Thinking in systems and processes

When working in Human Resources or as a people manager, we always have the duty to find solutions for human beings and achieve the best result possible. As you all know, each individual is different and has diverging needs and expectations.

Generally speaking, the smaller an organization, the more individual agreements you will find. Each employment contract might look different and there are often only two persons (employer and employee) agreeing on what seems right to them.

In contrast to my description above, the larger an organization, the more rules and standards are needed to function well and to reduce chaos (there is some sort of chaos and complexity anyhow).

When a company starts small — which is normally the case — you focus on setting up the basics and on what matters most during a typical start-up phase. The more your company grows or matures, the more you will experience complexity and diverse thinking. And it might be difficult to recognize when a certain “line of complexity” is crossed and that the moment has arrived to find different kinds of solutions.

At some point in time, offering individual solutions to employees might no longer be the best choice.

Why is that?

First of all, you will need to be able to handle the complexity. This means that if there is a high degree of individualism, you will have a hard time overseeing what has been agreed with whom, when and why.

Secondly, you or your employees will start comparing. Comparing their individual cases, talking with each other or noting differences between departments. If well explained, your workforce might accept it, but in general this can lead to questions, frustration, and unfortunately also demotivation. Especially if someone believes strongly in fairness, he or she will not approve of individual solutions. In German, we have the word “Nasenfaktor” which is often used in situations where decisions seem to be made according to an individual’s subjective preference.

“Nasenfaktor” also indicates that there is a lack of rules and standards (or an objection to follow them). Which brings me to the core of this post.

No matter how far your company is “behind”, meaning that processes and rules should have been defined or updated a long time ago, or if you are currently developing from small to bigger: Take the courage to define!

Start small and pick one topic which is either important to you or where you feel the workforce has a big pain point. Define and communicate what should be followed by everyone.

Allow for deviations, if your environment is not used to working with precise rules and regulations, but as you mature, aim for consistency and make sure that everyone follows the same standards.

At the same time, make sure that you do not overload the organization with policies, rules, and regulations. The downside is that you could lose yourself in administration and become slow in decisions. Only define processes where there is a need and dare to eliminate or exchange unnecessary or outdated definitions!

Last but not least, always allow for exceptions. Not every other day, since this would mean that you do not have a fitting process (or that you don’t like it). But as I said in the beginning, every individual has their own needs, and our systems need to at least consider and sometimes even allow for special needs. Otherwise we might be losing humanity.