Hey HR: Employees don’t trust you and rightfully so. Here’s what you can do about it.

Guest post by Cierra Gross, founder and CEO of Caged Bird HR

High-trust organizations have been proven to substantially impact employee engagement, productivity, stress, and wellness. Yet, the belief that HR is there to protect the company is growing in employee consciousness. Consequently, employees are becoming distrustful of not only HR, but also all the major processes and policies that HR owns — making it harder for HR to gain employee buy-in and execute processes. This does not just impact employee relations, but the whole employee life cycle. Employees are questioning if their offer was biased in some way, if their concern was taken seriously, or if they were laid off legally. The speed and accessibility of the internet have made employment laws understandable to the average employee. Similar to how there has been an increase in medical self-diagnosis without the opinion of an actual doctor due to Web-Md, so too has there been an increase in employees accusing employers of wrongdoing without the help of an attorney. So how did HR get here? It seems to have happened overnight, but it started with a strategic partnership in mind.

How did we get here?

About 20 or so years ago, HR decided it no longer wanted to be a reactionary function, only called to execute people-related decisions after the fact. Instead of executing decisions already made, HR wanted to have a seat at the table and bring the data and insights needed to enable the business to make better decisions. As a result, HR transformed itself into a strategic partner for the business. HR gained a seat at the table by providing data insights, best practices, and thought leadership to the C-suite. The business became better positioned to make sound people-related business decisions and plan for its people functions like it makes accounting decisions. This transformation, however, did not come without unintended consequences.

As HR’s main client shifted away from employees, the hyper-focus on serving the business came at the expense of transparency and meeting the needs of the employee population. Additionally, the speed of innovation coupled with a crippling pandemic has left many HR functions exhausted, overworked, and simply…