International HR Services team contributes to CRF’s Strong Foundations: Evidence-Based HR report

As this timely report shows, evidence-based practice is increasingly important for HR. In today’s dynamic business landscape, it can help in:

• Reducing bias and discrimination in decision-making, fostering a culture of fairness and respect.
• Promoting respect for HR and other decision-makers.
• Ensuring that strategies around recruitment, performance, promotion, and compensation are driven by merit and are aligned with an organisation’s values and objectives.
• Identifying gaps in skills and development, with a view to implementing more targeted policies and training.
• Driving compliance with fast-changing rules and regulations.

Many of these areas are covered in the Bird & Bird International HR Services team’s new initiative Managing compliance: The People Risk Agenda. So far, this has included a guide to criminal liability arising from workplace obligations, a webinar on managing sexual harassment risks and a guide to compliance triggers linked to workforce numbers – all taking a global approach.

At our heart, employment lawyers are in the business of reducing and responding to legal risks in organisations, and the associated costs and liabilities. To deliver the practical and targeted advice that our clients demand, we need to call on multiple sources of evidence – from constantly evolving employment laws and regulations to court and tribunal decisions, to legal commentary, to our past experiences in advising other companies on similar issues.

Indeed, while HR is deeply embedded in a single organisation, we can leverage evidence from multiple businesses across sectors, from tech start-ups to multinationals, of course respecting the important duties of confidentiality that we owe to our clients. We also observe causal connections between decisions and results, because we are often involved in legal cases that we have advised on from the outset.

In a sense, this is nothing new. However, HR are increasingly proactively asking us for insights around what other companies are doing, to inform their own approach. This shows that HR are increasingly viewed as critical decision-makers, who are expected to justify their strategy, as well as defending their decisions when legal disputes arise – as they do in all businesses.

Our insights can only assist up to a point. The evidence we use is generally fact-specific, and qualitative rather than quantitative. We don’t have visibility of the contextual factors that can be instrumental in determining whether a course of action will be successful, for example what stakeholders in the organisation are saying or thinking.

Therefore, it is crucial for us to work as partners with our clients, sharing the evidence that both sides can provide and working together to decide what actions to take. We also recommend taking time for a ‘wash-up’ at the end of a case or project to evaluate what went well and areas that could be improved, with a view to using the project as evidence for the future.

By working together, we believe the benefits of taking an evidence-based approach can help drive a culture of high performance, promoting fairness and transparency, and strengthening legal compliance.