Surely not!? Surely it’s the Marketing department (I am a marketer after all)? Or maybe Sales, maybe Engineering, maybe Customer Support. But no, I want to argue that getting HR right is one of the step changes you can make to a business, with far broader impact than any of the areas listed above.

There are a lot of well known beliefs, often cliches about the people in your business. A famous quote from Richard Branson is that “People are our greatest asset” (because if you look after them, they will look after your customers). But that isn’t what this piece is about. We all know that looking after employees is vital, and that your HR department is key to that. But I wanted to talk about something more – specifically, the implementation of good management practice and discipline, and how that underlies the success or otherwise of your company.

We’re very lucky at Redgate. We have, by far, the best HR department (or “People Team” as we know them) that I’ve ever worked with. But this isn’t because they’re just great people (they are) – it’s because of the principles and management practices that they encourage, enforce and monitor in the company. I’ve listed these below. But the reason it’s so important to have a great HR department, is to make sure the company understands and sticks to these principles, even if it causes difficulty in the short term – to make sure the reality matches the theory. A lot of these principles have come from that group, but they also work closely with us to make sure we stick to them.

NB: My experience of the last few years has been that every time you “fudge” these principles (for example, ignoring them to keep a talented individual happy) it leads to disruption, mis-alignment and bigger problems down the road.

Here are some of the principles we try and stick to at Redgate, where our People Team have come up with these, then been instrumental in making sure they happen, regardless of department. A lot might seem obvious, but Redgate is the first place I’ve worked where these are actually implemented!:

• Provide proper feedback. Everyone, in every role, gets a quarterly meeting where feedback is gathered from colleagues and peers. This is then discussed with the individual concerned, written up and uploaded to record. More than this, we don’t shy away from difficult feedback – better to mention issues early and often than wait until they’ve grown in to a “big deal”. It’s tempting when busy, to ignore this process, particularly where “You don’t think there’s anything that needs discussing – that person is great!”. But our People Team have made sure we stick to this principle, and it has pre-empted so many problems down the road, I’m thankful for this “enforcement”!
• Simple management structures. There are different opinions and ideas here. But after many years we’ve come to the conclusion that “Simple is best” (“Ingeniously Simplicity” is part of the DNA of Redgate). Specifically:

1. A manager manages approximately 4-8 people. You can strain this in the short-term (“I’m just managing 10 people for 3 months, to help a colleague out”), but long-term, if someone is a manager this is the correct number of people. And sometimes, for new managers, you might let them manage 2-3 people for a period, but that’s with a view towards growth.
2. No dotted lines. No double managers. No “I’m half managing this person, also responsible for a bit of this other function, and still looking after bits of my old job. That’s okay isn’t it!?”. Make the hard calls on who’s doing what. Without this, you’ll never get true accountability, period.
3. A manager is accountable for the people, function and performance that they manage. If you’re managing, for example, the digital marketing team, then you as the manager do far more than just handle the teams’ holiday requests – you understand digital marketing better than anyone else in the business (including your manager), you set the objectives for the team and are accountable for making them a great team, doing the best work they could be doing.
4. A function is split in to simple, logical sub-units that everyone else can understand. For example, your Sales function might be split first by geography, then in to “Strategic Accounts”, “Mid-market”, “Inside Sales”, “Renewals”, then other functions like Sales Enablement, Sales Ops and so on. The details don’t matter, what matters is that people know that “The Mid-market team is responsible for revenue from that tier, if I’ve got a question I know who to ask, and if I want to hold someone accountable, I know the manager to talk to”. Again, Keep It Simple.

• Professional Managers. You don’t get to be a manager at Redgate until you’ve been through a rigorous “Transition to Management” process, run by the People Team. So many problems occur when you “Give someone a chance at management” but either a) that person isn’t ready or b) doesn’t really want to do that role! The real problem with this is that it’s not just the new manager that struggles. It’s his/her team that really suffer, often in silence. So it’s vital that someone is ready for management (for everyone’s sake), and also really wants to do it – are they really happy giving difficult performance feedback as part of their job? If not, don’t take the role! As a manager of mine said many years ago:

Everyone thinks they can do their manager’s job. The question is whether they want to

• Do Performance Management. This is the most difficult area to write about; and I wouldn’t want to go in to details. But perhaps the most important part of the structure that the People Team provide us (and support us with) is performance management. Everyone has a Job Description and this is what people should be doing day-to-day in their roles. It seems obvious, but losing focus on these things is where many problems arise. And handling those mis-alignments early and often is the key to good performance management. If someone’s JD states that they should be “Creating a strong social media strategy, executing that strategy, and collaborating well with the rest of the business on social media plans” – then this is what they should be doing! If not, then the sooner you have a quick word (“I’m fine with you spending time on project X, but I still expect you to do these things in your JD”), the better. Of course there’s an art in being flexible, and giving people opportunities to grow – which we strongly encourage. But helping people grow in the role they’re doing is a key part of your job as a good manager. And of course, not being afraid to tackle difficult issues when they do arise.
• Build a great team. If you are lucky enough to be managing a team, it’s your responsibility to make that group of individuals a team. I won’t wax lyrical here about what makes a great team – only perhaps that you know when you’re in one. But the job of helping those people work together, providing vision and common purpose, multiplying their efforts ten-fold to make them more effective – that, at its core, is a central part of your role. NB: It’s not the team’s job to make sure they work well together – it’s yours! Again, our People Team make sure that happens.

These principles of management are to me, the under-pinning of any department – sales, marketing, engineering, finance, ops, research, IT, customer success, whatever you have at your org. And as I say, though they seem so obvious, they are rarely implemented.

But why? Why do they matter so much? If you work in marketing, you should be spending the vast majority of your time thinking about great marketing. How can we reach more people? What do our customers really value? What market should we actually be working in? Is our brand still right? How can we run the best conference in the world? How can we help land that six-figure deal? And so on. My experience is that when you short-cut the management principles above, you find your time taken up with work which isn’t great marketing. Sitting in rooms figuring out “Who owns what?”, “Why these two people have clashing objectives”, “Why this person doesn’t know what he’s doing”, “Who’s really running that team, Jo or Colin?”, “Why team X just can’t seem to work together”. Firefighting people issues that just shouldn’t come up in the first place. Good management practice is how you pre-empt this stuff, so that you can spend your time on the great positive work you could be doing.

To make sure these things are implemented you need an amazing HR department to frame the work, develop a programme and support it going forward. Of course, I’ve missed off 100 other things a strong HR team manages, and I apologize for that. But for me, these management principles are one of the key “value-adds” this group can provide to make your company and teams really thrive.