1st Step in a new Blue Collar HR job: Who to make Friends with

While I haven't had too many changes in jobs there is one truth that I am sure of in the line blue collar HR field. Make friends with your finance person. While in the white collar world with a proven structure this may seem anathema, the comptroller, controller, accountant, or whatever you call it, is an extreme asset in the management of an hourly workforce. Look, I have to many employees to be absolutely groundbreaking in everything I do. Maybe that is admitting defeat. But in my world simple victories stand out. Victories like making sure labor gets charged to the right account so that the proper supervisor or manager can be held responsible. Also, when you are looking at big picture, assessing manning levels and adjusting using overtime as a metric doesn't work when your maintenance account is getting not getting charged because of the production people they are using on overtime for fire-watch.

The person who knows all of these things is your financial guy (gal). Their frustrations are your frustrations when it comes to managing 200+ employees. Simple oversights or errors over the long term can hose you big time when you try to do that "big boy" analysis to actually better your organization. First step when you enter a new Blue Collar HR job is to ensure that labor is being charged to the right account ever time and employees are classified correctly. The easiest ally to that purpose is the finance person. They almost always feel under-appreciated and they already have a long list of issues about how labor is charged (without full perspective) that will make you look like a star.

Solve that issue and the finance guy will come to you with issues rather than suffering in silence. Which for some reason is what they tend to do without acknowledgment.