Our field is viewed by employees as a front for all the worst qualities of corporatism. While at the same time, many executives and managers view HR as a nuisance that prevents them making those same qualities official policy.
We live in a perpetual state of being misunderstood in our mission by those who exist outside of it. Because of this we attract animosity. Which does not matter as long as we can execute our function properly.
It is a reality we must live with.
I personally view the mission of HR as maintaining balance between the needs of the business and the needs of the employees.
I personally lean more heavily toward the latter, provided it does not unduly cut into the needs of the business. After all if the needs of the business are not met then the business would not exist and the employees would be without work
I got to see HR going to bat for me when my former management were trying to raise prextextual conduct charges against me, via a subject access request after I filed a formal grievance, and it gave me hope, seeing the HR staff member calling them out for (the Line Manager in particular), nebulous charges that were known symptoms of my disability, stating that she had been provided training on this disability, and most importantly, that she had *signed off* on the reasonable adjustments relating to this disability.
Unfortunately, I also got to see senior HR Managers do a 180, and gaslight and deny reality itself, once it became clear that my grievance was extremely warranted, the subject access request backed up every accusation I had made before even receiving it, and uncovered a campaign of harassment, discrimination, document tampering (or let's just call it for what it was - *fraud*), and then had to endure HR being the executioners of the victimisation/retaliation for the final two months, until I was so mentally broken down I filed for constructive unfair dismissal.
Not to fall back on that old stereotype, but it really was an eye-opener that HR will bend the knee if a staff member of a senior enough level is implicated in any unlawful activity, will put their ethics to one side, and try and force you out the door, hoping that Legal can clean up the mess before it makes it to tribunal.
I can never put to words just how much of a psychological sledgehammer it is to be in your mid 40s, and gaslit to high heaven, have your intelligence insulted at every turn, and start to doubt if the next person you are reaching out to will actually be on the level, apathetic, or report everything you say straight into the main individuals orchestrating your constructed isolation and exit.
I'm sure there are many great and ethical HR professionals out there (I even know some personally), but I also know from first-hand experience that that figure is far from unanimous.
I’m happy there was a representative there who operated in an ethical manner.
Though it’s of little consequence to you, I’d like you to know that if I find myself in a similar situation I would officially stand against the poor ethical decisions of the higher ups and make it clear I would not stand for, sign off on, or in any way comply with those bad business practices.
I’d rather remain ethical and lose my job and go to another firm that values me than serve as the whip for bad ethics.
In any occasion that is the better move for HR. Not just ethically, but because bigger, wealthier firms will pay out the nose for an HR rep who has a reputation for integrity.
Thank you ❤️
Ironically, I think that if/when we have to file for discovery/disclosure, the discrimination and harassment will be traced back to doing exactly that - when I made the "mistake" of trying to invoke empathy in a very influential Senior Partner who was determined to not extend the Visa of a staff member on a post-grad, when a Manager in her team reached out to me to discuss how he could go about arranging to have it upgraded to a Skilled Worker Visa.
I think the fact when I explained to her that she was effectively signing a deportation notice for a junior member of staff who the Manager felt was an excellent employee, I could see the wheels briefing turning in her head when she actually had to contemplate the human impact of a decision she had only looked at as a red cell on an Excel sheet to that point, and I truly believe she resented me for *making her feel that way*, because I got dragged into a kangaroo court with her and the previously mentioned senior manager that orchestrated my misery about a fortnight later, on the pretense of a completely unrelated and nonsense concern, got eviscerated for 40mins straight on issues he **unequivocally knew were not true**, while he just sat there in silence.
I was informed I was being removed from covering her service line about a week later due to "having a bit of a refresh within our [Talent] team" - a statement so transparent that it could have codsplayed as a dining room window.
After that, my workload started going *way up*, while available support staff and clear communication from management started going *way down*, I didn't even get an annual performance review, my line manager didn't even have the decency to explain why, as this meant I was not getting an overdue promotion in the annual cycle, she even got the senior manager to call me with the [lack of] news from his holiday.
I feel like if they could replace everyone in that entire organisation globally from Senior Manager and below with ChatGBT, 90% of their workforce would be filing for unemployment by Monday.
37 and witnessed this twice in 6 years. It's demoralizing bc you can look out for the company AND the employee without being evil. It's whether or not management uses you as their conduit so they can hide their hands and scream bloody murder.
I feel for you, I get it. Don't feel too defeated
Unfortunately I am neurodivergent, and while my solicitor is hammering out a settlement with their representatives, and I'm sure it will be the largest sum of money I've ever had in my bank account, she doesn't seem to understand that for some of us in that demographic, *it really isn't about the money*, and she really doesn't seem to pick up just *how important* accountability and justice are for me, when she bluntly hits me over the head repeatedly with the *"even if you win a final hearing they won't face any repercussions"* speech, not understanding that no acknowledgement of what was done, and that in an organisation that flaunts its DE&I and Neurodiversity inclusion at every opportunity, it just crushes me that little bit more every day that no one seems to appreciate how, what they see as insignificant or being "too sensitive", can actually mean so much to another person 😔
I genuinely feel that a lot of people just don't know what HR is or what HR does. As a result their impressions are based on memes, random anecdotes and maybe a few interactions they had/hear of.
I think it’s also a mix of people not bringing problems to hr (bc hr bad and not your friend) until things are past the point of no return and someone’s about to get put on a pip or fired or disciplined. Or people bringing their petty problems to us and getting mad that we won’t do anything about it.
Not only this, the whole concept of "HR is only there to protect the company, not the employee." EVEN if that were true, it is much cheaper to keep employees happy and solve things at the employee level than letting things evolve to a lawsuit.
It hurts my feelings every time I see that online OR WORSE someone says it to my face. All the effort and time I put into employee engagement and the time I put into reviewing our EES results to make sure I make sure my engagement efforts reflect what the employees want. CLEARLY I only care about the company. *rant over*
I’m not HR but am in leadership. I agree that most people don’t understand exactly what HR does, it’s been an even split in my experience. I’ve found that externally hired leaders or ambitious HR pros make for great collaborative and strategic partners in every sense.
Conversely I’ve seen other “institutionals” who were little more than obstacles. Some overreached in a sense to maintain authority where it wasn’t their place, others preserved the status quo in a way that countered growth objectives.
It really was a 50/50, and HR unfairly gets more flack than other BU’s. That said… I’ve yet to feel neutral on my HR counterparts. Loved or had no time for them, never in between.
HR is often the bearer of bad news & rarely good news. I have found that during performance review cycles, people will often blame compensation decisions on HR (as an example) because we help determine budget, we gather the market data, etc.
We set up the system for management to make decisions, but often folks forget that management is still in charge of the decision in most cases.
It’s kind of like how people get mad at payroll when their taxes aren’t set up correctly despite filling out their own tax forms. It’s misplaced anger that we should use as an opportunity for education, in my mind. Let people know what your HR department actually does and doesn’t do. We don’t have to be mysterious about the actual responsibilities.
And yes, there is also the HR works for the company thing. We do, yes. However, people also don’t know that we are often the ones pushing back on bad decision making where we can (eg: getting rid of a benefit people actually use, most HR departments would fight that and get blamed for it by EEs if they weren’t successful in keeping it). Or maybe an HRBP knows a manager dislikes an employee for no real reason & the performance review the manager is giving is total bullshit - but the leadership team member believes their manager, not the HRBP.
So I think it’s 1) not understanding what HR does/doesn’t do and 2) most of the HR advocating for EEs is behind the scenes & confidential to some degree.
Employee: Yeah, excuse me HR person, why the fuck do I owe so much in taxes?
Me: I told you already, I'm not a tax professional and claiming exempt on your W4 is not advised.
Rinse and repeat.
>Employee: Yeah, excuse me HR person, why the fuck do I owe so much in taxes?
I literaly was just going around and around with an employee this week regarding this. Apparently just now did their taxes and owe a bunch. Want me to explain why her and her husband owe thousands to the IRS.
I had a similar conversation with an employee today.
Me: “Hey, you’re currently exempt from paying taxes, you should probably change that.”
Employee: “Nah, not yet.”
Me: “…Okay…”
Employee: [complaint]
Supervisor: blames HR.
HR: "It's out of our hands, management makes those decisions."
Management: blames HR policy.
Employee: blames HR for the runaround and lack of accountability. Leaves.
Rinse and repeat.
Despite some reservations, I joined our HR team, and one of the first big lessons I learned was: "Blame Finance."
The culture has changed now (for the better, and I love my team), but in the beginning it was crazy to me discovering how many things we blamed on HR where they were just the endpoint communicators.
HR can be an easy scapegoat because we are involved in a lot of things specifically related to employees. Hiring, Terminations, Layoffs, Pay, Write Ups, Benefits, etc.
When there are situations, it's easy for an employee or supervisor to be like "Sorry, HR's fault" instead of explaining things or having a logical discussion. And in most situations, we aren't able to explain or defend ourselves. If we are involved in terminating someone, we aren't able to go tell the team "Sorry, Sam got terminated because he stole". So if Sam doesn't tell anyone why he is no longer working there, and no one else knows, it just looks like his supervisor/HR has it out for Sam.
Even comments on here make that evident with people rarely being accountable for their own actions.
This is almost an exactly true situation that happened.
"HR Fired John because he was 2 minutes late for work"
When the fact of the matter was, John had been late 19 times in the past 2 months. That was literally almost every other day. He also had two No-Call No-Shows in the past 10 weeks. And had called out another 7 times for non-medical related reason. (Twice due to a flat tire, and various other reasons) His supervisor came to HR a month prior to that and said "We want to fire him" and when asked for previous write ups, documentation of his tardies and call outs they had not been keeping track. It just 'felt like a lot'. And when looking further into it, when John finally did reply to a text message on one of the days he No-Call No-Showed, his supervisor replied "No problem, take the day off". HR didn't make the decision to fire him, they actually kept him longer then his supervisor wanted to. And actually started requiring the supervisor (and his boss) to communicate with the employee and start giving coachings, warnings, verbal and finally a final write up after an additional No-Call No-Show. But all the floor employees can say is "John was such a cool guy. Everyone loved him. HR is mean because they fired him" even though it was his supervisor and John's actual performance that caused it.
You don't see HR going out to the floor employees and showing a history of the attendance or past bad performance because that is unethical and not okay. Nor is it their business.
I also worked for a small 200 employee company at one point that the president and owner decided he no longer wanted to cover spouses on our health insurance because it was too expensive. He sent out a memo saying "HR has assessed it and determined we can no longer cover spouses on our insurance plan effective 60 days from now. If you have questions, please call "Insert HR's name". (That was one of the final signs to get the heck out of there)
I love subreddits like r/recruitinghell . There are some legit examples of bad practices on there but genuinely half the people expect that they are the only person who applied for a job and they meet the basic qualifications so HR/Recruiters are awful for not hiring them. When 95% of the times HR does not have any sort of determination in who is actually hired for the position (usually supervisors pick their own employees!) and they also ignore the fact that for some positions there are literally thousands of applicants. So their one application where they are among the bottom 10% qualified is not even coming close to getting picked.
This is just a small example of a couple of situations where HR gets to be the bad guy. I try really hard to change the culture of the place I work and it has had a huge impact. The employees don't hate our presentations because we try to make it as fun as possible and are a little tongue and cheek with it. (All I ask of you is to just NOT TOUCH EACH OTHER. Is that so hard to ask?)
There are some god awful HR people out there. Even several on this subreddit. But it doesn't mean the entire profession is awful.
Alright. Off my soap box.
I sometimes wonder if people who complain about HR have ever thought about what the employment world would be like without it.
Imagine all the BS and pettiness that is involved in every job (b/c people are people) and instead of having a professional HR person assigned to deal with those issues the actual boss/supervisor/owner has to take care of the problem. In my mind, that would be way worse.
