It's wonderful discussion we are holding here. I felt it worth spending time reading the whole...
Dear Mdaslam49,
I would like to look at this in three different personal approaches (This is absolutely my theory of approach):
1) Authority and responsibility
2) Personality and relationships
3) Psychology and consequences
All three are very crucially and sensitively interlinked with each other and go implicitly together. Being an HR Manager, the first approach to this is Authority and responsibility, the main important reason why you are in the company. Here, holding this status, you are not a natural person but a body established to perform certain prescribed roles. Hence, you are an HR Manager in the company, not Mr/Ms XYZ. Hence, you are expected to behave in the capacity of an HR Manager - that means, since you are not a natural person holding yourself the status and position of an HR Manager (established person), you are not supposed to bring in your personal emotions which any day, anyway affect your work styles - like which may include partiality (though not materialistic and may not hinder others, but still...), likes and dislikes (though not strong enough to make you love or hate, ignore or concentrate on someone...), anger and exaggeration (which hinder your decision-making abilities), enjoyment and interdependency (affect your quality of work and moods of working), attachments and detachments (affect your interests, performance, and development), speech (most important, affect confidentiality, matter of empathy, sincerity...) so on and so forth...
Secondly,
Personality and relationships, here I completely speak about holding the personal, amicable, and societal relationships,
Thirdly,
Psychology and consequences, here comes the real problem!! Since, as we all know, the basic psychology is the same in all of us, but the psychological behavior is different from one to one almost entirely. So, whatever you are and however you are, the kind of behavioral impact of yours differs from one to one. Mental process: If I enjoy your behavior, I tend to like it, but my psychology says, why should I like it, I may enjoy it doesn't mean I should like it (ego); if he cracks jokes I laugh, everyone laughs so I too do, when everyone laughs every day, it has become routine, I no more observe the difference, hence I call it a liberation (here you lose the grip on employer-employee relation), now, being it routine and I have got some personal distraction too, hence I would like to call for a change or being relaxed (person mixed with employee status), so let me take advantage of our kind HR manager, who is being liberal to us, who may probably understand my situation, and one takes your liberal attitude for granted, so the other starts, one by one, so when your attitude is taken for granted by all...!!, PSYCHOLOGY. Now the consequences are that you are still an HR Manager, but the employee has become no more an employee but also a person since you are responsible for triggering his emotional part of the brain to react in a way that it started expecting more than usual and human tendency becoming more and more moody and expecting sensual enjoyments. CONSEQUENCES.
Hence, with the above explanations, it is clear that First one has to be given the most importance to the core, second the average, and third the least.
You are neither the employee's family nor friends to give a vice versa approach to my theory discussed above.
Hence, I would suggest you maintain a strict official relationship with the employees. Act like the Authoritative person. And utilize your behavioral gift during leisure, T&D times, and be jovial and build a good bond. In this way, you are triggering both kinds of behaviors from the individuals, as an employee as well as a person. This makes them feel you are the person who is more amicable, empathetic, and understanding, at the same time strict when it comes to responsibilities and works to be done in the way it has to be done...
When you want to have a discussion, always try to keep it personal, between you and the employee, like if you want to warn or try to improve your employee and figure out his problems affecting the work, never touch anyone's emotions in front of others..!! After all, we are human, though employees...
Hope you understand the implied suggestion behind my efforts...
I also thank you, it's an opportunity to share my approaches...
All the very best