It doesn’t matter what role you hold in a company; you know when there isn’t synergy in the workplace, and you especially feel it when there isn’t trust in leadership or HR. Many employees see HR and leadership as the same but, often, leadership sees HR as more adversarial than as a partner. In low-trust environments, managers may feel that HR will only slow down or inhibit them from making people decisions rather than provide guidance and mitigate risk for them.

When leaders perceive HR as being a roadblock, they will often share their frustrations with their team or place blame on HR for making difficult decisions even when it is in the business’s best interest. This type of relationship between leadership and HR quickly undermines any desire for a unified front when changes or initiatives are implemented, leaving employees to question where they can go when they have legitimate concerns.

Low-trust environments are synonymous with low engagement and can often be directly attributed to the actions of leadership and HR. These types of environments not only hurt morale but also impact the bottom line through turnover and loss of productivity. When employees do not trust their leaders, they don’t trust the organization, which opens the company up to more legal risks and, for non-union workplaces, the potential for a union to gain momentum.

As an employee, trust is an essential part of the relationship with their manager. Without it, their concerns may go unreported, their work may suffer as a result, and good employees may leave.  If leadership does not partner with HR, bad managers will only continue to wreak havoc, especially if they have strong relationships with their supervisors who may be reluctant to take action.

It doesn’t take much to see how a hostile relationship between the leadership team and HR negatively impacts the work environment, but what effect does a strong relationship have on the workplace?

First, the obvious:

• A streamlined recruitment process. When Talent Acquisition is in sync with hiring managers, it does more than just attract talent; it helps to provide a seamless hiring process.
• Targeted and proactive retention efforts. HR can collaborate with leaders to pinpoint areas of the company vulnerable to flight risks, as well as develop strategies in response to turnover.
• Employee engagement initiatives. When there is trust between HR and leadership, listening is valued. Through surveys and other means of gaining feedback, HR can help identify key focus areas and build action plans to address them.

Now for the more subtle ways a strong relationship between HR and leadership can impact an organization.

Dynamic Leadership Development

It’s one thing to offer a few courses on being a leader through your learning management systems, but it’s a whole other thing to enable an HR team to assess leaders’ strengths and weaknesses to customize their development curriculum. While a blanket approach to a leadership development strategy is better than nothing, it allows bad leaders to check a box without addressing the root issues.

Senior leaders rely on HR to provide feedback on their direct reports, especially for new managers. HR plays a pivotal role in manager onboarding and supporting new managers in managing people – this can include learning new systems and processes like payroll, performance management, policies, and conflict resolution.

This same role includes HR’s insight on possible issues bubbling beneath the surface with leaders and their teams. Employees having issues with their manager are not always comfortable escalating up the chain of command and prefer to go to a neutral party, like HR, with their grievances. HR becomes privy to concerns and potential trends with leaders and can provide this input to help leaders grow and develop.

Strategic Calibration

HR can provide key metrics and insights into the capabilities of the workforce that are imperative to building an effective people strategy. When there is a disconnect between HR and leadership, the people strategy and business objectives may not be aligned. That misalignment is not just known by HR and leadership, it’s felt by the workforce and the culture is impacted as a result.

In medium to large-size organizations, it becomes increasingly difficult for senior leadership to have a pulse on the workforce outside of employee feedback surveys, which are typically based on a point in time. The strategic partnership with HR becomes an essential part of closing the feedback loop.

Leadership will lean on HR to guide budgetary decisions related to headcount in spaces where the business wants to grow and where organizational structure can be made more efficient. HR’s input on these decisions is an often-overlooked function of the department but important, nonetheless, especially if the result could be a reduction in force.

Robust Support System

In HR, it can often feel like you’re pitted against two distinct groups: employees and leadership. When there is trust in the relationship between HR and leadership, a robust support system can exist to serve all work groups in the organization. A support system that includes advocating for the employee, leadership, and the organization.

Relationships pose a unique challenge in the business world. Without trust, leadership may be weary of listening to HR when tough decisions arise and, instead, choose to heed a less objective party’s input. This is never more evident than when a bad leader becomes seemingly immune to corrective action regardless of their behavior and actions, which is one of the quickest ways to destroy trust and create risk.

HR will, in many cases, know the real impact of decisions, whether positive or negative, because of their relationship with employees; whereas senior leadership may not understand the downstream effects until it is too late.

HR’s relationship with people managers is a critical component of the overall success of the manager role. HR can closely counsel, provide advice, and guide through complex matters the people manager may be faced with. When this relationship is strong, it is often HR that helps people managers grow and develop their careers in leadership.

Building a strong relationship

There are many reasons why an organization’s culture benefits from a strong relationship between HR and leadership, but for any relationship to grow, it must be watered. Both parties need to be open to having transparent communication – imagine the risk that could be presented if HR is the last to know about an employment decision being made or in some instances after the fact.

HR should focus on proactive support for leadership. At all levels, leaders are inundated with the operational and people management aspects of their roles, so it’s important for HR to regularly check-in. To be a strategic partner, HR also needs to understand the business functions of the organization. Trust becomes much more achievable in this relationship when HR can speak the language and understands the pain points leaders experience at a deeper level.

Leadership must be receptive to feedback. A strong leader is good at actively listening and considering suggestions from HR because they understand that it can be used as a tool for constant improvement.