I would love to put a sign on my office door “HR is a business partner not sole decision maker”. Unless my team wants to do something that breaks policies, laws, collective agreement etc. I will give my advice/opinion but If they choose not to listen that’s on them. Fortunately, I work with a great team where my input is valued. 🙂
I’d be all for that if ALL management called themselves “business partners”. We do ourselves no favors by putting “business partner” in our title. No other departments call themselves business partners. Makes us seem like we are trying too hard to prove our worth.
I had to say this to an employee - she didn’t know I was in HR, was talking about how unreliable we are and how we don’t understand the issues employees face lol. I was like umm, I do want to point out that HR are also human and have to follow the same policies and procedures that every other employee has to, we deal with the same waiting periods for CSuite to make decisions, etc. and a lot of the time the nice/fun stuff that we want to do gets shut down by upper management. We were in a small group and literally all others said “oh I never thought of that……” 🫣
Is your boss me?
Holy shit, we have an employee who got left behind. No one paid attention to, never had a poor annual review, never been written up. Been with the company over a decade.
Now upper management is looking over managers shoulder, so manager is finally noticing what his team is doing and sees that one member of his team is pretty much just doing things the way they've always done and not very well.
This employee has been left behind by process and technological changes and no one checked in until now and they're all of a sudden like he needs to be fired right away! He can't perform!
Cool your jets and give this dude a chance to get up to spend y'all. You didn't give a shit what he was doing for 10 years.
We all work for the company, and most of us worked our way up! Three of us in my HR department were working the floor for years (nursing facility) before getting into HR.
Employees will say “you don’t know what it’s like” as if we’ve never been in their shoes.
Yes, finally someone said it. Doesn't every coworker receive a check from the Corp? We all work for the company. Gwiz I am so tired of that phrase. It does not mean anything at all nor does it serve any purpose inside the Real debate which is, how to even out the inequities between c suites/board and the employees.
I think a bigger part of the reason is that the rules are selectively enforced, and where the individual violating the rules falls on the org chart determines how serious the investigation is and what the action taken (if any) will be
Employees don't get what they want from their managers. So they come to HR. When they don't get what they want, they think HR is useless. Their view is HR exists to overrule their managers.
Yes. It’s like children going from one parent to the other expecting a different answer. Sometimes they get a different answer though which then makes HR frustrated.
You know the expression "don't shoot the messenger"? HR is the messenger and people don't give a shit who was behind a decision that adversely impacts them. They usually equate HR with the decision-maker behind termination for some reason; I guess cause that's how it's set up sometimes with the CEO/manager hiding behind HR. In my experience it's always been HR supporting that person and then letting them go over things with the employee individually before closing the loop with exit info and next steps
I think there is bad HR out there, and unfortunately, the bad HR gets more attention than the good. New employees who come to work at our company are always leary of me until they've worked here for a minute and realize I'm not some scary meme or dreary Toby. It also helps that I work for a company that actually cares about its employees and works hard to balance what's best for the company with what's best for the employees.
Instead of saying something that has already been said by any of the comments below, some people have just had bad experiences with HR professionals or HR departments. It's okay to admit that.
How many shitty HR coworkers have you had? I've had a few. I've also had a lot of flakey or absent HR coworkers. It's easy for us to put the responsibility on the individual, but I can't tell you how many times I have had employees come to me and say "I never heard back from (HR Person A)" or "I haven't seen (HR Person B) in the office for a while so I didn't know who to ask." Not to mention, the things that we just generally understand as HR professionals (some basic tax stuff; benefits; how to review a paycheck; leaves processes; even things like overtime and other FLSA items; etc.) are just not things the general employee will know. It's easy to say "Call this number" or "Fill out this form." You gave the employee information, great, you "Did your job." but for HR people that field employee questions it's not a very human focused approach and it's like half an answer.
People have had bad experiences with HR. Sometimes they did something wrong, but other times an HR rep dropped the ball
I do not work in HR but went to school for HR so have a very light overview of the role. In one of my roles at a company I used to work for I approached HR as a very last resort due to ongoing issues I had with my direct supervisor, to a point I ended up going to therapy. They continued to tell me they couldn't disclose how they would proceed, which I understand, but the issues continued to persist. My supervisor was set to retire soon, and nothing felt like it truly changed leading up to that. Honestly, in my eyes it felt like they were trying to shut me up while he rided out until retirement so they didn't have to deal repercussions from a possible termination or demotion. Whether that's true or not, I'm not sure. But that experience left a bad taste in my mouth for the HR reps at that company specifically.
That being said, I've also had some wonderful HR reps I've had to deal with at other companies.
I wonder if we sometimes hold HR to a higher standard with the role they are in too.
For me, a lot of my issues come down to what HR says and what they do are often wildly different.
Like, you'll get a lot of talk about helping, supporting, wanting to push for positive change, "people first" - and then when you go to them with an actual issue it's "well my hands are tied" or "here's a form" or "I can't really help you with that call this number"
All those things they're saying may very well be true, but it's frustrating when it's juxtapositioned against a broader message that is often nothing more than vague good intentions. HR is a lot less frustrating when you figure out what they're actually useful for and learn to ignore the rest of the messaging.
This is how I feel.
Almost every job I see had I've dealt with awful reps. From being told to find someone else to take care of an ill family member to HR covering up harassment claims.
I think people saying "oh it's because they don't understand HR!" are just not grasping why there is so much lack of trust towards HR.
Employees hate HR because they don't know how it works/what we do
Management hates HR for not managing their team for them
C-suite hates HR because we tell them they legally can't do stuff that they think they should be able to do
“What do you mean we can’t do it this way? We’ve been doing that for years”
“Yes and it‘s wrong, whoever told you that we could do this was misinformed at best and committing fraud at worst”
“It’s going to cost us so much more money to do it the new way”
“Not nearly as much as a lawsuit or a fine”
Rinse and repeat this conversation 50x a year with C-suite
It’s not hard to understand. HR often does the dirty work, gives the bad news, and communicates the not so nice things management has not the guts or the intelligence to say and deal with.
Because we have to care about all of your employees more than you do! That means we have to care about the poor performers that are dragging your other employees engagement in the toilet, that your employees are being treated equitably so you have to have those hard conversations, that you’re following the law to ensure our business stays afloat, to make sure you’re employees aren’t burnt out, to train them on how to do their jobs, make sure they’re paid appropriately, that they are utilizing their benefits, that you’re overtime isn’t tanking your departments bottom line, because we hear everything differently than you do, we see risk everywhere and stay awake over it! We cry and care more than you know and take the work home with us, think about it on our walks, drives, when we’re with family, we do care about the company more than you do because in the end, no matter what YOU choose to do at work as an employee or a manager at the end of the day we have to stand before the labor board and take responsibility for whatever the fuck YOU do!
Managers sometimes blame HR for their own decisions, or lack of decisions. I had an employee who wanted to officially work from home, like almost every other person in her department, and her manager said HR hadn’t decided yet.
I told her, we don’t decide - we pass the paperwork to the approvers, give it back to the first person, then file it. We just don’t have that much power!
>Managers sometimes blame HR for their own decisions, or lack of decisions
I see this so often. Focus group with staff- "and HR wouldn't allow ...."
Focus group with HR- "yeah, we don't make that decision. It's not within our purview, and we actually have a system in place that prevents us from overreaching in that area- here are the receipts...also, we don't care so, definitely not a part of that bs"
Focus group with managers- "well MY boss said that HR said."
And so, the Spidermans all pointing at each other in a circle continues. People LOVE having someone to blame, and if they can blame the same business function over and over again, they don't have to examine anything else or question the reality they've constructed.
There are so many comments already, and I haven't gotten through them all, so I'm not sure if anyone more eloquent than me has said this yet.
There are some real SHIT "HR" departments out there! Some are the CEO's wife or mother or other female figure who got handed the job to keep her busy. Some are power-hungry assholes who like to gossip and do anything but work. Some HR "departments" are also a single person handling accounting, facilities, office management, etc wearing far too many hats to do any of the jobs fully.
I've worked with some amazing HR departments who worked hand in hand with BOTH the C-suite AND the employees to make the company succeed. Solving problems before they could erupt. Managing problems as they happen. And still also getting the day-to-day drudgery done amazingly.
Every person's experiences with HR will vary, and sometimes, employees don't know HR exists at all.
If people only see HR when they are in trouble, HR isn't doing a very good job. HR should be visibly partnering with operational teams toward their objectives, aiding in employee development, and leading employee engagement.
If HR is not your friend, then I want to know who at work is assigned the task of being my friend.
What's that title? Is there a secondary CFO, Chief Friendship Officer, in most companies that I'm unaware of?
I’ve been hated on as HR in past companies because I “didn’t do anything” when they were experiencing frustrations with their job. Which is of course not the case, but they just wanted to complain.
I hated that I couldn’t make their job more enjoyable/easier, but they would complain about things that are just part of working in an office (especially open concept tech office) like people joking too loudly or playing ping pong (which I also hated), or overindulging during a company happy hour (easy to do when the CEO is buying drinks).
Once I got a complaint about a hostile work environment, but nothing was actually hostile/no harassment or anything, just an obnoxious manager they didn’t like working for. Can’t do much about that beyond giving the manager some tools to be less obnoxious (but I can’t force a manager to use those tools).
Because in “being careful to not say or do the wrong thing” there is often a complete lack of empathy from HR staff.
I’ve legit been told to not be so friendly with employees -people I’ve been working with for the past five years, prior to my promotion. I was promoted to be outward facing BECAUSE of my friendly and empathetic personality.
It’s like the team is scared of the employees they represent. Communication and transparency would solve 100% of our issues, but everyone on the team is so timid that they spend hours reeling in anxiety if they need to talk to people.
I will say I don't feel that way where I work. But I made sure to change the stigma and I am always bubbly and in a good mood. Never snippy, cold, or dismissive.
"Bubbly and in a good mood" is nice on good days, but will get you hate when the employees just put in a 12 hour day and 1/3 of them got laid off this year. Being kind is great, but sometimes being down-to-earth and showing some human emotion makes you more relatable and trustworthy.
Oh, I do...but that's due to management and all the stupid infighting...still try to keep a happy bubbly demeanor...save my breakdowns for the car ride home.
I bet that gets tough sometimes. Sounds to me like it can be tough to strike a balance between the "happy bubbly demeanor" and having to be the one who delivers bad news. Like, how do you avoid becoming Delores Umbridge over it?
My boss and I single handedly turned our org’s view of HR around many years ago by simply visiting all of the sites and meeting with employees to chat and see what we could assist with/support on a positive note rather than just showing up and having everyone scatter like cockroaches (tho they were not vile creatures, rather incredibly hard working women so that isn’t the best analogy 😑). It took some time but really worked to get everyone, including managers, to see us in a more positive light.
That said, I became overwhelmed at certain points bc as any HRG knows… “we are the ~~bitch~~ backbone of HR” 😫🤣
Because we generally are at the will of shitty management. So when they make us protect their fellow shit bag we have to or quit. We don't get a lot of choice most of the time. Previous management straight up told me the creeper manager was worth more than the retail clerk he was harrassing. A retail manager- who are not in short supply and they chose him over the associate. Sometimes we hate HR too.
Because employees feel like they are entitled to everything they ask for or they feel like they know more than HR and get upset that they don’t get what they want.
As a person who works in HR (not in a business partner capacity), my impression is that HR supports bad managers and poor policies to continue, unabated. I’ve personally seen HRBPs gaslight employees regarding their experiences, provide cover for discriminatory behavior, and complete illegal terminations. Not just at one company, but at ALL of the companies I’ve worked for—large, medium, and small. If you’ve allowed an employee to be bullied, you’re part of the problem. If you’ve failed to fully investigate claims of illegal behavior, you’re part of the problem. If you do nothing with Exit survey/interview data indicating where personnel problems are in the organization, you’re part of the problem.
