"It Depends"
Updated: 5 days ago
If you work in HR long enough, you develop a favorite answer:
It depends.
Should we offer unlimited PTO?
It depends.
Should this employee be put on a PIP?
It depends.
Should we require employees to come into the office?
It depends.
Do we need a policy for this?
You get the idea.
“It depends” has become an HR cliché for a reason. And while I understand why people roll their eyes when they hear it, the frustrating truth is:
It really does depend.
Context matters
There is no shortage of advice about how to run a successful company or build a great workplace. I've had the opportunity to work across very different industries and organizations, and one thing has become clear: what works exceptionally well in one company isn't guaranteed to work in another. Every organization is its own unique mix of people, objectives, pressures and personalities.
The employees who thrive in a government consulting firm may be very different from those drawn to a fintech startup. Their backgrounds may differ. Their motivations may differ. The expectations of the business certainly differ. Add leadership styles, company history, financial realities, growth stage and existing culture, and suddenly a seemingly straightforward HR question isn't quite so straightforward.
That's why, when someone asks me for advice, my brain usually starts generating questions before answers.
What are we trying to accomplish?
Who is involved?
What's happening today?
Has something similar happened before?
What's the risk?
What's the organization's tolerance for that risk?
What precedent would this create?
The answer comes after the context.
You can't copy and paste culture
Successful companies naturally become models for other organizations.
Company X does unlimited PTO.
Company Y eliminated performance ratings.
Company Z publishes everyone's salary.
That's useful information. It's just not necessarily an instruction manual.
Taking a successful company's People practice and blindly applying it somewhere else is a little like following someone else's recipe. You might know exactly what they did, but you're working with different ingredients, different equipment, and different people are at your table. Those same recipe instructions don't guarantee the same result.
Instead of copying the recipe, I want to understand why it worked and why you are drawn to it.
Is it their transparency?
Their autonomy?
Their organizational structure?
Their management style?
Their time management practices?
Their communication style?
Once we understand the outcome you're actually trying to create, we can build something that captures the essence of the idea while fitting the organization you actually have.
Take the inspiration. Understand the context. Build it for your reality.
Good HR requires judgment
Of course, some HR answers aren't "it depends." There are legal requirements. Ethical lines. Fundamental employee protections. Sometimes there is simply a right and wrong answer.
But much of People Operations lives somewhere in between. Good HR professionals have to consider multiple factors, determine which ones matter most, understand the risks and then make a recommendation.
That's judgment.
And judgment gets better with experience because you've seen what happens when policies meet actual humans. You've learned that the technically perfect solution may be operationally impossible.
That the industry's “best practice” may be a terrible fit for your workforce.
That consistency doesn't always mean identical treatment.
And that sometimes the question someone asks isn't actually the problem that needs solving.
“It depends” should start the conversation
There's an important caveat. “It depends” isn't a complete answer. If your HR advisor says "it depends" and leaves the room, you should probably go find them. The value comes from what happens next:
It depends. Tell me more.
The job isn't to avoid making a recommendation because every situation is different. It's to understand the situation well enough to make the right recommendation for this organization, at this moment, with these people.
There may be many paths to the same destination. Good HR isn't about knowing one path and applying it everywhere. It's knowing how to choose the right one.
So yes, HR says it a lot.
It depends.
But there's usually a pretty good reason why.
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