is more pleasant than answering questions and accepting appeals about property tax assessments. Workers can be incentivized by job rotation to perform better in good jobs and worse in bad jobs in the hope of influencing where they are placed in the future. This dynamic can negatively affect performance in some departments, but it is hard to assess the risk that it can pose. It is possible that further job redesign might improve the quality of some of these jobs.

Worker Underperforming

Kelly Moody is a 54-year-old snowplow driver. Two years ago, the small city where Kelly lives decided to contract out snow removal. They were laid off by the city and then hired by Plow King, the company that won the contract. Plow King pays Kelly 20% less than the city did and does not offer a pension plan. Their performance with Plow King has been satisfactory. This winter, however, homeowners in neighbourhoods where Kelly is clearing snow are complaining to the city that their driveways are partially blocked.

The city has been referring these complaints to Plow King for remediation. This usually entails dispatching a small bobcat crew to remove the windrows. Many of the windrows that have led to complaints are very small (less than six inches high) and pose no real barrier. A small number of windrows are larger and impede or simply narrow access for residents. Windrows are a common outcome of snow clearing and usually cleaned up by the operator. A small number of citizen complaints are common. There has been an increase in complaints this year, and Kelly has received the most complaints of the 15 operators.

Kelly’s supervisor has told them to ensure that there are no windrows left. This direction has improved but not resolved the problem. The general manager is concerned that continued complaints will mean that Plow King’s contract with the city will not be renewed. The supervisor wants to suspend or terminate Kelly’s employment over these performance issues. You are the only HR practitioner employed by Plow King, and the general manager has directed you to resolve “Kelly’s performance problem” immediately.

Since the general manager is framing this as a performance problem, you decide to start by assessing its cause(s) using the process set out in Figure 9.2 (go back to refer to this process). You begin by determining whether the expectations of windrow removal have been made clear to Kelly. The supervisor provides you with a list of three dates when Kelly was verbally instructed to remove all windrows. The supervisor also sent Kelly two text messages with the same directions. Given the context of the text messages and the supervisor’s recollections of the verbal instructions, you are satisfied that the expectation has been clearly communicated.

Reviewing Kelly’s HR file also suggested that they do have the ability to clear windrows. Kelly has more than 30 years of experience operating a snowplow and two satisfactory performance assessments, which include a supervisor’s observation of their work. There are no references to inadequate windrow clearing. The administrative data that you can find about complaints from past years are incomplete, so you set the data aside as not valid or reliable.

Kelly has the same equipment as every other snowplow operator, and this equipment has not changed over time, so you are satisfied that they have the resources necessary to clear windrows. With this basic background research done, you decide to interview Kelly and arrange to meet them in a coffee shop during the lunch break. Your interview yields four salient pieces of information.

• • The time required to plow a given area depends, in part, on the amount of snow that has fallen, the condition of the snow (e.g., loose or compacted), and the presence of obstructions (e.g., parked cars, traffic, stacked snow). Poor plowing conditions historically required operators to work overtime, for which they received overtime pay.
• • This year operators were directed not to put in for overtime. It is not clear who made this decision, but Kelly says that all operators were given this direction by their respective supervisors. Some operators continue to work overtime but not record it. Kelly has reduced the number of passes made down each street to complete the work in the allotted time.
• • Kelly harbours some resentment about the reduction in pay and loss of benefits following contracting out of snow removal by the city. This resentment has been intensified by the loss of overtime pay.
• • Kelly is deeply resentful of being chastened for the declining quality of work. Their supervisor has repeatedly refused to address the impact of the overtime ban on the quality of the plowing.

Following the interview, you are not necessarily sure that this is a performance problem. You decide to use the issues analysis checklist in Feature Box 11.1. That analysis yields three potential ways to frame the problem.

• • Resource shortage: The decision to eliminate overtime has put plow operators in a difficult situation. To complete the job, they must either self-exploit (i.e., work without wages) or trade quality for speed.
• • Dissatisfaction with compensation: Kelly is dissatisfied with both the overall compensation mix and the loss of overtime pay, and this might be affecting their performance.
• • Insubordination: Kelly might be complying maliciously with the supervisor’s directive to complete the task within a fixed amount of time by lowering the quality of the work.

Each framing suggests different pathways to a fix. Allowing operators to claim overtime is likely to resolve the problem of poor quality (and thus attenuate the risk of contract loss) and bring Plow King into compliance with the law on overtime premiums (see Chapter 2). It would also, however, increase labour costs and thereby reduce profitability. Since the overtime ban externalizes some labour costs to the workers (i.e., some continue to work without pay), it might be cheaper for the company simply to let workers like Kelly, unwilling to self-exploit, quit.