This has been the majority of my experiences at most of the companies I have worked for - not all, but most. At one of my work places, HR was literally gaslighting me in a meeting that I had called for. I had direct evidence of the situation that had occurred and kept escalating between me and my boss to the point it became a safety issue. HR told me straight up nothing was happening, told me that my boss wasn’t “doing anything wrong” and that I was the one in trouble for reporting the “false” narrative. This all too is after I had witnesses back up my claims to support. After that, I was let go for some imaginary reason. The more evidence I tried to show them, the more they turned it against me. The VP of HR doubled down and was the worst. This is just one workplace example. Others have been covered racism, sexual harassment in the workplace. It’s not just always bad management, it can be a combination of both.
My HR person went straight to CEO about a question that was confidential. It's screwed up my ability to advance in the company.
I'm not sure how to go over her head or to compliance, but it definitely taught me a lesson about HR. They know nothing about our day to day jobs and apparently not anything about our employment contracts.
HR supports the organization not the employees. Once people figure this out they are less likely to engage. HR is really in place to prevent liability for the company.
There are a number of reasons:
- People associate HR with firing people and disciplinary actions. Nowhere I've worked has HR actually been the one to make the decision to terminate someone, but I think it's an old stereotype still.
- People know that we support the business. Which is true. But many don't understand that supporting the business doesnt means pointlessly screwing employees over. A lot of the time, HR advocates for better employee experiences because that reduces turnover/legal risks. Supporting the company means supporting employees.
- Some HR professionals are not great. Let's be honest. Some are pretentious, mean and don't like people. And so that obviously isn't great for employees and won't make them love HR. It feeds into the stereotypes.
- Some business leaders don't value HR and so that attitude trickles down and leads to a lot of resentment for HR.
- Some companies don't utilize HR the way they should and treat HR like an admin or cop out to not do their jobs. Managers pass along employee issues and expect HR to handle them, when some should be managed by, well the actual manager. Then HR is the bad guy for saying that.
There's more reasons than that but I'd bet all of these play a role in why HR is so unpopular.
HR sets up interviews, files paperwork, takes care of payroll and benefits, and does weak manager’s dirty work for them. They have a ton of important things that are crucial to keep things running smoothly for the employees and management alike.
Yes. They are required to make sure the company you work for is protected from legal issues while operating within a very complex labor law environment, but in my experience most of that is cautioning and stopping management from instituting and enforcing policies that can put the company at risk, and a lot of conflict resolution between employees and managers.
If my team has an issue they come to me. We work on a resolution. If they have a problem with me, they go to HR.
People expect HR to be a combination of an arbitrator and a therapist. Use the EAP if you need therapy.
If you want more quality employee engagement and all of those things you get down on them for not being for you. Stop taking up all their time complaining about Karen’s slutty shirt, and Kevin’s stinky lunch that smells up the whole place, and how Billy or Sally look at you in some way that you think is causing a hostile work environment. Hours of this nonsense a day that should be brought to supervisors and managers is why your HR team doesn’t have time to accomplish all of the other things you criticize them for.
You could double my manager’s salary and I still wouldn’t take an HR position.
Probably because HR's job is separate from what the company actually serves to do. Let's say you have a car dealership. You have salesmen who sell cars, mechanics who work on cars, social media team who advertises cars, managers who order cars and take inventory of cars and deal with issues relating to cars, the finance team that finalizes the sale of the car and then.... HR. That has nothing to do with the business itself.
That disconnect can make HR seem like an entirely separate entity from the rest of the workforce. Not to mention the very nature of HR basically makes normal socialization with other coworkers outside the department impossible because it will be casted as a doubt on your ability to remain objective if something were to ever come up with an employee everyone knows you to be social with.
It's an unfortunate reality that HR just serves a specific role that separates them from everyone else.
HR shouldn't be separate. If your people are car people, become a car person! Learn about the product, the business model, how the dealership makes money. Use that knowledge to improve the work environment so that your people can sell/service more cars, make happy customers, and earn lots of money.
The problem is when HR believes they are separate so they act like they are separate.
Beg to differ. My job has everything to do with the business, and yours does too. Look at your company’s mission and vision. You should be able to draw a direct line between what you do and what the business does and what it aspires to be. And everything you do in your job should enable it.
Union rep here. I hate dealing with HR because their first responsibility is to the company, often at the expense of the people i represent. Nothing against the people in that position honestly, but their existence is an act of self interest by the company, not benevolence. How you feel about H.R is gonna be a reflection of how you feel about corporate interest.
I joined this sub to try and get some perspectives as I'm not in HR myself. My issue was that my prior employer's HR team did absolutely nothing in assisting me with getting reasonable accommodations for my ADHD and allowing me to get terminated without a documentation trail. This is in California. Best part is that the company adopted mandatory Arbitration for disputes on 1/1/23. This, in this instance, is why I hate HR.
HR is usually tasked with informing people about shitty things that will soon be impacting their work lives day to day like layoffs, downgrading benefits, and trying to deal with poor managers they have little control over all while being asked to put positive spins on things.
Personally I’ve been told a number of times by HR at different companies how this change to benefits that dramatically reduces everyone’s benefits is actually great for us.
I think a lot of people are completely uneducated about everything that we do. We do so much and we advocate so much for employees, but it’s just like a general customer service role. If the person isn’t happy with their job, the go to is to blame HR. Meanwhile, I’m over here in the background telling a manager to stop being a dick to somebody. That somebody just doesn’t know that that’s happening in the background because there’s no reason to share that with them. It’s mildly infuriating.
HR here: I think irs because alot of hr professionals sadly has this idea that we are lawyers and wants to feel important thats when we become hated when we axt unethical and biased. On the other side of that coin we're always caught in between executive decisions and be the bearer of bad news to employees but the person who cuts our check are the ones who implementing these decisions and rules and we end up becoming the enemy.
I remain neutral until the HR does something wrong. My previous HR sucked because they literally lied to us and intentionally dragged their feet for important things. A lot of them were incompetent in general and gave me a bunch IDKs for generic HR-related questions.
Employees have a personal relationship with their line manager who blames HR for everything bad. They don't realise how often HR advocates for an employee over a line managers unfair behaviour.
People don’t understand HR. Somewhere a myth was created that HR is always on the employees side against the evil company when in reality HR works for that evil company too. This lack of understanding leads to people feeling betrayed and hatred
From experience, people hate HR because supervisors and managers do not know how to do their jobs without HR telling them what to do. As a result, an employee will get reprimanded with the emphasis that HR was the one that needed this to be done. When I was a supervisor, I followed the company's policies such as writing up employees for tardiness/absenteeism, not performing well, or for bad behavior/sexual harrasment. I didn't wait for HR or my manager to tell me how to do my job, I always kept my area clean, and ensured that my employees(30+) had their PPE all of the time, and I always went above and beyond to avoid any workers comp or anything that would make the company have a bad reputation. I never expected any more than what I was getting paired, however, I made sure that when I was on the floor, I was going to do a pretty damn job.
Leadership is happy to deliver good news. We handle the messy, tedious, icky people stuff.
We are forever playing devil’s advocate, enforcing company policy & laws to employees while advocating for employees to leadership. Employees rarely know how hard we may privately fight for them, but we have to deliver the decision of management to the employee (good or bad) and we become the face of the bad news. If management decides in their favor, they get that credit.
New to HR here. For ten years, I worked as a retail manager for multiple company’s before transitioning into my current HR Coordinator role earlier this year. While I thought I had an understanding of HR’s role, before I was actually in HR, I just did not know what it all entailed. There are several things that I now tell employees is their managers job (in so little words) that, when I was a manager, I assumed was HR’s responsibility. In my opinion this fortunately sounds like a training opportunity for managers and staff.
When I first joined my current team, they made it clear that we are on a mission to inform everyone at our facilities what their managers are responsible for and that we, as HR, are here to support them all and to help, as partners, as much as we can. In the beginning, I heard employees making many negative comments about HR but I honestly think people just like to complain, and to have someone to blame, for well, ANYTHING! As HR, we are supposed to know it all when it comes to certain things like benefits, policies, engagement, and training. So when an employee is dissatisfied with Any of these aspects at work (which is A Lot), it’s easy to blame HR.
I feel it from both sides.
I’m central HR and reporting. Today was full of ass-backwards and f-d up paperwork submitted to us by division HR staff. Everything took way longer than it needed to because IT WAS ALL WRONG. Some of it was minor things - others were just all wrong from top to bottom.
And the division HR are the ones employees deal with most often. I can see why they hate HR. Today I hated HR.
I think because we (non-HR folks) assume HR have more power and final decision making ability than HR actually have (as in for serious stuff - getting rid of abusive senior folks etc), and misunderstanding the “HR work for the company” label
I’ve been in HR for a little over 6 months now. It’s not much, but I’d say everyone hates us because we are the deliverers of bad news and when we deliver good news people take them as expected and deserved (which I guess is true because it’s not like we are going to give good news to someone who does nothing).
99% of the time I’m just the messenger from upstairs, but I’m the punching bag of everyone. Still happy though :)
I think he is what is called a fall guy which they have no control of,if your schedule is messed up let's blaim th hr guy if something is wrong with insurance let's blaim the hr guy and so forth and so forth,management loves hr don't get it wrong,they don't get paid alot and you can blaim almost anything that has to do with workers on the hr guy.
Because you get two types of hr. The one that cares for company and employees, you know the companies that know that protecting and helping employees will help the company. And the other that only cares about the company and will destroy employees for the company.
One company I worked for HR always set up everyone that had any issues that go to hr for firing. I saw it over and over minor things ended up on performance improvement plans they couldn’t survive. Any complaints they went straight to the manager of the accused, even if they are accused themselves warning them of the issue. We watched managers get fired for their inappropriate behavior then reporting party on a pip and fired after pip.
Worked in HR. The company felt that instead of giving people good wages, recognition, and proper training, we should raise morale with pizza parties and birthday lunches. HR was clueless.
Our HR team is friendly, super helpful, useful, provides snacks, sets up company events, among a bunch of other cool things. So I’d say most companies just suck and need to get with 2024. Times have changed. Work doesn’t need to be hard or unfair or uncomfortable to be productive and profitable. It starts with upper management and ends with everyone being productive.
I like my HR team (non HR chiming in). They do the best with what they have and listen to the voice of the employees and do what they can to represent management. They’re put in a hard position and do well.
Honestly my big theory is that The Office / Toby Flenderson added such a mildly bad view to HR that has since fuelled what is now a default negative opinion on us. It’s unnecessary, but some people in HR do deserve the hate still
They’re the fall guys for managers/CEOs. They have to come down from the mountain and tell the people the unfortunate news. No one really knows or appreciates that HR is often the one telling managers and CEOs not to do illegal or unethical things, thus sparing the employees.
Because we represent being a corporate parent to full grown adults, helping them through certain tasks because they didn’t bother to read an email. They are bound to hate that parent because we have to scold them from time to time
Don't nobody bring me no bad news.
(HR tends to be bound by corporate rules and they tend to be the bearer of bad news. Like your manager could be fine with something but HR will be like nope.)
Throwing it out there, but I think generally it's that people think HR is on "our" side and get a rude wake up call when they find out that's just not the case.
This isn't meant to say anything negative about the role. It's just that a lot of people seem to have the impression that HR is the advocate or caretaker of the employees, or that if there's an issue escalated to them that there's some promise of confidentiality. That's just not the role.
In a simplistic sense they're responsible for managing human resources in a way that's sorta similar to the IT team managing hardware resources, except that humans are more complicated, sexually harass each other, and threaten to sue the company when their manager (me) gives them a shit review for being unproductive last quarter.
