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The Human Resources (HR) Department is the backbone of every organisation, responsible for attracting, retaining, and nurturing talent. However, amidst a world focused on bottom lines and profit margins, it’s all too easy to lose sight of the ‘human’ when looking at our employees. So, how do we reintroduce compassion, empathy, and humanity into our HR practices? Here are some ideas.

Foster a Culture of Empathy

Empathy is the ability to understand and share the feelings of others. In a workplace context, it involves seeing things from employees’ perspectives and responding with understanding and support. This may be achieved by:

  1. Emphasising Emotional Intelligence: Emotional intelligence, the ability to understand and manage one’s own emotions and those of others, should be a priority. HR should encourage managers to develop their emotional intelligence and use it to guide their interactions with team members.
  2. Promoting Open Communication: Create a safe space where employees feel comfortable expressing their thoughts, concerns, and feelings. This can be facilitated through regular one-on-one check-ins, feedback sessions, open-door policies or coaching sessions.

Build Respectful Relationships

Respect is foundational to any relationship, including those in the workplace. Here’s how to contribute towards fostering respectful relationships:

  1. Practicing Fairness: Treat every employee fairly and equally, regardless of their role, experience, or background. This also extends to hiring, promotions, and compensation decisions.
  2. Fostering Inclusion: Create an environment where diversity is celebrated, and everyone feels valued and included. This involves not only avoiding discrimination but actively promoting diverse perspectives and backgrounds.

 Prioritise Employee Well-being

Employee well-being should be at the heart of HR practices. Here are a couple of pointers on how HR can make this a priority:

  1. Supporting Work-Life Balance: Encourage employees to maintain a healthy work-life balance. This might involve offering flexible work hours, remote work options, or additional vacation days.
  2. Providing Mental Health Support: Establish resources and initiatives to support employee mental health, such as Employee Assistance Programs (EAP), mental health days, or wellness programmes.

 Encourage Continuous Learning and Growth

A humane HR approach involves supporting employees’ personal and professional growth. This also contributes towards enhancing employee motivation and retention:

  1. Providing Learning Opportunities: Offer opportunities for continuous learning, such as workshops, training programmes, or tuition reimbursement for further education.
  2. Providing Constructive Feedback: Regular, constructive feedback can help employees grow and improve. Make sure feedback is delivered in a respectful and supportive manner. Support feedback by creating competency, skills and training plans.

Conclusion

In essence, putting the humane back in Human Resources is about treating employees as individuals with unique experiences, needs, and aspirations, rather than just cogs in the machine. By cultivating empathy, building respectful relationships, prioritising employee well-being, and encouraging continuous growth, HR can create a more humane and supportive workplace that benefits both employees and the organisation as a whole.

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