Dictatorship - Human Resources Manager OrderWise Employee Review

A response from the OrderWise Founder and CEO David Hallam: I think on this occasion it would be relevant for me, as the CEO and hiring manager, to reply to these comments. It’s not something I relish to do in the public eye but I feel the comments that have been made deserve a direct and honest reply. This person was employed by the Company for about four months and sadly they consistently struggled. This role was a big step up for this person and, clearly, a far too bigger step for them to cope with, despite high levels of support. I do have to accept responsibility for appointing this person into a role that simply was not right for them. I’m a reasonable judge of character and have employed many people who have gone on to have remarkable careers with us but, whilst I may have people’s best interests at heart and want the best for everyone, sometimes I get this wrong. I genuinely believed at the time of their appointment that their newly gained theoretical qualifications in HR would work well combined with the Company’s practical HR experience. I do feel that we went above and beyond to support this person in their role and to try and make it a success. On top of daily catch ups we had regular weekly meetings to ensure a dedicated period of time was always available to discuss any issues every week, if it couldn’t be dealt with through our daily communications. Sadly I see this has been seen as overbearing micro management, however this was never fed back to me at the time when I was simply trying to support this person to grow into their role with us. Unfortunately this person joined an office based role without fully considering all aspects of their family life, which became challenging for them when they realised they couldn’t financially manage their child care. We tried to do our best for the individual, by enabling them to work almost permanently from home, which in hindsight was not the right approach for someone who lacked significant practical experience. This is not the normal approach we would take for new starters as they start their journey with us – however I wanted to be supportive and flexible. I believe this situation accentuated issues in the individual’s ability to perform their role, as they were unable to interact with and learn from peers on a structured, daily basis and struggled to manage their own workload as a result of increasingly erratic working hours, at their own request. Beyond this it also became quite evident that this person struggled to manage priorities, despite being given direction on a weekly basis. As a fast growing company, we needed some real focus on the core foundations that I’d have expected a HR manager to bring to our organisation – however there was a consistent focus on areas that, whilst I accept would have been a focus in the future, in the short to medium delivered no value to the business or the people that work here and who needed support. Overall I felt that this person struggled with workload due to their own lack of prioritisation as well as not being prepared for the challenges of balancing their professional and personal life, which ultimately we all need to be able to do. As a result of concerns over performance and general understanding of our people, it is correct that I would not allow them to communicate directly with all colleagues by email. This was simply because sending an email to over 200 colleagues requires great care and attention and ultimately a better understanding of our organisation, which at the time I felt was lacking. No business owner or manager wants to see people leave a role in their probation period – particularly during a time where recruitment is fiercely competitive. Sadly this person made two key errors that would ordinarily have required a disciplinary process to be followed. When I outlined these issues to this person there was a lack of ownership over these errors and no desire to learn, grow and improve from this situation. What I do expect from my management team is that mistakes are acknowledged, an apology be made where necessary, and our processes improved to ensure these mistakes don’t happen again. In the absence of this, I accepted this person’s resignation to avoid a disciplinary process starting and to give them the best possible chance of securing a new role in the future. In regards to this person’s comment about internal promotions – we have so many great success stories of how people have been supported to develop and achieve promotion and career progression at OrderWise – most of our management team are here as a result of this approach, rather than focusing on external hires. The challenge for me as a business owner and manager is that sadly sometimes just because a person is amazing at their current position or has been in that position the longest, it does not always make that person suitable for the next position above them. I can guarantee that if the right role is available for the right person I would move heaven and earth to get them into that position. As a company we will move on and find someone more suited for this role and I personally will learn from this experience, as we all need to do when things don’t work out as you’d have hoped. I wish this person well in their future career and whilst I have obviously had to reply to give a balanced view on this review and highlight why I believe things did not work out, I would like to say that this person was very friendly, smart and always tried to help others – which I thought were their key strengths.