Admittedly, staying on HR’s good side is probably not at the top of your list of managerial priorities, but HR has the power to make your life easier…or very difficult.  Over at HR Capitalist, Kris Dunn has five great tips for how managers can make HR love them.

You clearly communicate expectations.  Your employees understand their objectives, and they also understand performance you consider to be not meeting, meeting and exceeding your expectations in each micro area.  Not a lot of surprises in your group when it comes to performance management.  Nice...

Talent is important to you, but you are a realist.  You want the best talent, but you seem to have a knack regarding what type of talent you can get for your open slot.  With that in mind, you'll hold out for a better candidate, but you know when to cut to the chase and close the deal. 

You have a sense of urgency in Employee Relations issues.  You know if you let employee relations issues fester in your group, it's only going to get worse.  With that in mind, you're proactive, and always looking to talk about where you need to go with a certain situation to ensure it doesn't blow up.

You have a situation-specific sense of humor.  Face it, we talk about a lot of sticky stuff, including your own plight, and you mix humor with seriousness like a champ.  Thanks for understanding we're going to work through it and laughing with me/at me.

You have the ability to anticipate outcomes and reactions to your actions.  You see the game.  If you are thinking about taking a specific action, you proactively talk about what that will mean to others, how others will perceive it, the political landscape, etc.

Kris claims that he didn’t put anything administrative in the list, like “you get the forms to me”, or “your reviews are always done on time”.   Those things are apparently easily fixable, whereas if a manager doesn’t do the things above, all the administrative excellence in the world won’t matter.  Thanks, Kris!