Page 47 - An Indispensible Resource for Being a Credible Activist

If you have no idea what will work, I recommend you stick to one of the perspectives
(or both) shown in the HR Tool “Recommended Approaches to Influence Leadership on HR
Issues,” on pages 40–41.
One way to prepare for such a meeting is to check in with yourself personally and profes-
sionally. Use the list shown in the “Checklist of Questions Credible Activists Ask Themselves,”
on pages 41–42, in the HR Tools section to confirm your readiness.

WHAT PRO-COMPLIANCE, PRO-HR LEADERSHIP
CAN LOOK LIKE

Pro-compliance is pro-HR. Leaders who understand this carefully and consciously set a tone
for the companies they lead. They might send a letter like the one in the HR Tool “Sample
Letter from Company Leadership Introducing New HR Leader,” on pages 44–45, to introduce
a new HR director or VP to the whole staff and to set a tone for a culture change in a pos-
itive new direction. Even if you are not new in your HR position, you can meet with your
leadership and ask that they review this book with you, support you in your efforts to pos-
itively transform your corporate culture, implement the linchpins of competitive corporate
governance, and improve legal and ethical compliance. Let your leadership know that you
cannot do this without their full support.
The template in the HR Tool “Sample Teambuilding Exercise,” on pages 42–43, can be
combined with any number of items to create a team-building exercise among any small
group of employees—5 to 15 employees in a group works well. You can use this before going
over new policies, processes, procedures, roles, job descriptions, codes of conduct, or
employee handbook, or to introduce key staff.
The group dynamics model explains to the group what often happens in work groups
at different stages, and this can help people be more patient with each other as they go
through the earlier stages. If we anticipate the bumps, we can handle them better. If we are
instructed specifically in how to respond to them, the bumps will hardly be noticed. If we
begin by labeling the bumps as necessary to a growth process for a developing company, we
can accept them more readily and understand that they are part of a group process. We will
then be less likely to fall into the unfortunate trap of attempting to place blame on one or a
few individuals when really the issue is how the entire group works together as a whole.
Scapegoating one or a few people when a group is growing and developing is hardly ever
an effective solution for what is really going on, and the scapegoats are rarely the actual
cause for what is happening.
An example of leaders who don’t support compliance or HR will often completely mis-
understand not only HR’s crucial role in the company but also their own individual and pro-
fessional compliance responsibilities. These are the leaders who tend to consider legal and
ethical compliance to be optional, to be something that is not taken seriously, and to erro-
neously consider any HR professional who advocates for legal and ethical compliance to be
“radical,” “inappropriate,” or “not on the side of the company,” even though these are not
accurate characterizations at all. Persons who think in this way need to be reminded that
when they chose to do business in the United States, they agreed to abide by all employ-

30 The H R Toolkit