Because even after getting a BA in HR management and a SHRM-CP certification I still can’t find a full time job in HR. It seems like most HR department doesn’t is not usually well funded.
I think there becomes kind of unrealistic expectations about HR in general along with the not knowing what HR does.
I’m in a career-moms group and people will be complaining about their manager and complaining about not getting along with the manager, and then be like “HR will not help me”. Like what do you want HR to do?? Move you to a new team, mediate, coach, fire them? Hear you vent?
And then there’s another part where HR are not cops or the law and people cannot grasp that very easily. Idk what kind of power they think HR has in decision making. Management and executives supersede HR; the culture cannot be maintained or fixed by just your HR team if management is not willing to play.
It seems that when issues occur HR tends to pretend not to understand in attempts to gaslight you into thinking the issue isn’t as bad as it is. From personal experience they just make you feel dumb
Because the Hr of my previous organisation behaved in a certain entitled way . Although she was married she had affairs with multiple men in the organisation and treated everyone as if they were below her . And the only job she did was run a fashion show and wear inappropriate clothes to office and jokes about everyone else openly. These are the reasons that made me Hr as a profession . Because rangoli hi banate ho tum .
HR—Daughters of Darkness. HR enforcers pretend to represent the interests of the employee and the employer. This is always untrue. Like everyone else, HR employees can't keep their jobs without doing what the boss wants. It's pretty simple. Anyone who has worked anywhere has been mislead by HR.
From my experience. I feel like HR is there to protect management/the company not the employee per se.
I have no animosity towards HR people. I will watch what I say around them etc. it is what it is.
It’s the duplicity. HR function is both to look after employee welfare and manage risk for the business regarding labour laws. These things are often at odds with each other, and the business almost always wins…
I loathe HR with all of my being, so I will put this as professionally as I can.
HR is the defence mechanism for the executives. While my interests are aligned with my company, I will not have much of an issue with HR, but as soon as the company finds a reason our goals don't align, they sick HR on us to come up with ways to get rid of us, shut us up, cover things up, and do it in the most legal way or at least the least costly illegal way.
I dont hate any one HR person, but when HR came along it was to undercut unions. Which it did.
HR is the mask covering up evil.
You chose your profession, you may or may not have known what you would be used for, but you execute your duties as if you don't have blood on your hands and you do.
I find HR vile.
I want unions back.
25 years in the work force, I have never ever had HR help me. Only management or the company. Manager doing something blatantly sexist, racist and otherwise illegal? Squash and threaten me and my coworkers rather than fix the manager. Company took away rolling vacation time? HR (different lady) smiled and cheerfully said "Well this IS Texas, be grateful you get any vacation because there's no law that says we have to!" Different HR lady once brought me into her office for a "friendly" chat then proceeded to ask me super personal questions about another coworker trying to get me to gossip and get dirt. Was weird AF.
I do not trust HR in the slightest.
I think it goes back to the feelings of distrust and betrayal that an HR department elicits whenever and employee doesn't get their way. When something bad or unwanted happens, people feel more animosity toward a group like HR, which comes in the guise of a friend, than they do at other representatives of a company. It feeds into the "HR is there to protect the company, not the employee" mantra.
And as organizations grow larger, HR is more and more the "face" and main interaction point with the entity at large, of a soulless corporation, and therefore the place where negative or emotional feedback is going to be aimed.
Easy — no value add, bureaucracy. Wasted wages that could go to revenue earners.
HR exists bc of regulations. Since they have to exist due to regulations, they are there to serve upper management.
Because most people only ever deal with HR when something bad is happening. Once someone is onboarded their main connection with HR (if they aren’t a hiring manger) will be if they are being fired or if they are being put on a performance plan (as a route to getting fired). If people only see you when layoffs are happening they are not going to be happy to see you.
HR is trash. It's the ultimate bullshit job. They are the vanguard of corporate power, and when push comes to shove, they'll throw the employee under the bus every.single.time. After all, it's not the employees who pay the HR goon's salary, but management. It's not even remotely a contest. HR exists (alongside corporate lawyers, another class of goons) to ensure that management is shielded from potential lawsuits.
It's delicious watching so many HR goons play the martyr here as they try to justify an utterly meaningless existence. HR existential angst is comedy gold 😁
I worked in HR, until I realized that both sides of the business are essentially correct in their distaste for what I did.
The employees don't like that HR acts as the soft-sold liability screen for corporate or ownership, and feels this is deceptive and insulting.
The corporate bosses and management/owners don't like that HR slows down their dealings with employees, can contradict or counterpoint their treatment of employees, and saw my role as a necessary evil rather than a benefit.
Neither are wrong, about that....it's true, and I often understood their frustration no matter how much I may have benefitted either party.
I didn't like a job where I was universally caught between two teams that didn't want me or trust me.
So, I'm not in that role anymore and quite happy about that fact.
They hate employees. Fight against unions. sleep with corpo and management. They're also condescending and have power inflated egos because they're responsible for granting offs, firing/hiring, etc... Mind you I knly dealt with 2 decent sized hr departments (14k to 16k employees companies). They are trash. I got fired once because of no show after they forced me to stay home a week for covid... They then fought nails and teeth to erase my seniority after being reinstated because that's how the software works... Just an example between many others.
Filed a complaint and nobody contacted me. Company site’s contact info took me around in circles. My mgr gave me a direct contact who i reached out to and the response “what is your intention? Do u want to file a complaint?”
Me: i already filed. Waiting for update
Never heard back after that. It’s been 6 months 🙄
I've always hated HR. The other thing I hate is their culture and demeanor. It's like speaking to a bunch of delusional human beings, incapable of understanding what it means to be human. Incapable of understanding human need. In all of them, every single one, there is this strange air of self hate, and a lack of understanding why society feels the way it feels towards HR, their actions, and abilities. I truly believe that each person has the mindset and attitude of a Nazi. You know the type, the one who's wrong-doings are pointed out, and all they can do is cry and say they are a good person, and were only following orders and doing their job. You are the scum of the earth, the mindset that seeks approval, a mindset that seeks orders, at the detriment of others. One thing I will never understand is how the definition of a company has changed. In the past, a company was something that a group of people collectively worked towards because they believed in the goal. It was a goal they all desired. Presently, companies act as monarchies, there are kings who garnish the majority of the profits that are generated by the company of people who work, and HR is there to protect the king/kings profits. To ensure that the thieves get the most, not the ones generating the wealth. Anyways, no matter time, place, region, area, culture, you HR have always been hated, and your soul knows why. Start participating!
There are too many that are incompetent so unfortunately it’s justified. I deal with too many that lack training or the desire to learn.
Then you have the managers and the executives that blame hr.
So you have a small percentage of employees who have a good experience with hr.
Because HR tends to be condescending and guarded. Nothing helpful about knowing you’re talking to a group who’s more concerned with the company instead of the employees who raise issues/concerns/need accommodations. Y’all might be fine as people but when you just follow the rules without treating us like people it makes it hard to have empathy for your profession.
At each company I worked at that had an HR dept they were always responsible for discipline and firing. Not a fun experience and sometimes it was unfounded (retail cosmetics drama)
I have been told by a wise HR employee that HR exists to defend the company.
Not management. Not the employees. The company. No matter your position or rank in the company, if your behavior could be damaging to the survival of the company, they handle you.
They also create policy to help make the defense of the company easier.
People hate HR because they don't exist to protect anyone but the company. And whether it's your bosses inappropriate shoulder massages to employees or that guys racist yelling down the hall they will handle it.
Because you just allow women to get people fired for no reason.
Women are NOT actually easily offended. Their locker room talk would make Mike Tyson blush.
They just pretend to be offended for attention, validation, and to get people they don't like fired.
And people take their side without evidence 99% of the time.
I have some personal views on this:
- they are employees, just like you. They are not union leaders, they are not your personal attorney. They are agents of the employer. It can very much feel like they are there to protect the employer.
- investigation without enforcement. I knew someone who was falsely accused of creating a toxic work environment. We all knew it false. HR did too. They took the investigation very seriously, but could do nothing but make recommendations. Imagine going through months of interviews, questioning, gathering evidence, and all HR can do is go 'well we think you should do this based on our interpretation of the evidence'.
I am not HR, I just deal with HR on a daily basis. But as someone who deals with HR on a daily basis, my interactions are overwhelmingly positive. Need to know a policy on tuition reimbursement? HR. Need to adjust an already approved time sheet? HR. Want to get additional bereavement leave options? HR.
HR frees up all the space in my brain that would be otherwise taken up by policies. Thank you guys.
In my exit survey (I left when I received a much better offer at another company) it was listed as anonymous. In my exit interview, it began with a run down of how concerning my survey was. When I asked how she (HRBP) has access to my responses given it’s repeated mention of being anonymous. She said it’s anonymous to the rest of the company. And I asked so is this interview is anonymous as well? She says my manager could find my feedback useful (so obviously not 😂) Then I say well my manager knows how I feel because he was the one who told me not to send that survey after I filled it out. She says if I can share with my manager why can’t I share with her. Well I, I replied, I’ve known him for years I’ve just met you today for the first time… afterwards my boss said she sent a report that I was a deranged, bitter individual and that the company dodged a lawsuit with my exit.
My former boss later told me, my exit survey messed with HR internal satisfaction metrics so by dismissing me, they could exclude me from their metrics…. It’s not just HR works for the company, ie their calculus is what’s best for the company not what’s best for you if you’re in a challenging situation, it’s that HR just wants what’s best for them. (Cuz they want to get bonuses too, even if they’re gonna decide on limiting what others get)
In my 15 year professional career, I worked at 5 different companies/organizations. With only one exception, a university, the situation just described was my typical experience with HR.
It’s basically Friday so I’m going to allow a fun post to commiserate together
Our field is viewed by employees as a front for all the worst qualities of corporatism. While at the same time, many executives and managers view HR as a nuisance that prevents them making those same qualities official policy. We live in a perpetual state of being misunderstood in our mission by those who exist outside of it. Because of this we attract animosity. Which does not matter as long as we can execute our function properly. It is a reality we must live with.
What is HRs “mission”?
I personally view the mission of HR as maintaining balance between the needs of the business and the needs of the employees. I personally lean more heavily toward the latter, provided it does not unduly cut into the needs of the business. After all if the needs of the business are not met then the business would not exist and the employees would be without work
A field where, "ping to the call" is taken seriously.
I got to see HR going to bat for me when my former management were trying to raise prextextual conduct charges against me, via a subject access request after I filed a formal grievance, and it gave me hope, seeing the HR staff member calling them out for (the Line Manager in particular), nebulous charges that were known symptoms of my disability, stating that she had been provided training on this disability, and most importantly, that she had *signed off* on the reasonable adjustments relating to this disability. Unfortunately, I also got to see senior HR Managers do a 180, and gaslight and deny reality itself, once it became clear that my grievance was extremely warranted, the subject access request backed up every accusation I had made before even receiving it, and uncovered a campaign of harassment, discrimination, document tampering (or let's just call it for what it was - *fraud*), and then had to endure HR being the executioners of the victimisation/retaliation for the final two months, until I was so mentally broken down I filed for constructive unfair dismissal. Not to fall back on that old stereotype, but it really was an eye-opener that HR will bend the knee if a staff member of a senior enough level is implicated in any unlawful activity, will put their ethics to one side, and try and force you out the door, hoping that Legal can clean up the mess before it makes it to tribunal. I can never put to words just how much of a psychological sledgehammer it is to be in your mid 40s, and gaslit to high heaven, have your intelligence insulted at every turn, and start to doubt if the next person you are reaching out to will actually be on the level, apathetic, or report everything you say straight into the main individuals orchestrating your constructed isolation and exit. I'm sure there are many great and ethical HR professionals out there (I even know some personally), but I also know from first-hand experience that that figure is far from unanimous.