Alternatively, if Kelly’s dissatisfaction with the compensation package is causing them to reduce the amount of effort expended on the job, then altering the compensation structure might induce greater effort and thereby address the concerns about quality. Compensation could be linked explicitly with meeting certain quality benchmarks, although how to set and assess them is unclear. Altering the compensation structure would require the agreement of the workers (see Chapter 9) and likely increase labour costs.

Finally, there is obviously friction between Kelly and their supervisor. The reinstatement of overtime or a change in Kelly’s compensation might be an opportunity to assist them to resolve their differences. Alternatively, the employment of one or the other could be terminated with notice. Mediation or termination alone would not solve the root problem that operators have not been allocated adequate time to meet performance standards. That said, terminating Kelly (unhappy with the job) might allow Plow King to hire a different plow operator who would be prepared to work uncompensated overtime.

Disability Accommodation and Harassment

You are an HR practitioner in the provincial government. Your manager has directed you to place a long-term employee (Brian) into a vacant, unionized position rather than running the usual job competition. The collective agreement allows you to do this in “exceptional circumstances” as long as you provide notice and explanation to the union. The job that you have been directed to put Brian into will see him work in a unit with 20 other unionized staff members and one non-unionized manager, most of whom are women.

You looked at his personnel file to confirm that Brian has the KSAs required for the position (he does) and discovered an extensive record of performance and disciplinary issues. His performance has varied over time from unsatisfactory to marginally satisfactory. Over the past 15 years, two of his past managers attempted to dismiss him (using progressive discipline) for poor performance. A combination of slight performance improvements and medical notes frustrated these efforts to terminate him. Instead, Brian has been issued a series of verbal and written reprimands.

The only active medical note in the file indicates that he has post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) following a non-work-related car accident five years ago. The psychologist indicates that the PTSD can compromise Brian’s judgment in social situations and ability to focus on tasks. Since the accident, Brian has received additional written warnings for excessive absenteeism, poor job performance, and inappropriate behaviour in the workplace (specifically leering at and repeatedly asking out female co-workers).

At present, he is suspended from work without pay after being accused of harassing another government employee (in a different department) during his lunch hour at an offsite location. Noting Brian’s government identification card hanging around his neck, the victim of the alleged harassment complained to her manager. During the investigation of this incident, it was discovered that Brian had also kept extensive notes about the performance and errors of his then manager, perhaps in retaliation for past verbal discipline that she had meted out.

After consultation with legal counsel, it was decided that the latest incident did not justify termination. Reading between the lines, it appears that there is concern that the union would grieve such a termination as discriminatory, arguing that Brian’s behaviour was the result of his PTSD. Instead, it was determined that Brian should receive a written reprimand and be moved to a comparable job in a different office. This is how his file found its way to you.

You are very concerned that Brian’s previous behaviour is placing 20 employees at risk of harassment, which would violate the organization’s obligation to identify and control hazards (see Chapter 2). Your past experience is that your own manager expects you to obey orders and not push back. You have a good working relationship with the manager of the unit into which Brian is to be transferred. You are fairly sure that the manager of this unit does not know about his past behaviour. You are concerned that placing Brian into her unit and not telling her about his past will damage your relationship with the manager. So what do you do?

You could focus on a number of potential issues, but after some reflection the most compelling one, both personally and organizationally, is that placing Brian in the new unit places the workers in that unit at risk. There is also the need to comply with your manager’s directions to place Brian into a job and not discriminate against him on the basis of his PTSD.

You can think of three ways to approach this situation.

• • You can place Brian into the unit and not disclose his past behavioural issues. This complies with your manager’s direction. But it creates a real risk that Brian will harass one or more of the workers in that unit. In addition to the potential harm caused to the worker(s) whom he might harass, if human resources fails to flag this as a hazard and control it, then there can be legal risk (the union also represents these workers) as well as distrust between line managers and HR personnel.
• • You can propose the placement to the unit manager and tell her your concerns about Brian so that she can take steps to protect her staff. She will almost certainly resist his placement, and that will anger your boss, who will see this as an effort to thwart his clear direction to place Brian in the unit.
• • You can call the unit manager and tell her that you have been directed to place a worker into the vacant position in her unit. You can then ask her if she wants to review the worker’s personnel file first. This is the manager’s right but one rarely exercised. This review will likely forewarn the unit manager of Brian’s issues and give you an opportunity to discuss the manager’s options. These options might include the unit manager resisting the placement or implementing a performance management plan (see Chapter 9). Some performance management options might include requiring Brian to complete training or serving him with a letter of behavioural expectations.

