‘Do no harm’: a message for HR?

Blog posts

10 Nov 2025

Jonny Gifford, Principal Research Fellow

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The HR profession is a management function with a dual focus. On the one hand, the smooth and effective running of organisations, supporting performance and managing risk in employment. On the other hand, the good of employees, protecting the quality of jobs and working lives. But it doesn't always feel like this. As many of us will be able to testify, HR comes in for a lot of flak. It’s accused of processes that complicate things and get in the way of performance, that create additional stress or lead to unnecessary dismissals.

Employee investigations or disciplinaries are one of – if not the – worst area for this. They are necessary for risk management, for holding poor behaviour to account and ultimately protecting people from it. But at the same time, they regularly have damaging fallout – not just for those under investigation but also for managers leading the process and the complainants. Disciplinaries can feel like a sledgehammer to crack a nut, with huge unintended consequences.

One of the major problems is when disciplinary processes are set up primarily to reduce risk by ensuring managers follow set practices to the letter. Or when managers themselves insist on a heavily process-based approach because they don’t trust their own ability or don’t trust their senior leaders to support them. Policies easily become rigid and cumbersome, making it hard (if not impossible) to both nip things in the bud and deal with things humanely. As such, a key step is to not shy away from and, indeed, actively use informal conversations. This can make the difference in ensuring an effective process that’s fair when not just getting to the bottom of an issue, but also in not adding to the damage. Sometimes an informal chat is all that’s needed – you can quickly reach resolution without a drawn-out, costly and energy sapping process. But even if not, informal discussion makes it easier to bring compassion into formal processes, which can otherwise be a cold, lonely and damaging experience.

At a more cognitive level, how organisations understand and discuss processes like disciplinaries could also help advance progressive practice. The concept of Avoidable Employee Harm is notable here. It borrows from the concept of Avoidable Patient Harm that’s become established in healthcare. It’s a challenging perspective, because it confronts HR professionals and other managers with the question: 'Are your actions harming people in ways that are simply not necessary?' But it is arguably useful in bringing a novel perspective to workplace wellbeing – specifically, a focus on the relationship between people management practices and employee wellbeing.

Moreover, although the concept of avoidable employee harm may be unnerving for managers to embrace and will require courage and mutual trust to apply, I would argue it doesn’t need to be feared. It’s not about demonising the HR function or individual managers. Rather, it’s about understanding the damage that shouldn’t happen but does because of the complex, messy world of work.

Those of us who are managers or HR professionals like to see ourselves as being there to provide solutions. But we should recognise we can be part of the problem. If organisations can face up to that reality and critically examine it – that is, seek to understand its dynamics and apply insights and learning to organisational life – they can minimise the fallout from practices like employee investigations.

'Under Investigation' is a new book that draws on research insights and real-life cases to look at challenges and solutions in employee investigations. It’s edited by Andrew Cooper and Adrian Neal, both HR leaders in NHS Wales, and authored by a mix of academics and practitioners. The chapter by Jonny Gifford considers the usefulness of focusing on avoidable employee harm. The book is available from Bristol University Press at: https://bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/professional-business/under-investigation

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Any views expressed are those of the author and not necessarily those of the Institute as a whole.