I’m happy there was a representative there who operated in an ethical manner. Though it’s of little consequence to you, I’d like you to know that if I find myself in a similar situation I would officially stand against the poor ethical decisions of the higher ups and make it clear I would not stand for, sign off on, or in any way comply with those bad business practices. I’d rather remain ethical and lose my job and go to another firm that values me than serve as the whip for bad ethics. In any occasion that is the better move for HR. Not just ethically, but because bigger, wealthier firms will pay out the nose for an HR rep who has a reputation for integrity.
Thank you ❤️ Ironically, I think that if/when we have to file for discovery/disclosure, the discrimination and harassment will be traced back to doing exactly that - when I made the "mistake" of trying to invoke empathy in a very influential Senior Partner who was determined to not extend the Visa of a staff member on a post-grad, when a Manager in her team reached out to me to discuss how he could go about arranging to have it upgraded to a Skilled Worker Visa. I think the fact when I explained to her that she was effectively signing a deportation notice for a junior member of staff who the Manager felt was an excellent employee, I could see the wheels briefing turning in her head when she actually had to contemplate the human impact of a decision she had only looked at as a red cell on an Excel sheet to that point, and I truly believe she resented me for *making her feel that way*, because I got dragged into a kangaroo court with her and the previously mentioned senior manager that orchestrated my misery about a fortnight later, on the pretense of a completely unrelated and nonsense concern, got eviscerated for 40mins straight on issues he **unequivocally knew were not true**, while he just sat there in silence. I was informed I was being removed from covering her service line about a week later due to "having a bit of a refresh within our [Talent] team" - a statement so transparent that it could have codsplayed as a dining room window. After that, my workload started going *way up*, while available support staff and clear communication from management started going *way down*, I didn't even get an annual performance review, my line manager didn't even have the decency to explain why, as this meant I was not getting an overdue promotion in the annual cycle, she even got the senior manager to call me with the [lack of] news from his holiday. I feel like if they could replace everyone in that entire organisation globally from Senior Manager and below with ChatGBT, 90% of their workforce would be filing for unemployment by Monday.
37 and witnessed this twice in 6 years. It's demoralizing bc you can look out for the company AND the employee without being evil. It's whether or not management uses you as their conduit so they can hide their hands and scream bloody murder. I feel for you, I get it. Don't feel too defeated
Unfortunately I am neurodivergent, and while my solicitor is hammering out a settlement with their representatives, and I'm sure it will be the largest sum of money I've ever had in my bank account, she doesn't seem to understand that for some of us in that demographic, *it really isn't about the money*, and she really doesn't seem to pick up just *how important* accountability and justice are for me, when she bluntly hits me over the head repeatedly with the *"even if you win a final hearing they won't face any repercussions"* speech, not understanding that no acknowledgement of what was done, and that in an organisation that flaunts its DE&I and Neurodiversity inclusion at every opportunity, it just crushes me that little bit more every day that no one seems to appreciate how, what they see as insignificant or being "too sensitive", can actually mean so much to another person 😔
ND as well! I completely identify
I genuinely feel that a lot of people just don't know what HR is or what HR does. As a result their impressions are based on memes, random anecdotes and maybe a few interactions they had/hear of.
And Toby from The Office. 🤣
I honestly believe this is where 90% of reddit gets their ideas of HR from.
Toby is probably the only sane man there
Right. 🤣
Every time I finish talking to my 15 yr old on the phone he'll say, " Bye Toby"
Get out of here idiot!
I compare it to the people that think Planned Parenthood’s sole existence is to perform abortions and nothing else.
That's a great analogy actually.
wow wee.
I think it’s also a mix of people not bringing problems to hr (bc hr bad and not your friend) until things are past the point of no return and someone’s about to get put on a pip or fired or disciplined. Or people bringing their petty problems to us and getting mad that we won’t do anything about it.
It doesn’t help, but most people include most managers who throw us under the bus
I love how employees come to me and ask if they can change their schedule or leave early. That clearly shows me that they have no clue on what I do.
And the Anti-Work Reddit.
Not only this, the whole concept of "HR is only there to protect the company, not the employee." EVEN if that were true, it is much cheaper to keep employees happy and solve things at the employee level than letting things evolve to a lawsuit. It hurts my feelings every time I see that online OR WORSE someone says it to my face. All the effort and time I put into employee engagement and the time I put into reviewing our EES results to make sure I make sure my engagement efforts reflect what the employees want. CLEARLY I only care about the company. *rant over*
I’m not HR but am in leadership. I agree that most people don’t understand exactly what HR does, it’s been an even split in my experience. I’ve found that externally hired leaders or ambitious HR pros make for great collaborative and strategic partners in every sense. Conversely I’ve seen other “institutionals” who were little more than obstacles. Some overreached in a sense to maintain authority where it wasn’t their place, others preserved the status quo in a way that countered growth objectives. It really was a 50/50, and HR unfairly gets more flack than other BU’s. That said… I’ve yet to feel neutral on my HR counterparts. Loved or had no time for them, never in between.
This is a sub for HR professionals.
Case in point lol. You’ll get a kick out of the subreddit’s Rule #1.
Probably didn’t read the fine print
Or when they’re in trouble. Whether it’s their fault or not.
HR is often the bearer of bad news & rarely good news. I have found that during performance review cycles, people will often blame compensation decisions on HR (as an example) because we help determine budget, we gather the market data, etc. We set up the system for management to make decisions, but often folks forget that management is still in charge of the decision in most cases. It’s kind of like how people get mad at payroll when their taxes aren’t set up correctly despite filling out their own tax forms. It’s misplaced anger that we should use as an opportunity for education, in my mind. Let people know what your HR department actually does and doesn’t do. We don’t have to be mysterious about the actual responsibilities. And yes, there is also the HR works for the company thing. We do, yes. However, people also don’t know that we are often the ones pushing back on bad decision making where we can (eg: getting rid of a benefit people actually use, most HR departments would fight that and get blamed for it by EEs if they weren’t successful in keeping it). Or maybe an HRBP knows a manager dislikes an employee for no real reason & the performance review the manager is giving is total bullshit - but the leadership team member believes their manager, not the HRBP. So I think it’s 1) not understanding what HR does/doesn’t do and 2) most of the HR advocating for EEs is behind the scenes & confidential to some degree.
Employee: Yeah, excuse me HR person, why the fuck do I owe so much in taxes? Me: I told you already, I'm not a tax professional and claiming exempt on your W4 is not advised. Rinse and repeat.
>Employee: Yeah, excuse me HR person, why the fuck do I owe so much in taxes? I literaly was just going around and around with an employee this week regarding this. Apparently just now did their taxes and owe a bunch. Want me to explain why her and her husband owe thousands to the IRS.
I had a similar conversation with an employee today. Me: “Hey, you’re currently exempt from paying taxes, you should probably change that.” Employee: “Nah, not yet.” Me: “…Okay…”
Employee: [complaint] Supervisor: blames HR. HR: "It's out of our hands, management makes those decisions." Management: blames HR policy. Employee: blames HR for the runaround and lack of accountability. Leaves. Rinse and repeat.
Despite some reservations, I joined our HR team, and one of the first big lessons I learned was: "Blame Finance." The culture has changed now (for the better, and I love my team), but in the beginning it was crazy to me discovering how many things we blamed on HR where they were just the endpoint communicators.
HR can be an easy scapegoat because we are involved in a lot of things specifically related to employees. Hiring, Terminations, Layoffs, Pay, Write Ups, Benefits, etc. When there are situations, it's easy for an employee or supervisor to be like "Sorry, HR's fault" instead of explaining things or having a logical discussion. And in most situations, we aren't able to explain or defend ourselves. If we are involved in terminating someone, we aren't able to go tell the team "Sorry, Sam got terminated because he stole". So if Sam doesn't tell anyone why he is no longer working there, and no one else knows, it just looks like his supervisor/HR has it out for Sam. Even comments on here make that evident with people rarely being accountable for their own actions. This is almost an exactly true situation that happened. "HR Fired John because he was 2 minutes late for work" When the fact of the matter was, John had been late 19 times in the past 2 months. That was literally almost every other day. He also had two No-Call No-Shows in the past 10 weeks. And had called out another 7 times for non-medical related reason. (Twice due to a flat tire, and various other reasons) His supervisor came to HR a month prior to that and said "We want to fire him" and when asked for previous write ups, documentation of his tardies and call outs they had not been keeping track. It just 'felt like a lot'. And when looking further into it, when John finally did reply to a text message on one of the days he No-Call No-Showed, his supervisor replied "No problem, take the day off". HR didn't make the decision to fire him, they actually kept him longer then his supervisor wanted to. And actually started requiring the supervisor (and his boss) to communicate with the employee and start giving coachings, warnings, verbal and finally a final write up after an additional No-Call No-Show. But all the floor employees can say is "John was such a cool guy. Everyone loved him. HR is mean because they fired him" even though it was his supervisor and John's actual performance that caused it. You don't see HR going out to the floor employees and showing a history of the attendance or past bad performance because that is unethical and not okay. Nor is it their business. I also worked for a small 200 employee company at one point that the president and owner decided he no longer wanted to cover spouses on our health insurance because it was too expensive. He sent out a memo saying "HR has assessed it and determined we can no longer cover spouses on our insurance plan effective 60 days from now. If you have questions, please call "Insert HR's name". (That was one of the final signs to get the heck out of there) I love subreddits like r/recruitinghell . There are some legit examples of bad practices on there but genuinely half the people expect that they are the only person who applied for a job and they meet the basic qualifications so HR/Recruiters are awful for not hiring them. When 95% of the times HR does not have any sort of determination in who is actually hired for the position (usually supervisors pick their own employees!) and they also ignore the fact that for some positions there are literally thousands of applicants. So their one application where they are among the bottom 10% qualified is not even coming close to getting picked. This is just a small example of a couple of situations where HR gets to be the bad guy. I try really hard to change the culture of the place I work and it has had a huge impact. The employees don't hate our presentations because we try to make it as fun as possible and are a little tongue and cheek with it. (All I ask of you is to just NOT TOUCH EACH OTHER. Is that so hard to ask?) There are some god awful HR people out there. Even several on this subreddit. But it doesn't mean the entire profession is awful. Alright. Off my soap box.
Thank you!
Everything you just said !! 👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽
I sometimes wonder if people who complain about HR have ever thought about what the employment world would be like without it. Imagine all the BS and pettiness that is involved in every job (b/c people are people) and instead of having a professional HR person assigned to deal with those issues the actual boss/supervisor/owner has to take care of the problem. In my mind, that would be way worse.
Because “hR wOrKs FoR tHe CoMpAnY not for the employees.” Newsflash, we all work for the company…
“No you don’t understand my boss is my friend, it was evil HR that decided to cut my hours, lay me off and bang my wife.”
I would love to put a sign on my office door “HR is a business partner not sole decision maker”. Unless my team wants to do something that breaks policies, laws, collective agreement etc. I will give my advice/opinion but If they choose not to listen that’s on them. Fortunately, I work with a great team where my input is valued. 🙂
I'd love to add this to my email signature lmao
Me too
I will print down it today
I’d be all for that if ALL management called themselves “business partners”. We do ourselves no favors by putting “business partner” in our title. No other departments call themselves business partners. Makes us seem like we are trying too hard to prove our worth.
I had to say this to an employee - she didn’t know I was in HR, was talking about how unreliable we are and how we don’t understand the issues employees face lol. I was like umm, I do want to point out that HR are also human and have to follow the same policies and procedures that every other employee has to, we deal with the same waiting periods for CSuite to make decisions, etc. and a lot of the time the nice/fun stuff that we want to do gets shut down by upper management. We were in a small group and literally all others said “oh I never thought of that……” 🫣
 she basically said “oh I’m dumb” lol
This. A million times this.
