systematicHR

When you’re angry, it’s still better to be nice.

Sometimes, I see people who are not angry over anything, yet they are still not nice.  Here’s my message: some of the people we interact with in HR can have huge impacts on our workforce.  My main example is interactions with consultants and vendors.  I’ve seen way too many organizations not only treating their vendors like non-partners, but treated with great disrespect and insolence with little or no reason.  Vendors have the ability to be either great partners, or are also in the position to greatly disrupt your organization.  While I’ve never seen the latter, certainly an unhappy vendor is not going to go the extra distance, above and beyond the call of duty, to create perfection – and perhaps they should not.

Let’s talk about engagement, but not with your employees, but with your vendors instead.  If we define engagement as the willingness to invest discretionary effort, this means they are working to improve quality of deliverable or product when they are not contracted to do so.  This is the type of service you want from your vendors, and the type of service you are likely to get only when you have a good and positive relationship with them.  It’s the type of relationship that comes not from a vendor relationship, but from a partnership where each organization not only profits, but genuinely wants to get the best result for the other.

Sometimes things go wrong.  When they do, an engaged vendor is going to act quickly and often before you even know something has gone wrong.  Your concern as a customer is rightly so.  Your reaction to issues can be controlled, or highly negative.  Whatever your perspective, I’ve seen many such transactions, and the highly negative reactions never get you as much as controlled and thoughtful exchanges that appreciate that things go wrong (on both sides), and ask for partnership in the appropriate solution.