Why leaders need HR training, no matter the size of the business

HR serves as the middle ground between an organisation and its people. Leaders could benefit by adopting the skills needed to operate this function effectively. Whether in a small, family-owned business or a large multinational, this remains consistent.

HR training can serve as a lifeline for upholding the people-mindedness needed to be an effective leader. According to “HR Lady” Wendy Sellers, who recently appeared on The HR Leader podcast, it’s not just encouraged, but crucial.

“[Leaders] need to take HR training. They really do. So, being a manager, even if you are in a big company and you have an HR department, you still have that HR hat on. I don’t care where you’re located. You’re in charge of filling roles. Even if HR recruiting teams are helping you, you’re probably the decision maker at the end,” Sellers said.

Employment law is an often confusing and ever-changing part of business that requires constant attention. If leaders aren’t aware of their responsibilities legally, consequences can be severe. Ongoing training is crucial to avoid any pitfalls.

“[Leaders are] managing humans who are managing projects and deadlines and making things and fixing things. And so, they have to know about all of the company policies and then the laws of where they’re located as well. When we hear things on the news of like, a company has gotten sued, regardless of what country it’s in, it’s often because of a management decision that the higher-ups didn’t know about, but the manager didn’t know that these were laws or lines that weren’t supposed to be crossed,” Sellers said.

While providing legal training is important, it also needs to be effective. Rather than providing a boring course where the information goes in one ear and out the other, learning and development needs to be structured and engaging to provide the most benefits.

Sellers said: “Please don’t make your HR training boring. The managers do not need to know like the 700 pages of XYZ law regarding overtime or whatever it is. They just need to know a high-level summary of the law, here’s how we’re going to do it in our company, and here’s a resource for where you could click on later when you have to address this.”

“All too often, we try to train managers on all these legal things, and they’re boring. They’re complicated, they’re overwhelming. I was just looking at a new law that came out in the United States this week, and I went to a lawyer’s website that summarised it, and I went to the official document and it was almost 2,000 pages long. I was like, ‘Oh my goodness, please, nobody give this to anybody to read.’”

“We don’t have to be experts on every single law or every single skill. Hence the name human resources, we’re a resource to our humans, and we need to 100 per cent be a resource to our managers so that they know, you could come to me with any problem and I’m going to help you fix it. But the keyword there is I’m going to help you fix it. I’m not going to fix it for you.”

Further to providing legal training, establishing a committee to help make decisions and drive training initiatives can be helpful.

“Be part of the team. I personally love committees for a lot of things. I like having committees to say, hey, we have a new role. Let’s get some people from our company together so that I, the manager, am not the only one making the decision. So, it might be somebody from HR, it might be somebody from another department that works closely with this role that needs to be filled. Let’s have a team effort,” Sellers said.

“You know what else that does that, gets these other people that might be a little disengaged? It gets them re-engaged to say, ‘You know what, I had one foot out the door, but they just asked for my advice to make some changes with the organisations moving forward, and I appreciate that. So now my foot’s back in the door. I’m going to help them fill this position,’ and hopefully, you’ve saved some retention there.”

The transcript of this podcast episode was slightly edited for publishing purposes. To listen to the full conversation with Wendy Sellers, click below: