Holidays ? No, it is not at the level of the manager that they are managed. You have to see with human resources who have implemented software to simplify. It does not work. As the RRH is on maternity leave, an external firm is replacing her. No 06 to reach him and after ten increasingly aggressive emails, an answer: “sorry”. He has no control over the teams or the holidays. What does the manager say? He does not have the precise count of the vacation days to be taken before May 31 so that they are not lost for the employee. But, no break suits him because there are two unfilled positions in the service. The headhunter forgot his mission, we’re understaffed. We can eat at midnight, and go to bed at noon / More time, more schedules, holidays are great : the anthem of Elegance is to be forgotten for lack of organization. Nobody is guilty and the fable repeats itself ad infinitum for sick leaves, restaurant tickets, a promised raise that does not arrive, a fanciful payslip and everything that makes up the daily life of a company.
“Since the health crisis, HR has taken on a more strategic role, but compared to managers, there is sometimes confusion about who does what”, analyzes Nathaniel Philippe, CEO of HeyTeam (HR start-up which digitizes the entire employee experience). He conducted a study on the relationship between the “HR/manager duo” which has become too often harmful for employees: only 24% trust one as much as the other (in partnership with poll & roll, April 2023).
27% of employees trust neither the manager nor HR
Back to the origins by Gilles Verrier, president of Identité RH, professor at Sciences Po and Paris Dauphine: “the first personnel managers were retired soldiers. Their responsibility was to respect discipline and very formalized processes. The posture which resulted from this for the HR function with the managers was that of guardian of the rules”. The change of course occurred in the 1990s when the logic of service imposed itself with the Human Resources Business Partner (HRBP) and the short term as the rule. This is the end of the authority model, the HR function now revolves around the contributions of its area of expertise and the logic of service. It comes to the support of the manager: “the operational staff decides, the HR helps him to adopt the relevant decisions with regard to HR logics”.
Thirty years of a tandem that works somehow, and comes the health crisis, then hybrid work and the economic crisis. Collapse of the weakened duo: in 2022, a wave of discouragement hit HR professionals, 54% of them admitting to being “exhausted”, while 77% of managers faced an episode of burnout in 2021, deplores Nathaniel Philippe. New missions for some, more complex tasks for others, we step on each other’s toes or, on the contrary, there is no one for an urgent response. At the centre, the employee no longer understands anything: who does what? Result of the study, scathing: 27% of employees trust neither the manager nor HR. “The latter are often seen as executors of management, who do not understand business policies”, confirms the CEO of HeyTeam: 71% of employees consider that HR is more useful to the company than to them and 66 % see him less than once a month.
Train HR in “Live my life as a manager” mode
However, “nearly half of employees want their HR to be more attentive and more present throughout their career”, underlines Nathaniel Philippe. Relearning to communicate and in particular listening to the needs and feelings of the manager rather than imposing a profile on him. In parallel, a “Live my life” system could be envisaged, in which HR, consultants, engineers and managers would spend half a day sharing the daily life of other departments, with a view to understanding the business of other. Go back down to the field level for more operational and therefore more credible HR.
They must also regain control in the management committee to gain credibility vis-à-vis the employees. Appreciate their action. CSR (social and environmental responsibility) is an asset to make people want to get involved: 57% of employees define their quest for meaning by the objective of “contributing to the challenges of ecological and/or social transition” and 42 % by that of “belonging to an organization with a positive impact on society and/or the planet” (Audencia/jobs_that_makesense survey, March 2022).