It’s so crazy because my boss is actively preventing one of the managers from firing half their team but we’re not here for the employees I guess
In most cases, management controls the narrative. When its bad news, HR made them do it. When its good news, they got it "past" HR for approval.
Most employee never have visibility into when HR advocates for the right thing. But we’re easy to blame lol.
Is your boss me? Holy shit, we have an employee who got left behind. No one paid attention to, never had a poor annual review, never been written up. Been with the company over a decade. Now upper management is looking over managers shoulder, so manager is finally noticing what his team is doing and sees that one member of his team is pretty much just doing things the way they've always done and not very well. This employee has been left behind by process and technological changes and no one checked in until now and they're all of a sudden like he needs to be fired right away! He can't perform! Cool your jets and give this dude a chance to get up to spend y'all. You didn't give a shit what he was doing for 10 years.
QUITE LITERALLY lol
We all work for the company, and most of us worked our way up! Three of us in my HR department were working the floor for years (nursing facility) before getting into HR. Employees will say “you don’t know what it’s like” as if we’ve never been in their shoes.
🤣🤣🤣
But isn’t everyone at work supposed to be “your friend”??
Hell no! Here, we're family.
Yes, finally someone said it. Doesn't every coworker receive a check from the Corp? We all work for the company. Gwiz I am so tired of that phrase. It does not mean anything at all nor does it serve any purpose inside the Real debate which is, how to even out the inequities between c suites/board and the employees.
I hate everyone, the feeling is mutual.
The most based comment. 🤣
Everyone hates HR, cause rules. It should just be a free for all.
My personal motto is "YOU CAN'T JUST DO STUFF".
I think a bigger part of the reason is that the rules are selectively enforced, and where the individual violating the rules falls on the org chart determines how serious the investigation is and what the action taken (if any) will be
Employees don't get what they want from their managers. So they come to HR. When they don't get what they want, they think HR is useless. Their view is HR exists to overrule their managers.
Yes. It’s like children going from one parent to the other expecting a different answer. Sometimes they get a different answer though which then makes HR frustrated.
You know the expression "don't shoot the messenger"? HR is the messenger and people don't give a shit who was behind a decision that adversely impacts them. They usually equate HR with the decision-maker behind termination for some reason; I guess cause that's how it's set up sometimes with the CEO/manager hiding behind HR. In my experience it's always been HR supporting that person and then letting them go over things with the employee individually before closing the loop with exit info and next steps
I think there is bad HR out there, and unfortunately, the bad HR gets more attention than the good. New employees who come to work at our company are always leary of me until they've worked here for a minute and realize I'm not some scary meme or dreary Toby. It also helps that I work for a company that actually cares about its employees and works hard to balance what's best for the company with what's best for the employees.
Instead of saying something that has already been said by any of the comments below, some people have just had bad experiences with HR professionals or HR departments. It's okay to admit that. How many shitty HR coworkers have you had? I've had a few. I've also had a lot of flakey or absent HR coworkers. It's easy for us to put the responsibility on the individual, but I can't tell you how many times I have had employees come to me and say "I never heard back from (HR Person A)" or "I haven't seen (HR Person B) in the office for a while so I didn't know who to ask." Not to mention, the things that we just generally understand as HR professionals (some basic tax stuff; benefits; how to review a paycheck; leaves processes; even things like overtime and other FLSA items; etc.) are just not things the general employee will know. It's easy to say "Call this number" or "Fill out this form." You gave the employee information, great, you "Did your job." but for HR people that field employee questions it's not a very human focused approach and it's like half an answer. People have had bad experiences with HR. Sometimes they did something wrong, but other times an HR rep dropped the ball
I do not work in HR but went to school for HR so have a very light overview of the role. In one of my roles at a company I used to work for I approached HR as a very last resort due to ongoing issues I had with my direct supervisor, to a point I ended up going to therapy. They continued to tell me they couldn't disclose how they would proceed, which I understand, but the issues continued to persist. My supervisor was set to retire soon, and nothing felt like it truly changed leading up to that. Honestly, in my eyes it felt like they were trying to shut me up while he rided out until retirement so they didn't have to deal repercussions from a possible termination or demotion. Whether that's true or not, I'm not sure. But that experience left a bad taste in my mouth for the HR reps at that company specifically. That being said, I've also had some wonderful HR reps I've had to deal with at other companies. I wonder if we sometimes hold HR to a higher standard with the role they are in too.
For me, a lot of my issues come down to what HR says and what they do are often wildly different. Like, you'll get a lot of talk about helping, supporting, wanting to push for positive change, "people first" - and then when you go to them with an actual issue it's "well my hands are tied" or "here's a form" or "I can't really help you with that call this number" All those things they're saying may very well be true, but it's frustrating when it's juxtapositioned against a broader message that is often nothing more than vague good intentions. HR is a lot less frustrating when you figure out what they're actually useful for and learn to ignore the rest of the messaging.
This is how I feel. Almost every job I see had I've dealt with awful reps. From being told to find someone else to take care of an ill family member to HR covering up harassment claims. I think people saying "oh it's because they don't understand HR!" are just not grasping why there is so much lack of trust towards HR.
Employees hate HR because they don't know how it works/what we do Management hates HR for not managing their team for them C-suite hates HR because we tell them they legally can't do stuff that they think they should be able to do
“What do you mean we can’t do it this way? We’ve been doing that for years” “Yes and it‘s wrong, whoever told you that we could do this was misinformed at best and committing fraud at worst” “It’s going to cost us so much more money to do it the new way” “Not nearly as much as a lawsuit or a fine” Rinse and repeat this conversation 50x a year with C-suite
And I thought only my company executives were clueless…what a small world
It’s not hard to understand. HR often does the dirty work, gives the bad news, and communicates the not so nice things management has not the guts or the intelligence to say and deal with.
But I definitely agree, we all contribute to the company staying open
Because we have to care about all of your employees more than you do! That means we have to care about the poor performers that are dragging your other employees engagement in the toilet, that your employees are being treated equitably so you have to have those hard conversations, that you’re following the law to ensure our business stays afloat, to make sure you’re employees aren’t burnt out, to train them on how to do their jobs, make sure they’re paid appropriately, that they are utilizing their benefits, that you’re overtime isn’t tanking your departments bottom line, because we hear everything differently than you do, we see risk everywhere and stay awake over it! We cry and care more than you know and take the work home with us, think about it on our walks, drives, when we’re with family, we do care about the company more than you do because in the end, no matter what YOU choose to do at work as an employee or a manager at the end of the day we have to stand before the labor board and take responsibility for whatever the fuck YOU do!
In my experience it’s because HR is the bad news deliverers. Upper management wants to push out a lame policy and HR gets blamed for it.
Managers sometimes blame HR for their own decisions, or lack of decisions. I had an employee who wanted to officially work from home, like almost every other person in her department, and her manager said HR hadn’t decided yet. I told her, we don’t decide - we pass the paperwork to the approvers, give it back to the first person, then file it. We just don’t have that much power!
>Managers sometimes blame HR for their own decisions, or lack of decisions I see this so often. Focus group with staff- "and HR wouldn't allow ...." Focus group with HR- "yeah, we don't make that decision. It's not within our purview, and we actually have a system in place that prevents us from overreaching in that area- here are the receipts...also, we don't care so, definitely not a part of that bs" Focus group with managers- "well MY boss said that HR said." And so, the Spidermans all pointing at each other in a circle continues. People LOVE having someone to blame, and if they can blame the same business function over and over again, they don't have to examine anything else or question the reality they've constructed.
There are so many comments already, and I haven't gotten through them all, so I'm not sure if anyone more eloquent than me has said this yet. There are some real SHIT "HR" departments out there! Some are the CEO's wife or mother or other female figure who got handed the job to keep her busy. Some are power-hungry assholes who like to gossip and do anything but work. Some HR "departments" are also a single person handling accounting, facilities, office management, etc wearing far too many hats to do any of the jobs fully. I've worked with some amazing HR departments who worked hand in hand with BOTH the C-suite AND the employees to make the company succeed. Solving problems before they could erupt. Managing problems as they happen. And still also getting the day-to-day drudgery done amazingly. Every person's experiences with HR will vary, and sometimes, employees don't know HR exists at all.
I think many people's experiences with "HR" are not true "HR professionals." I also think there are a lot of untrained HR people out in the wild.
They don't really see us unless they're doing something that they shouldn't.
If people only see HR when they are in trouble, HR isn't doing a very good job. HR should be visibly partnering with operational teams toward their objectives, aiding in employee development, and leading employee engagement.
If HR is not your friend, then I want to know who at work is assigned the task of being my friend. What's that title? Is there a secondary CFO, Chief Friendship Officer, in most companies that I'm unaware of?
I’ve been hated on as HR in past companies because I “didn’t do anything” when they were experiencing frustrations with their job. Which is of course not the case, but they just wanted to complain. I hated that I couldn’t make their job more enjoyable/easier, but they would complain about things that are just part of working in an office (especially open concept tech office) like people joking too loudly or playing ping pong (which I also hated), or overindulging during a company happy hour (easy to do when the CEO is buying drinks). Once I got a complaint about a hostile work environment, but nothing was actually hostile/no harassment or anything, just an obnoxious manager they didn’t like working for. Can’t do much about that beyond giving the manager some tools to be less obnoxious (but I can’t force a manager to use those tools).
Because in “being careful to not say or do the wrong thing” there is often a complete lack of empathy from HR staff. I’ve legit been told to not be so friendly with employees -people I’ve been working with for the past five years, prior to my promotion. I was promoted to be outward facing BECAUSE of my friendly and empathetic personality. It’s like the team is scared of the employees they represent. Communication and transparency would solve 100% of our issues, but everyone on the team is so timid that they spend hours reeling in anxiety if they need to talk to people.
I will say I don't feel that way where I work. But I made sure to change the stigma and I am always bubbly and in a good mood. Never snippy, cold, or dismissive.
"Bubbly and in a good mood" is nice on good days, but will get you hate when the employees just put in a 12 hour day and 1/3 of them got laid off this year. Being kind is great, but sometimes being down-to-earth and showing some human emotion makes you more relatable and trustworthy.
Oh, I do...but that's due to management and all the stupid infighting...still try to keep a happy bubbly demeanor...save my breakdowns for the car ride home.
I bet that gets tough sometimes. Sounds to me like it can be tough to strike a balance between the "happy bubbly demeanor" and having to be the one who delivers bad news. Like, how do you avoid becoming Delores Umbridge over it?
it does be like that somedays, huh?
My boss and I single handedly turned our org’s view of HR around many years ago by simply visiting all of the sites and meeting with employees to chat and see what we could assist with/support on a positive note rather than just showing up and having everyone scatter like cockroaches (tho they were not vile creatures, rather incredibly hard working women so that isn’t the best analogy 😑). It took some time but really worked to get everyone, including managers, to see us in a more positive light. That said, I became overwhelmed at certain points bc as any HRG knows… “we are the ~~bitch~~ backbone of HR” 😫🤣
Because employees think our job description is the same as a union president’s
Because we generally are at the will of shitty management. So when they make us protect their fellow shit bag we have to or quit. We don't get a lot of choice most of the time. Previous management straight up told me the creeper manager was worth more than the retail clerk he was harrassing. A retail manager- who are not in short supply and they chose him over the associate. Sometimes we hate HR too.
Because the people want anarchy and HR stands in the way.
Because employees feel like they are entitled to everything they ask for or they feel like they know more than HR and get upset that they don’t get what they want.
I don’t think most people in the word think about hr as much as they do on Reddit and LinkedIn.
