HR Judgment Lab
The first three lessons gave you a way to think about HR.
You looked at why organisations need HR, how the profession evolved, and how HR works with managers and the business. Now it is time to put those ideas together.
This exercise is deliberately different from a quiz. There is no single sentence you need to remember and no definition you need to reproduce. The situations below are the kind of situations an HR professional may encounter at work.
Your job is to diagnose before prescribing.
For each situation, resist the temptation to jump straight to an HR solution. Start by understanding what is happening, what you know, what you do not know, and what the business and people implications might be.
How to approach the exercise
For every case, work through these questions:
1. What is the request?
What is the manager, employee or business leader actually asking HR to do?
2. What is the underlying problem?
Is the request itself the problem, or could something else be causing it?
3. What facts would you want to establish?
Identify the information you would need before advising anyone.
4. Who is affected?
Think beyond the person who raised the issue. Consider the manager, employee, team, business and wider organisation.
5. What HR responsibility is involved?
Think about whether the situation primarily involves building capability, enabling performance, sustaining the organisation, or a combination of these.
6. What would you do next?
Do not try to solve everything immediately. Identify the most sensible next step.
7. What would good HR judgment look like?
Think about fairness, consistency, business needs, employee impact, evidence and potential consequences.
Case 1: "We need to hire 30 people"
You are an HR professional supporting a technology business.
The engineering leader comes to you and says:
"We need 30 engineers immediately. Please open the requisitions."
The company has recently announced that it wants to launch a major new product within six months.
The leader is convinced that hiring is the only way to meet the deadline.
Your task
Before opening 30 requisitions, write down:
- What would you want to understand about the business requirement?
- What information would you ask the engineering leader for?
- What alternatives to external hiring might you explore?
- What would make you agree that 30 external hires are actually required?
Then write a short response you would give the engineering leader.
Do not focus on making the response sound impressive. Focus on making it useful.
Case 2: "This employee is a problem"
A manager approaches HR about an employee who has been with the company for two years.
The manager says:
"She has become very difficult. The team doesn't want to work with her anymore. I want to start formal performance action."
The manager is clearly frustrated and wants HR to begin the process immediately.
You have not spoken to the employee yet.
Your task
Identify:
- What do you know?
- What are you assuming?
- What important facts are missing?
- What questions would you ask the manager?
- What would you want to understand from the employee?
- What possible explanations could exist for the situation?
Then describe your next step.
Your objective is not to decide whether the manager or employee is right.
Your objective is to determine what you need to know before advising on the appropriate action.
Case 3: Attrition has increased
Your organisation normally has annual employee attrition of around 12%.
This year, the number has increased to 18%.
The CEO asks HR:
"What are you going to do about retention?"
Someone on the HR team immediately suggests launching a retention bonus for employees.
Your task
Before recommending an intervention, think through the problem.
Write down the questions you would ask about:
- Who is leaving?
- Where are they leaving from?
- When are they leaving?
- Which roles are affected?
- Which employees are most critical to the business?
- What reasons are employees giving for leaving?
- What other evidence would you want?
Then identify three possible causes of the increase in attrition.
For each possible cause, suggest one piece of evidence that could help confirm or challenge your hypothesis.
Finally, explain why a retention bonus might or might not address the underlying problem.
Case 4: A manager wants an exception
A high-performing employee asks to work remotely three additional days every week.
The manager tells HR:
"She's one of my best people, so I'm happy to approve it. Just make an exception."
The organisation has an established policy around hybrid working.
Another employee in the same team requested a similar arrangement six months earlier and was not given it.
Your task
Think through the situation from the perspectives of:
The employee
Why might the request be reasonable?
The manager
Why might the manager want to approve it?
The organisation
What consistency, operational or people implications might exist?
HR
What would HR need to understand before advising the manager?
Then answer this question:
Does treating two employees differently automatically mean the organisation is being unfair? Why or why not?
Finally, describe what you would want the manager to consider before making the decision.
Case 5: A new strategy needs new capabilities
Your organisation has decided to move from traditional software products toward AI-enabled products.
The leadership team has asked HR to "build the AI workforce."