None of these options is ideal. In the end, you decide that the third option is the best one. It allows you to give the receiving manager an informal heads up but leaves the final decision about resisting the placement to her.

Union Drive

The Station Bar and Grill is a family-operated restaurant and bar. It is the largest eatery in your small urban centre and employs approximately 10 servers, 10 kitchen staff, four assistant managers, and one general manager (also the owner). You report to the general manager and handle all administrative functions, including accounting and human resources.

All serving and kitchen staff are paid the minimum wage. All tips are pooled. Any costs (e.g., dine and dash, breakage) are deducted from the tip pool, and the remainder is distributed evenly among all staff working that shift, including the assistant and general managers. Staff are resentful of using tips to cover losses and sharing tips with managers (already better compensated). The Station does not currently offer any paid sick leave for its employees. Staff are entitled to unpaid time off for illness, but many go to work when sick because they cannot afford to lose their wages.

The servers are mostly female. In your observation, they are all both young and attractive and required to wear tight-fitting outfits. Over time, servers have reported significant sexual harassment by customers and, occasionally, the assistant managers. As far as you know, the general manager has not taken any effective action to address this issue. Overall, morale seems to be low, and there has been a slight uptick in staff turnover during the past year.

On your way home on Tuesday, you note that local union organizer Sean O’Brien is handing out leaflets to servers and cooks arriving for the evening shift. O’Brien seems to be quite friendly with several of the cooks and a few of the servers. You are worried that the Guild of Restaurant and Casino Employees is organizing a union among your workers, and you immediately call the general manager. He is very upset by this news and tells you to prevent the guild from organizing the Station at all costs.

You know that there is some worker dissatisfaction at the Station. You also know that dissatisfied workers can exhibit loyalty, voice, neglect, or exit behaviours (see Feature Box 11.2). The heightened turnover might be a sign of exit behaviour. Unionization is a form of voice and often reflects workers’ desire for better wages and working conditions. In thinking back on your conversations with the general manager, he has expressed negative views about unions. His specific worries about unionization are that it will trigger significant cost increases and interfere with the operation of the restaurant. His family worked very hard to create a successful business, and he is very resistant to anyone—workers, the government, a union—interfering in its operation.

Basically, you see two ways to approach this issue. First, you could recommend that the manager take some action to pressure the workers into giving up on the union. For example, he could threaten to close the business if the workers join a union, or he could threaten to (or actually) fire some of the workers whom you saw talking to O’Brien. Based on your experience, you expect that this approach would dissuade the workers from pursuing unionization. But you also know that it entails some risks. The union might file a complaint with the labour board that the Station engaged in unfair labour practices by interfering with the workers’ right to join a union (see Chapter 10). The workers might also go to the press and damage the Station’s reputation, or, since comparable jobs are easy enough to find, they might quit in protest, possibly all at once.

The second option is to propose addressing the concerns that you believe are driving the workers toward the union. This could include

• • ending the practice of covering losses from the tip jar;
• • no longer requiring tips to be split with managers;
• • introducing a small number of paid sick days, giving managers the discretion to ask for medical evidence of illness (to prevent abuse);
• • allowing servers to choose their own working attire;
• • implementing a zero-tolerance policy on sexual harassment by customers or staff (including a process for complaints); and
• • investigating past complaints about one of the assistant managers.

These changes might be enough to cause the workers to lose interest in joining the union. There will be some small costs associated with these changes, but you suspect that they will be offset by savings on hiring and training costs. The major risk here is that the workers will learn that they can effect change through cooperation and might make future demands. You think that this risk is relatively low. This second option is clearly better for the organization because it has much lower risk attached to it. It also entails meaningful improvements in the workers’ wages and working conditions.

It is not clear that the general manager will be interested in increased upfront costs or in accommodating the interests of the workers. One way to frame the second option to him is as an opportunity to implement minor and low-cost operational changes that will maintain the Station’s long-standing reputation as a good, family-operated employer. This framing will fit with his view that his family runs a fair workplace and thus will make these changes more palatable to him. You expect that these changes, as a bonus, will keep the union out of the workplace by undermining the key benefits that unionization might offer. This is an example of how attending to the psychological needs of decision makers can increase the likelihood that they will adopt a recommendation.