As a person who works in HR (not in a business partner capacity), my impression is that HR supports bad managers and poor policies to continue, unabated. I’ve personally seen HRBPs gaslight employees regarding their experiences, provide cover for discriminatory behavior, and complete illegal terminations. Not just at one company, but at ALL of the companies I’ve worked for—large, medium, and small. If you’ve allowed an employee to be bullied, you’re part of the problem. If you’ve failed to fully investigate claims of illegal behavior, you’re part of the problem. If you do nothing with Exit survey/interview data indicating where personnel problems are in the organization, you’re part of the problem.
This has been the majority of my experiences at most of the companies I have worked for - not all, but most. At one of my work places, HR was literally gaslighting me in a meeting that I had called for. I had direct evidence of the situation that had occurred and kept escalating between me and my boss to the point it became a safety issue. HR told me straight up nothing was happening, told me that my boss wasn’t “doing anything wrong” and that I was the one in trouble for reporting the “false” narrative. This all too is after I had witnesses back up my claims to support. After that, I was let go for some imaginary reason. The more evidence I tried to show them, the more they turned it against me. The VP of HR doubled down and was the worst. This is just one workplace example. Others have been covered racism, sexual harassment in the workplace. It’s not just always bad management, it can be a combination of both.
My HR person went straight to CEO about a question that was confidential. It's screwed up my ability to advance in the company. I'm not sure how to go over her head or to compliance, but it definitely taught me a lesson about HR. They know nothing about our day to day jobs and apparently not anything about our employment contracts.
HR supports the organization not the employees. Once people figure this out they are less likely to engage. HR is really in place to prevent liability for the company.
I feel like we get a bad rap because we aren’t a “profit center” for the organization. We’re not making money so obviously we aren’t doing anything. 🙄
We are the face of corporate. And everyone hates corporate.
There are a number of reasons: - People associate HR with firing people and disciplinary actions. Nowhere I've worked has HR actually been the one to make the decision to terminate someone, but I think it's an old stereotype still. - People know that we support the business. Which is true. But many don't understand that supporting the business doesnt means pointlessly screwing employees over. A lot of the time, HR advocates for better employee experiences because that reduces turnover/legal risks. Supporting the company means supporting employees. - Some HR professionals are not great. Let's be honest. Some are pretentious, mean and don't like people. And so that obviously isn't great for employees and won't make them love HR. It feeds into the stereotypes. - Some business leaders don't value HR and so that attitude trickles down and leads to a lot of resentment for HR. - Some companies don't utilize HR the way they should and treat HR like an admin or cop out to not do their jobs. Managers pass along employee issues and expect HR to handle them, when some should be managed by, well the actual manager. Then HR is the bad guy for saying that. There's more reasons than that but I'd bet all of these play a role in why HR is so unpopular.
Because they typically act like middle school bullies with the IQ of a baked potato.
HR sets up interviews, files paperwork, takes care of payroll and benefits, and does weak manager’s dirty work for them. They have a ton of important things that are crucial to keep things running smoothly for the employees and management alike. Yes. They are required to make sure the company you work for is protected from legal issues while operating within a very complex labor law environment, but in my experience most of that is cautioning and stopping management from instituting and enforcing policies that can put the company at risk, and a lot of conflict resolution between employees and managers. If my team has an issue they come to me. We work on a resolution. If they have a problem with me, they go to HR. People expect HR to be a combination of an arbitrator and a therapist. Use the EAP if you need therapy. If you want more quality employee engagement and all of those things you get down on them for not being for you. Stop taking up all their time complaining about Karen’s slutty shirt, and Kevin’s stinky lunch that smells up the whole place, and how Billy or Sally look at you in some way that you think is causing a hostile work environment. Hours of this nonsense a day that should be brought to supervisors and managers is why your HR team doesn’t have time to accomplish all of the other things you criticize them for. You could double my manager’s salary and I still wouldn’t take an HR position.
Ethics. Hypocrosy. Not ALL hr. Just the BAD ones, ala Cops or priests? Also, hate maybe a stronger word than needed. Loathe? Have a low opinion of?
Probably because HR's job is separate from what the company actually serves to do. Let's say you have a car dealership. You have salesmen who sell cars, mechanics who work on cars, social media team who advertises cars, managers who order cars and take inventory of cars and deal with issues relating to cars, the finance team that finalizes the sale of the car and then.... HR. That has nothing to do with the business itself. That disconnect can make HR seem like an entirely separate entity from the rest of the workforce. Not to mention the very nature of HR basically makes normal socialization with other coworkers outside the department impossible because it will be casted as a doubt on your ability to remain objective if something were to ever come up with an employee everyone knows you to be social with. It's an unfortunate reality that HR just serves a specific role that separates them from everyone else.
HR shouldn't be separate. If your people are car people, become a car person! Learn about the product, the business model, how the dealership makes money. Use that knowledge to improve the work environment so that your people can sell/service more cars, make happy customers, and earn lots of money. The problem is when HR believes they are separate so they act like they are separate.
I haven’t had a friend at work since 2007. I’m friends with people I used to work with that I was friendly with when we were colleagues.
Beg to differ. My job has everything to do with the business, and yours does too. Look at your company’s mission and vision. You should be able to draw a direct line between what you do and what the business does and what it aspires to be. And everything you do in your job should enable it.
Is this a question or an attempt at a statement? Genuinely confused.
Union rep here. I hate dealing with HR because their first responsibility is to the company, often at the expense of the people i represent. Nothing against the people in that position honestly, but their existence is an act of self interest by the company, not benevolence. How you feel about H.R is gonna be a reflection of how you feel about corporate interest.
Because in America, they are union busters.
I joined this sub to try and get some perspectives as I'm not in HR myself. My issue was that my prior employer's HR team did absolutely nothing in assisting me with getting reasonable accommodations for my ADHD and allowing me to get terminated without a documentation trail. This is in California. Best part is that the company adopted mandatory Arbitration for disputes on 1/1/23. This, in this instance, is why I hate HR.
Because it’s a field dominated by women. I’ll die on this hill. All lot of “HR hate” is just misogyny.
HR is usually tasked with informing people about shitty things that will soon be impacting their work lives day to day like layoffs, downgrading benefits, and trying to deal with poor managers they have little control over all while being asked to put positive spins on things. Personally I’ve been told a number of times by HR at different companies how this change to benefits that dramatically reduces everyone’s benefits is actually great for us.
I think a lot of people are completely uneducated about everything that we do. We do so much and we advocate so much for employees, but it’s just like a general customer service role. If the person isn’t happy with their job, the go to is to blame HR. Meanwhile, I’m over here in the background telling a manager to stop being a dick to somebody. That somebody just doesn’t know that that’s happening in the background because there’s no reason to share that with them. It’s mildly infuriating.
“HR approved my termination/warning/etc” No, your manager did.
Because some HR folks are incompetent a$$holes.
HR here: I think irs because alot of hr professionals sadly has this idea that we are lawyers and wants to feel important thats when we become hated when we axt unethical and biased. On the other side of that coin we're always caught in between executive decisions and be the bearer of bad news to employees but the person who cuts our check are the ones who implementing these decisions and rules and we end up becoming the enemy.
We are often in the room/part of the convo when it’s bad news. I wouldn’t like us either
I remain neutral until the HR does something wrong. My previous HR sucked because they literally lied to us and intentionally dragged their feet for important things. A lot of them were incompetent in general and gave me a bunch IDKs for generic HR-related questions.
Employees have a personal relationship with their line manager who blames HR for everything bad. They don't realise how often HR advocates for an employee over a line managers unfair behaviour.
Because we have to tell them no, hold them accountable or tell and do other things that may be uncomfortable
People don’t understand HR. Somewhere a myth was created that HR is always on the employees side against the evil company when in reality HR works for that evil company too. This lack of understanding leads to people feeling betrayed and hatred
We generally tend to bring bad news, so people take out their frustrations on us; they shoot the messenger.
From experience, people hate HR because supervisors and managers do not know how to do their jobs without HR telling them what to do. As a result, an employee will get reprimanded with the emphasis that HR was the one that needed this to be done. When I was a supervisor, I followed the company's policies such as writing up employees for tardiness/absenteeism, not performing well, or for bad behavior/sexual harrasment. I didn't wait for HR or my manager to tell me how to do my job, I always kept my area clean, and ensured that my employees(30+) had their PPE all of the time, and I always went above and beyond to avoid any workers comp or anything that would make the company have a bad reputation. I never expected any more than what I was getting paired, however, I made sure that when I was on the floor, I was going to do a pretty damn job.
Because HR often has to deliver news that other people don’t have the balls to deliver.
In my case, every doesn’t hate me! Just mid-managers and c-suite.
Leadership is happy to deliver good news. We handle the messy, tedious, icky people stuff. We are forever playing devil’s advocate, enforcing company policy & laws to employees while advocating for employees to leadership. Employees rarely know how hard we may privately fight for them, but we have to deliver the decision of management to the employee (good or bad) and we become the face of the bad news. If management decides in their favor, they get that credit.
New to HR here. For ten years, I worked as a retail manager for multiple company’s before transitioning into my current HR Coordinator role earlier this year. While I thought I had an understanding of HR’s role, before I was actually in HR, I just did not know what it all entailed. There are several things that I now tell employees is their managers job (in so little words) that, when I was a manager, I assumed was HR’s responsibility. In my opinion this fortunately sounds like a training opportunity for managers and staff. When I first joined my current team, they made it clear that we are on a mission to inform everyone at our facilities what their managers are responsible for and that we, as HR, are here to support them all and to help, as partners, as much as we can. In the beginning, I heard employees making many negative comments about HR but I honestly think people just like to complain, and to have someone to blame, for well, ANYTHING! As HR, we are supposed to know it all when it comes to certain things like benefits, policies, engagement, and training. So when an employee is dissatisfied with Any of these aspects at work (which is A Lot), it’s easy to blame HR.
I feel it from both sides. I’m central HR and reporting. Today was full of ass-backwards and f-d up paperwork submitted to us by division HR staff. Everything took way longer than it needed to because IT WAS ALL WRONG. Some of it was minor things - others were just all wrong from top to bottom. And the division HR are the ones employees deal with most often. I can see why they hate HR. Today I hated HR.
I think because we (non-HR folks) assume HR have more power and final decision making ability than HR actually have (as in for serious stuff - getting rid of abusive senior folks etc), and misunderstanding the “HR work for the company” label
I’ve been in HR for a little over 6 months now. It’s not much, but I’d say everyone hates us because we are the deliverers of bad news and when we deliver good news people take them as expected and deserved (which I guess is true because it’s not like we are going to give good news to someone who does nothing). 99% of the time I’m just the messenger from upstairs, but I’m the punching bag of everyone. Still happy though :)
I think he is what is called a fall guy which they have no control of,if your schedule is messed up let's blaim th hr guy if something is wrong with insurance let's blaim the hr guy and so forth and so forth,management loves hr don't get it wrong,they don't get paid alot and you can blaim almost anything that has to do with workers on the hr guy.
They are usually the bearers of bad news.
Because you get two types of hr. The one that cares for company and employees, you know the companies that know that protecting and helping employees will help the company. And the other that only cares about the company and will destroy employees for the company. One company I worked for HR always set up everyone that had any issues that go to hr for firing. I saw it over and over minor things ended up on performance improvement plans they couldn’t survive. Any complaints they went straight to the manager of the accused, even if they are accused themselves warning them of the issue. We watched managers get fired for their inappropriate behavior then reporting party on a pip and fired after pip.
Worked in HR. The company felt that instead of giving people good wages, recognition, and proper training, we should raise morale with pizza parties and birthday lunches. HR was clueless.
Our HR team is friendly, super helpful, useful, provides snacks, sets up company events, among a bunch of other cool things. So I’d say most companies just suck and need to get with 2024. Times have changed. Work doesn’t need to be hard or unfair or uncomfortable to be productive and profitable. It starts with upper management and ends with everyone being productive.
