Is It Professional For HR To Offer Personal Advice To Employees?

(Published March 3, 2008)

 

Reprinted from PERSONNEL LEGAL ALERT, a widely read employment law newsletter that keeps HR executives up-to-date on the latest court cases, legal trends, government regulations, and federal legislation that affect the policies you write and procedures you administer.  Click here to view a sample issue, get more information, or sign up for a risk-free subscription.

 

It's human nature to want to offer words of advice to an employee who is suffering a personal hardship.  Think twice before you do.  It can be difficult for most employees to separate you from your role as an HR manager, so your "friendly advice" can be perceived as an employer directive.  This doesn't mean you can never give personal advice in your professional capacity.  It does, however, require listening to your head before speaking from your heart.

 

Before You Advise Employees

Whether it's a good idea for an HR manager to give an employee personal advice "depends on the situation and the culture of the company," said Patty Wingard, HR Director for Castle Worldwide, Inc. (Morrisville, NC).  "I have offered an employee personal advice.  The employee was the caregiver to her mother, who was diagnosed with cancer and was given a short time to live.  I had gone through the experience myself.  I had worked for the company for several years and was a person the employees felt they could trust." 

Take Wingard's lead to ensure that your guidance is received in the spirit in which it is given and your professional integrity remains intact.

• Do offer solicited advice only.  "The employee came to me and asked for the advice.  I did not seek her out," Wingard explained.  Unsolicited advice is usually unappreciated.  If employees want to confide in you, they will.  It's the employee's choice, though. 
• Do couch advice in terms of "here's what I did," and not "here's what you should do."  Said Wingard: "I gave [the employee] some ideas and suggestions on how to cope, some resources that I had used, and gave some insight into my own experience." 
• Don't broach extremely personal topics.  Offering advice for coping with a loved one's terminal illness is one thing.  Making judgments on his/her care is quite another.

The following supervisor's personal advice was less than professional or compassionate.  She confided to an employee who was pregnant with her third child that she had had an abortion and stressed that having one was nothing to feel bad about.  Every day thereafter, the supervisor told the employee she should have an abortion.  Due, in part, to these repeated suggestions, a court allowed the employee's pregnancy discrimination and retaliation case to proceed.  (Paz v. Wauconda Healthcare and Rehabilitation Centre, LLC, 7th Cir., No. 05-2837, 2006)

• Don't pressure employees to act on your advice.   The supervisor's repeated comments eventually wore on the employee, who claimed she was afraid the supervisor would fire her if she didn't have an abortion, and felt she had no choice if she wanted to keep her job.
• Don't punish an employee for not taking your advice.  After learning that the employee changed her mind about getting an abortion, the supervisor blamed the employee for anything that went wrong, prohibited all discussions about babies, constantly questioned her ability to do her job while pregnant, and ultimately fired her.
• Do clarify that the advice is coming from a friend, and not a company representative.  This is especially important when talking to a subordinate, who, like the employee in Paz, could fear negative job consequences for not heeding the advice.
• Never assume that the door is always open for you to talk to an employee about their personal issue, even if they approached you about it before.  This means you should not press for details, try to find out whether they've taken your advice, or offer additional advice.  At most, ask how they're doing; their response will dictate whether they want to continue the conversation and in what direction they want to go.

Related Topic(s): Discrimination/PDA - Pregnancy Discrimination Act

 

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