Different leaders have different opinions about what this means.
The CTO wants to hire machine-learning engineers.
The product leader wants product managers who understand AI.
The customer-support leader wants employees who can work effectively with AI tools.
The learning team wants to launch an AI training programme for everyone.
Your task
The request sounds like a hiring problem, but is it?
Create a simple diagnosis.
Start with:
Business strategy
What is the organisation trying to achieve?
Then identify:
Required capabilities
What capabilities might the organisation need?
Then consider:
Current workforce
What would you want to know about the capabilities that already exist?
Finally, think about the possible workforce responses:
- Hiring
- Internal development
- Internal mobility
- Organisation design
- Technology
- External partnerships
You do not need to choose one.
Instead, explain why a combination of these responses might be more appropriate than simply hiring more people.
Case 6: The manager wants HR to have the conversation
A manager tells you that an employee has repeatedly missed important deadlines.
The manager says:
"Can you speak to him? I'm not comfortable having this conversation."
The employee has not previously received any formal feedback about the missed deadlines.
Your task
Consider what could happen if HR simply takes over the conversation.
Then consider what could happen if HR refuses to help.
What would you do instead?
Write the conversation you would have with the manager before the manager speaks to the employee.
Your response should demonstrate the principle:
HR should support managers without taking away their responsibility to manage.
Case 7: Build, Enable or Sustain?
For each situation below, identify whether the primary HR responsibility is Build, Enable or Sustain.
Remember that more than one responsibility can sometimes be relevant. Choose the one that best represents the immediate issue.
Situation A
A business is entering a new market and does not currently have enough employees with the required language and market expertise.
Your answer: __________
Situation B
A team has talented employees, but managers are giving unclear priorities and inconsistent feedback.
Your answer: __________
Situation C
A company has identified several employees whose departure would create a significant capability gap and wants to strengthen succession plans.
Your answer: __________
Situation D
A rapidly growing company needs to determine whether its current organisational structure can support its next stage of growth.
Your answer: __________
Situation E
New employees are joining quickly, but many are leaving within their first six months.
Your answer: __________
After completing the exercise, choose one situation and explain why you classified it that way.
Your HR diagnosis framework
Now create your own one-page HR diagnosis framework.
You should be able to use it when a manager brings you almost any people-related problem.
Complete the following:
The request
What is the person asking HR to do?
The context
What is happening in the business or team?
The facts
What do we know?
The assumptions
What are we currently assuming that still needs to be tested?
The diagnosis
What could actually be causing the problem?
The people impact
Who could be affected by the decision?
The business impact
What could this mean for performance, capability, cost, productivity or risk?
The options
What possible responses could address the underlying problem?
The decision
What action appears appropriate based on the available evidence?
The outcome
How will we know whether the action worked?
Practitioner reflection
Take a few minutes before moving to the quiz and answer these questions in your own words.
1. What did you previously think HR's job was?
2. What has changed in your understanding of HR after these three lessons?
3. When a manager brings HR a problem, what is the biggest mistake an inexperienced HR professional can make?
4. Why is understanding the business important even if you work in an HR specialist role?
5. What does "diagnose before you prescribe" mean in practical HR work?
Do not worry about writing textbook answers.
The purpose of this reflection is to see whether your way of thinking about HR has changed.
What good HR judgment looks like
There is no perfect answer to every case in this exercise.
That is intentional.
Real HR work rarely arrives as a neatly defined problem with a single correct answer. A manager may present one version of events. An employee may present another. The data may tell you something different again.
Good HR judgment begins by resisting the pressure to decide too quickly.
It means asking better questions, establishing the facts, understanding the business context and considering the people implications before recommending action.
It also means recognising that different situations require different roles from HR.
Sometimes HR needs to enable.
Sometimes it needs to advise.
Sometimes it needs to challenge.
Sometimes it needs to govern.
And sometimes the most valuable thing HR can do is slow a decision down long enough for everyone to understand what they are actually deciding.
If you can develop that habit early in your career, you will have learned something much more valuable than another HR definition.
You will have started learning how to think like an HR professional.