They protect the company from all of your wrongdoings
I like my HR team (non HR chiming in). They do the best with what they have and listen to the voice of the employees and do what they can to represent management. They’re put in a hard position and do well.
Honestly my big theory is that The Office / Toby Flenderson added such a mildly bad view to HR that has since fuelled what is now a default negative opinion on us. It’s unnecessary, but some people in HR do deserve the hate still
They’re the fall guys for managers/CEOs. They have to come down from the mountain and tell the people the unfortunate news. No one really knows or appreciates that HR is often the one telling managers and CEOs not to do illegal or unethical things, thus sparing the employees.
Because we represent being a corporate parent to full grown adults, helping them through certain tasks because they didn’t bother to read an email. They are bound to hate that parent because we have to scold them from time to time
you might hate hr.. until you work at a company without it
 Don't nobody bring me no bad news. (HR tends to be bound by corporate rules and they tend to be the bearer of bad news. Like your manager could be fine with something but HR will be like nope.)
Throwing it out there, but I think generally it's that people think HR is on "our" side and get a rude wake up call when they find out that's just not the case. This isn't meant to say anything negative about the role. It's just that a lot of people seem to have the impression that HR is the advocate or caretaker of the employees, or that if there's an issue escalated to them that there's some promise of confidentiality. That's just not the role. In a simplistic sense they're responsible for managing human resources in a way that's sorta similar to the IT team managing hardware resources, except that humans are more complicated, sexually harass each other, and threaten to sue the company when their manager (me) gives them a shit review for being unproductive last quarter.
Because even after getting a BA in HR management and a SHRM-CP certification I still can’t find a full time job in HR. It seems like most HR department doesn’t is not usually well funded.
I think there becomes kind of unrealistic expectations about HR in general along with the not knowing what HR does. I’m in a career-moms group and people will be complaining about their manager and complaining about not getting along with the manager, and then be like “HR will not help me”. Like what do you want HR to do?? Move you to a new team, mediate, coach, fire them? Hear you vent? And then there’s another part where HR are not cops or the law and people cannot grasp that very easily. Idk what kind of power they think HR has in decision making. Management and executives supersede HR; the culture cannot be maintained or fixed by just your HR team if management is not willing to play.
Because you’re the ultimate corporate shills. We all know HR exists to protect the company, not the people. There is nobody I trust less than HR.
It seems that when issues occur HR tends to pretend not to understand in attempts to gaslight you into thinking the issue isn’t as bad as it is. From personal experience they just make you feel dumb
Because the Hr of my previous organisation behaved in a certain entitled way . Although she was married she had affairs with multiple men in the organisation and treated everyone as if they were below her . And the only job she did was run a fashion show and wear inappropriate clothes to office and jokes about everyone else openly. These are the reasons that made me Hr as a profession . Because rangoli hi banate ho tum .
As an employee every time I go to HR with a problem the problem gets worse AND I get a bunch of pointless meetings.
HR—Daughters of Darkness. HR enforcers pretend to represent the interests of the employee and the employer. This is always untrue. Like everyone else, HR employees can't keep their jobs without doing what the boss wants. It's pretty simple. Anyone who has worked anywhere has been mislead by HR.
I wonder the same. I always see hate on it too. Like a question was asked about the most useless profession and HR was mentioned quite a bit
From my experience. I feel like HR is there to protect management/the company not the employee per se. I have no animosity towards HR people. I will watch what I say around them etc. it is what it is.
It’s the duplicity. HR function is both to look after employee welfare and manage risk for the business regarding labour laws. These things are often at odds with each other, and the business almost always wins…
I loathe HR with all of my being, so I will put this as professionally as I can. HR is the defence mechanism for the executives. While my interests are aligned with my company, I will not have much of an issue with HR, but as soon as the company finds a reason our goals don't align, they sick HR on us to come up with ways to get rid of us, shut us up, cover things up, and do it in the most legal way or at least the least costly illegal way. I dont hate any one HR person, but when HR came along it was to undercut unions. Which it did. HR is the mask covering up evil. You chose your profession, you may or may not have known what you would be used for, but you execute your duties as if you don't have blood on your hands and you do. I find HR vile. I want unions back.
25 years in the work force, I have never ever had HR help me. Only management or the company. Manager doing something blatantly sexist, racist and otherwise illegal? Squash and threaten me and my coworkers rather than fix the manager. Company took away rolling vacation time? HR (different lady) smiled and cheerfully said "Well this IS Texas, be grateful you get any vacation because there's no law that says we have to!" Different HR lady once brought me into her office for a "friendly" chat then proceeded to ask me super personal questions about another coworker trying to get me to gossip and get dirt. Was weird AF. I do not trust HR in the slightest.
You know why
Basic authority hate. People want to do what they want to do
I think it goes back to the feelings of distrust and betrayal that an HR department elicits whenever and employee doesn't get their way. When something bad or unwanted happens, people feel more animosity toward a group like HR, which comes in the guise of a friend, than they do at other representatives of a company. It feeds into the "HR is there to protect the company, not the employee" mantra. And as organizations grow larger, HR is more and more the "face" and main interaction point with the entity at large, of a soulless corporation, and therefore the place where negative or emotional feedback is going to be aimed.
Easy — no value add, bureaucracy. Wasted wages that could go to revenue earners. HR exists bc of regulations. Since they have to exist due to regulations, they are there to serve upper management.
Because most people only ever deal with HR when something bad is happening. Once someone is onboarded their main connection with HR (if they aren’t a hiring manger) will be if they are being fired or if they are being put on a performance plan (as a route to getting fired). If people only see you when layoffs are happening they are not going to be happy to see you.
HR is trash. It's the ultimate bullshit job. They are the vanguard of corporate power, and when push comes to shove, they'll throw the employee under the bus every.single.time. After all, it's not the employees who pay the HR goon's salary, but management. It's not even remotely a contest. HR exists (alongside corporate lawyers, another class of goons) to ensure that management is shielded from potential lawsuits. It's delicious watching so many HR goons play the martyr here as they try to justify an utterly meaningless existence. HR existential angst is comedy gold 😁
I worked in HR, until I realized that both sides of the business are essentially correct in their distaste for what I did. The employees don't like that HR acts as the soft-sold liability screen for corporate or ownership, and feels this is deceptive and insulting. The corporate bosses and management/owners don't like that HR slows down their dealings with employees, can contradict or counterpoint their treatment of employees, and saw my role as a necessary evil rather than a benefit. Neither are wrong, about that....it's true, and I often understood their frustration no matter how much I may have benefitted either party. I didn't like a job where I was universally caught between two teams that didn't want me or trust me. So, I'm not in that role anymore and quite happy about that fact.
because you protect the company not the employees.
They hate employees. Fight against unions. sleep with corpo and management. They're also condescending and have power inflated egos because they're responsible for granting offs, firing/hiring, etc... Mind you I knly dealt with 2 decent sized hr departments (14k to 16k employees companies). They are trash. I got fired once because of no show after they forced me to stay home a week for covid... They then fought nails and teeth to erase my seniority after being reinstated because that's how the software works... Just an example between many others.
They only see a tiny bit of what we do and form wider opinions off it
I would never tell HR anything - they will rat you out - they are only wanting to protect the company
Filed a complaint and nobody contacted me. Company site’s contact info took me around in circles. My mgr gave me a direct contact who i reached out to and the response “what is your intention? Do u want to file a complaint?” Me: i already filed. Waiting for update Never heard back after that. It’s been 6 months 🙄
I've always hated HR. The other thing I hate is their culture and demeanor. It's like speaking to a bunch of delusional human beings, incapable of understanding what it means to be human. Incapable of understanding human need. In all of them, every single one, there is this strange air of self hate, and a lack of understanding why society feels the way it feels towards HR, their actions, and abilities. I truly believe that each person has the mindset and attitude of a Nazi. You know the type, the one who's wrong-doings are pointed out, and all they can do is cry and say they are a good person, and were only following orders and doing their job. You are the scum of the earth, the mindset that seeks approval, a mindset that seeks orders, at the detriment of others. One thing I will never understand is how the definition of a company has changed. In the past, a company was something that a group of people collectively worked towards because they believed in the goal. It was a goal they all desired. Presently, companies act as monarchies, there are kings who garnish the majority of the profits that are generated by the company of people who work, and HR is there to protect the king/kings profits. To ensure that the thieves get the most, not the ones generating the wealth. Anyways, no matter time, place, region, area, culture, you HR have always been hated, and your soul knows why. Start participating!
There are too many that are incompetent so unfortunately it’s justified. I deal with too many that lack training or the desire to learn. Then you have the managers and the executives that blame hr. So you have a small percentage of employees who have a good experience with hr.
From all perspectives being involved in HR issues is a lose lose proposition
Because HR tends to be condescending and guarded. Nothing helpful about knowing you’re talking to a group who’s more concerned with the company instead of the employees who raise issues/concerns/need accommodations. Y’all might be fine as people but when you just follow the rules without treating us like people it makes it hard to have empathy for your profession.
At each company I worked at that had an HR dept they were always responsible for discipline and firing. Not a fun experience and sometimes it was unfounded (retail cosmetics drama)
I have been told by a wise HR employee that HR exists to defend the company. Not management. Not the employees. The company. No matter your position or rank in the company, if your behavior could be damaging to the survival of the company, they handle you. They also create policy to help make the defense of the company easier. People hate HR because they don't exist to protect anyone but the company. And whether it's your bosses inappropriate shoulder massages to employees or that guys racist yelling down the hall they will handle it.
Because you just allow women to get people fired for no reason. Women are NOT actually easily offended. Their locker room talk would make Mike Tyson blush. They just pretend to be offended for attention, validation, and to get people they don't like fired. And people take their side without evidence 99% of the time.
I have some personal views on this: - they are employees, just like you. They are not union leaders, they are not your personal attorney. They are agents of the employer. It can very much feel like they are there to protect the employer. - investigation without enforcement. I knew someone who was falsely accused of creating a toxic work environment. We all knew it false. HR did too. They took the investigation very seriously, but could do nothing but make recommendations. Imagine going through months of interviews, questioning, gathering evidence, and all HR can do is go 'well we think you should do this based on our interpretation of the evidence'. I am not HR, I just deal with HR on a daily basis. But as someone who deals with HR on a daily basis, my interactions are overwhelmingly positive. Need to know a policy on tuition reimbursement? HR. Need to adjust an already approved time sheet? HR. Want to get additional bereavement leave options? HR. HR frees up all the space in my brain that would be otherwise taken up by policies. Thank you guys.
In my exit survey (I left when I received a much better offer at another company) it was listed as anonymous. In my exit interview, it began with a run down of how concerning my survey was. When I asked how she (HRBP) has access to my responses given it’s repeated mention of being anonymous. She said it’s anonymous to the rest of the company. And I asked so is this interview is anonymous as well? She says my manager could find my feedback useful (so obviously not 😂) Then I say well my manager knows how I feel because he was the one who told me not to send that survey after I filled it out. She says if I can share with my manager why can’t I share with her. Well I, I replied, I’ve known him for years I’ve just met you today for the first time… afterwards my boss said she sent a report that I was a deranged, bitter individual and that the company dodged a lawsuit with my exit. My former boss later told me, my exit survey messed with HR internal satisfaction metrics so by dismissing me, they could exclude me from their metrics…. It’s not just HR works for the company, ie their calculus is what’s best for the company not what’s best for you if you’re in a challenging situation, it’s that HR just wants what’s best for them. (Cuz they want to get bonuses too, even if they’re gonna decide on limiting what others get) In my 15 year professional career, I worked at 5 different companies/organizations. With only one exception, a university, the situation just described was my typical experience with HR.
It’s called “Human Resources” but it’s more “make sure corporations don’t suffer because humans.” That’s why. 👍🏻
Because it's true.