HR’s ‘Yes’ Problem Is Costing Companies More Than They Think

Agreeable HR is a liability. When every request gets a yes, companies trade short term harmony for long term risk. Today’s HR leaders sit inside decision making, not beside it, and their value comes from pressure testing choices before they land. That means asking for documentation, enforcing consistent policy, and making sure every people decision can stand up legally and culturally. The organizations that get this right avoid costly missteps and protect their reputation before it is put on the line.

Awele Davies is one leader making the case that HR professionals who prioritize being agreeable over telling hard truths aren’t doing what they are hired to do. Awele is currently operating as a Legal Recruiter at attorney search firm HookFord Partners and Head of HR & Operations at holding company Eazzy Holdings. By prioritizing organizational design and due process, Awele has successfully nurtured 60% reduction in employee turnover, a 45% improvement in operational efficiency, and a 50% drop in hiring costs. Her secret to success is building clear policy as a practical tool to avoid problems before they begin.

“HR is not for the people or the employer,” Awele says. “HR is for the business, and subsequently for the people. HR is a bridge. It is an intermediary between the people and the business.” And to operate in the function effectively, she argues, means enforcing accountability rather than just echoing leadership.

Executives can sometimes make impulsive choices, and Awele says HR’s job is to build guardrails before those choices become costly problems. Her framework is straightforward: before any significant people decision moves forward, she asks whether it is fair and aligned with long-term company vision. Terminations are where skipping that process tends to hurt the most. Without documented warnings, clear disciplinary procedures, and proper offboarding steps, a firing that felt justified in the moment can rapidly become grounds for a lawsuit. By establishing that process in advance, Awele says HR gives leadership a defensible path forward that protects the company legally and ensures decisions hold up to scrutiny after the fact.

• Show the receipts: Awele says even a justified termination becomes difficult to defend without proper tracking. “When leadership just says to terminate a contract, you cannot simply say yes without asking questions,” Awele says. “What is the reason for this? Is it documented?”

• Posterity doesn’t pay: She adds that if a firing feels unjust, a company’s youngest workers in particular aren’t inclined to let it go. “You terminate a millennial’s employment, they probably want to leave it for God and say posterity will fight,” she says. “But Gen Z, if they are wrongfully terminated, they are going to court. They are suing the entire organization.”

HR professionals who don’t push back risk actively allowing unfair practices to become policy. Awele notes that she has seen this happen in two places repeatedly. The first is employment contracts: companies routinely require employees to give months of notice before leaving, while quietly reserving the right to terminate with immediate effect. The second is performance reviews: when appraisals are left entirely to individual managers, personal bias fills the gap that process should occupy, and employees who are disliked get penalized on paper regardless of their actual performance. In both cases, Awele says reducing bias isn’t complicated, it just requires HR to ask whether the system is genuinely fair before signing off on it.

• Convenient compliance: Awele notes that organizations naturally lean toward self-interest, which is why objective systems matter. She points to appraisal committees as one practical fix in the case of performance reviews, where a group reviews manager recommendations rather than leaving the final word to one person. “Employers cite labor law when it’s going to be in their favor,” she says. “Otherwise, they don’t even know about its existence.”

Fixing this starts with actually talking to employees. Turnover happens even at top-tier companies, but Awele says churn drops when leaders ditch performative engagement and establish genuine alternative feedback forums. Methods like transparent town hall meetings where employees feel safe speaking up without judgment can make a world of difference. In her view, HR departments benefit from committing to turning employee feedback into actionable change and making sure the employee experience aligns with the employer brand.

• Employees as partners: Awele says top-performing companies recognize that true engagement depends on treating employees as stakeholders and establishing practical boundaries around their well-being. “We need to have a safe and a conducive working environment where employees are heard,” Awele says. “When you make them feel like business partners and you listen, they don’t see it as work.”

• Proactive pulse checks: She also highlights that most organizations only interview employees when they’re hired and when they’re leaving, which means they’re collecting feedback at the two moments when it’s least actionable. “What happened to stay interviews? People have been in the organization for three to five years. You want to find out, why are you still in the organization?” she says. “What is that thing we are doing well that has kept you for three to five years so that we can improve it?”

How HR professionals treat candidates is easy to overlook, but Awele highlights this shapes how the talent market sees the company more than almost anything else. Poor interactions discourage candidates and feed negative perceptions, regardless of what the organization communicates elsewhere. She is quick to defend the HR profession against stereotypes, but she emphasizes the weight on these representatives as the first point of contact for the enterprise.

• Failing the vibe check: A single bad interaction destroys employer branding and drives away top talent. “The other day I walked into an interview, and the lady just yelled at me to put on my camera,” Awele says. “Now, this is the catch: it’s probably not toxic in the organization, but the brand ambassador, who is the HR person, was really horrible. I made my decision about the whole organization based on my interaction with this person.”

The ultimate lesson she shares is this: without objective protocols, any company can put themselves at risk. Rather than relying on personal whims, Awele advocates for strict guardrails. “You need to be sure that the organization is not exposed financially or legally,” she says. “Ensure that at every time, actions are backed up with policy. Any decision you’re making should be linked to organizational policy.”