Managing Difficult Conversations - Guest Article by Sarah Darbyshire

30/08/19

As an HR Consultant, I’m often asked whether there are any common issues I come across when working with different companies and sectors.

In every company that I’ve worked with over the last 24 years, whether a start-up, a small family business or a multinational organisation, one of the key challenges that I’ve dealt with is around having difficult conversations.

No one wants to upset a colleague, create a difficult working environment, or at worst, have a member of their team raise a grievance against them. Having worked closely with a number of teams that I have led and managed throughout my career, I can empathise with this – it can be very difficult to share an office with someone who perceives that you’ve just ‘told them off’.

To compound the issue, many managers are promoted into management positions due to strong technical skills but have not been given any training on how to lead and manage their team.

The most common concerns I come across are around probationary periods; absence and timekeeping; underperformance; behaviours at work, and increasingly behaviour outside of work on social media; and working relationships with colleagues, clients or customers.

Avoiding difficult issues doesn’t make them go away – in fact in can make them worse. I’ve worked in a number of companies where my role during the first few months has involved fire fighting to address issues which no one has historically wanted to tackle. Sometimes leaving an issue unmanaged can escalate what could have been a simple discussion into a formal HR matter. This potentially puts the organisation at risk as well as damaging employee relations, not just with the employee(s) involved but also with their colleagues.

From an employment law perspective, managers and HR professionals need to make sure that they are being fair and consistent in the way that staff are being managed, to avoid potentially expensive claims of discrimination under the Equality Act 2010 (on the grounds of gender, gender reassignment, race, age, disability, marital/civil partnership status, pregnancy or maternity, religion or belief or sexual orientation).

If you do end up in a formal disciplinary or grievance procedure, my advice is that you need to make sure that you have offered support, guidance, training to the employee before starting down that route (unless the issue is one of gross misconduct).

Curiosity is an important management trait – asking questions to try and understand what is going on, rather than making assumptions.

My advice to managers and fellow HR professionals is, therefore, to talk to employees sooner rather than later.

As a starting point, ask yourself the following questions:

What have they done/not done?
What is the evidence? This may be information from your HR records, such as absence records or it could be a conversation with a colleague or client raising concerns about a member of your team.
Gather the facts so that you are clear in your own mind about whether or not there is an issue. How do they compare to information that you have about other people – are you being consistent?
How long have they worked for you and how long has it been an issue?
If it’s just started, do you need to find out what’s changed – something at work or home?
If it’s been going on for a while, why have you decided that it’s an issue now?
Have you done everything you can to help them – support, guidance, training?
What conversations have you already had? What was the outcome?

Before you meet with the employee, consider how they might react – are they likely to become upset, angry, defensive? How will you deal with those reactions? They can be genuine reactions however, some employees can use them as a distraction technique to avoid having to talk about the issues.

If they become emotional, give them a break to compose themselves and then carry on with the discussion.

In the meeting, I suggest the following approach:

Explain the facts to the employee
Be supportive and explain that you want to help them to be the best that they can in their role
Focus on the issue, not the person
Ask for an explanation
Is there something going on at work or home that’s led to a change in behaviour and/or performance at work?
Make it clear that if they chose not to tell you, you can only manage based on the information you have
Agree to a solution, what you expect from them, any support they need and timescales
Follow up the main points of your discussion in writing so that you both have a record
Book a date in the diary for a review

Follow up is important, so at the review meeting:

If they have done what you asked – thank them, and continue regular one to ones
If they haven’t done what you asked – what are the reasons?
Have priorities changed in the business for example or do they need more support?

If they haven’t done what you asked them to do, you may have to consider whether you need to start formal disciplinary, performance management or grievance procedures. If you do go down the formal route, make sure you are following your own HR policies and procedures, and take external advice if you need to.

Sarah Darbyshire has worked in Human Resources since 1995. She started her HR career in a small family business, and worked her way up to Head of HR roles, transforming and restructuring a number of organisations. She set up HR Solutions Yorkshire Limited in 2016 which provides ad hoc and retained HR Consultancy services in the following areas to businesses across Yorkshire and the North:

HR strategy and projects

Change management

Employee relations

Learning and development

Employee wellbeing

Sarah is a Chartered Fellow of the CIPD, and also holds the Prince 2 project management qualification.