Whatever you do, don’t have nightmares!

Did this sentence give you nightmares after watching Crimewatch?!  It sometimes made me sleep with one eye open! 

Fear is a very powerful thing and is often the reason why we avoid action:

“What if I get it wrong?”

“What if I make it worse? Maybe if I ignore it, the issue will just go away.”

It is also drives us to take action:

“I am vulnerable to employees so need to pay this nice sales person thousands of pounds to protect me from them”

“I’m just going to bring them in and sack them without any procedure because I am worried that doing things properly takes too long, will be uncomfortable and harmful to my company.”

I am a business owner and people manager and I get it.  I’ve had employees who have given me sleepless nights too – and I knew exactly what advice I would have given to a client in my situation!  It’s not easy though, is it?  You’re playing with peoples’ lives – you don’t want to make them demoralised, unwell or unemployed by raising issues with them but, honestly, you will save yourself so much time, effort and energy by tackling issues when they arise rather than letting them fester because you are fearful.  It’s never as bad as you imagined it would be if you know what you’re doing.

If you need to share details of an HR issue that is troubling you and get some advice on how to deal with it, please get in touch.  A problem shared is a problem halved (apparently).