The Conflicted Roles of HR Practitioners

The cases presented above highlight that HR practitioners sometimes can find themselves in difficult positions while doing their job. Although most HR departments and practitioners abide by both contractual obligations and legal requirements, sometimes organizations or organizational decision makers can find advantage in acting otherwise. These instances can place them into positions that are tricky to navigate. For example, an organization might wish to get rid of a worker without providing a reasonable period of notice or pay in lieu. To avoid such a cost, the employer might fire the worker wrongfully (perhaps with a small amount of money in lieu of notice) and rely on the high cost of legal action to pressure the worker into accepting the employer’s terms.

This demand by an organization places an HR practitioner in a tough spot. An HR employee can face significant pressure to participate in this activity and close ranks with the employer, regardless of whether or not such behaviour causes personal discomfort. The HR employee might even be tasked with breaking the news to the worker and handling that worker’s subsequent phone calls and workplace appearances. As this HR practitioner, do you go along with the employer’s demands? And what does this say about the employer’s commitment to its workers (including you)?

Such moral dilemmas occur frequently in human resource management. There is often contractual ambiguity or room for discretion in handling HR matters. What if an employee misses a deadline by one day for opting-in to an employment benefit? Do you overlook this and process the worker’s request anyway? Do you hold the worker to the policy? On what basis do you make this decision? Would you risk arguing with your boss to do right by a worker?

Savvy HR practitioners can use several strategies to protect themselves (and their employers) when placed in such difficult circumstances. As discussed in Feature Box 11.1, one strategy is to ensure that the “real” problem or issue at hand has been identified. This is important because often there are multiple ways to look at an issue. How an issue is framed can shape how an organization responds and the options available to it. Often carefully examining an issue to identify the real problem can productively change the options available to remedy the issue. For example, is recurring tardiness the result of a worker’s flaunting of a supervisor’s authority? Or does it reflect the limitations of public transit and could be eliminated through a slight variation in start and end times? How tardiness is framed shapes the potential solutions. In figuring out the real problem, it is important to recognize that frustration can affect the perspectives of those closest to the issue.

A second useful strategy is to identify the risks associated with the problem, the issue, or the resolution. Sometimes difficult situations emerge when those involved do not recognize the risks associated with particular actions or behaviours. Identifying the potential legal, reputational, or other risks associated with a decision can (re)focus discussion and cause decision makers to reassess how they wish to proceed. For example, many employers are keen to implement random drug testing in their workplaces. Sometimes this reflects an earnest belief that testing will improve safety. In other cases, it reflects a moral position that drug use is wrong. In either case, identifying the legal and reputational risks of such a decision can induce (if you will pardon the pun) sober second thoughts. The challenge here is tactfully to frame a risk assessment so as not to alienate the decision maker (or others).

A third useful strategy is to document the process. Maintaining a complete record of difficult situations is helpful in a number of ways. If there are questions about what happened, then a written record can be an important and credible source of information for the employer. Furthermore, the process of documenting decisions can cause decision makers to reflect on the consequences of their decisions should the written record ever be reviewed. This is sometimes called the observer effect: that is, writing things down often makes decision makers think more carefully about their actions because writing things down makes those decisions visible to others. If a decision maker decides to proceed in a questionable manner, then documentation records that the decision maker was apprised of the risks associated with the decision. This is referred to colloquially as CYA (cover your ass) paperwork and ensures that, if something bad happens, then the decision maker is not able to deflect blame onto you or your department.

Conclusion

The purpose of human resource management is to achieve organizational goals. The role of an HR practitioner is to facilitate achieving those goals in a legally and ethically grounded manner. That is not always easy. Organizational decision makers might wish to act in ways not anchored in law and ethics. Even if legal, some actions will disproportionately harm certain actors. This means that there are often unavoidable trade-offs and compromises in the day-to-day work of an HR practitioner.

Furthermore, employers and employees have conflicting interests. An HR practitioner can feel “caught in the middle” wanting to ensure decent working conditions for employees but needing to be responsible and accountable to the employer. Although HR practitioners might feel that they are caught in the middle, their role in the organization puts them on the side of the employer. The result can be situations in which practitioners might feel awkward and uncomfortable but have an obligation to resolve them.

That is why the practice of human resource management requires combining our technical knowledge of it with a political analysis of differing interests and goals. Navigating difficult situations requires understanding what motivates people and where their interests lie. With that understanding, the technical knowledge can be utilized in as responsible a fashion as possible and in a manner that protects the practitioner.