What’s the connection between HR, Heroes, and Zombies?
A friend was telling me a story about his son. Their school was hosting a fund-raiser – ‘come as your favorite super-hero’ day. He wanted to dress up as his hero – a zombie. The boy asked the teacher if it was ok Teacher said no. Thing is, all the other kids were dressed up as their heroes – like famous footballers – so not really sticking to the super-hero rule. Teacher insisted. So the kid opts out entirely and goes in school uniform.
I thought this was a really interesting metaphor for the role of an authority figure at work – like HR, often the keeper of policies and rules. It’s a good lesson for us to watch what’s actually happening versus policing what should be happening. And a great lesson not to penalise your ‘good’ (aka compliant) customers for asking, when they are the minority – the rest are avoiding asking the question as they already know they don’t like the answer and it won’t be enforced anyway.
That teacher lost a good customer that day – let’s apply this to HR and keep ours!
