Melina Murray

I spent last week in San Francisco at the annual RSA Conference, a huge conference for the Information Security industry. Having worked in with a network security company for a number of years, I am still in contact with many former colleagues and others in the industry. As an HR professional and a person continually interested in learning, I find the people in the IS community to be exceptionally talented and passionate about what they do.

Throughout the week I talked to many, many people, and the one thing that struck me more than anything was how unhappy most were with their companies. Not their jobs, but their leadership and company as a whole. Granted, there were a few, maybe 20%, who loved both their current career and company. However, the vast majority were just biding time awaiting a new opportunity.

The most common frustrations revolved around 2 issues: Human Resources and Company Communications. Below is a sampling of the complaints.

• I have no trust in our HR leader. He/She doesn’t talk to anyone other that the executive team. When I ask questions or voice concerns, I am told not to worry, there are no problems. I never get a response to my actual question.
• Our company changes direction all the time. I never know what will happen tomorrow, and I don’t even know what is happening now.
• When our company makes a big change or announcement, we hear about it with the rest of the world, in a press release.
• My manager is completely uninvolved in what I do. He/She has no idea what my actual job entails and when I ask for a growth path, I am always told to wait.
• I would never talk to our HR leader about about anything important. HR is a joke at our company.

Yikes! The main theme= Communication. From HR, from managers, and from the executive team.

Mind you, most of the people I talked to are from small/mid-sized companies (50-3000). These are not big corporations mired down in decades of processes and many layers of management. There is really no reason for this level of frustration and discontent.

I am always appalled when there is a distrust of HR. As an HR professional myself, I have always made it a point (very important one) to talk to as many employees as possible, to let them know they can talk to me anytime, to not gossip about what I am told, and to work to alleviate frustrations while keeping in mind the overall needs/goals/directions of the company.

As for overall company communication, it is simple. If you don’t trust your employees, they will not trust you. Something as important as company direction should be conveyed prior to a press release. Talk to your employees! Help them feel connected, respected and valued.

Yesterday, the HR Daily Advisor wrote about a partnership between The Wall Street Journal and Winning Workplaces to select 15 top small workplaces.

The list of commonalities is worth noting:

Does your company have a mission statement? Values statement? Does everyone know the focus and goals? And, does everyone know how the work they do contributes to those goals?

Noting that none of the items on the lists requires a financial investment, only time and commitment, what can you do today to make move your company closer to being a “top small company”?