HR departments see employees as the enemy

Great 👍

Fact remains the majority of the time they hide behind HR, even if they dont directly say so, and they (used to be we) get this sort of abuse because people, for some inexplicable reason, genuinely think HR make the decisions all the time.

There was nothing reasonable. Sweeping derogatory statements help no one, as well as being bloody rude.

"its not me its HR"

I've never had a manager say that to me, except in the case of HR fucking up paperwork and then they were as pissed off as I was.

Funny seeing these threads.

You do realise that the majority of the time your cool and reasonable line manager who said "its not me its HR" is actually the one driving the decision to treat you badly, they can then hide behind big bad HR because it's not as if HR can say "this is what management want me to do"?

Reason why I left HR. Because I got fucking fed up of being the one blamed for disciplinaries, terminations, redundancies etc. while managers got to say "oh it's not my decision, it's HR"

As I always said to fellow employees "if only I had as much power as you think I have....."

If someone says ridiculous things they should be called up for it. What, in your opinion, was reasonable about that poster’s statement?

Why work in HR when you can be a douchebag on mumsnet?

Hmmm

HR is part of internal security whose function is to detect weaknesses in the employees. ``I'm from HR and I'm here to help you.'' Believing that is not even naïve.

I think HR is a bit like social work - they can’t ever argue their case to the general public because the majority of their work is highly confidential and can’t be commented on.

My experience of HR teams is good, they have provided sound employment law advice when needed. IME many managers use them as a ‘get out jail free card’ even though HR have acted in an advisory/supporting role which perpetuates the idea that they’re all bastards who are out to get you.

Total absence of any brain cells

In the earlier Cormoran Strike books by Robert Galbraith, there's a subplot where Robin's relationship is under strain. Her fiance/husband (can't remember where they're at at that point) is a bit shallow, corporate and materialistic and he wants her to take a job that's secure, relatively well paid with higher salary likely to come, corporate, boring and fairly cushy rather than the low-paid, unpredictable private detective work that she actually loves. The job he wants her to take is in HR.

I don't think Rowling was insulting people in HR personally but I think she was being pretty honest about the nature of it as a job.

Those who can, do; those who can't, work in HR.

I just use ‘professional’ instead of worker. To define their area of expertise. I also say IT professional etc. I have never thought about it much!

I’ve worked in HR for 35 years and have never encountered someone with the job title HR Professional. If that’s the case in your organisation then it’s as wanky as it comes. However if you’re talking about the profession collectively then it’s perfectly appropriate to refer to HR professionals, the same way you’d refer to Accounting or Legal or Estates or Marketing professionals etc. You might want to take the large chip of your shoulder and keep your “lofty opinions” to yourself.

Ultimately HR will act to protect the organisation they work for.

I think its really dependant on the company though. I switched to HR, because I had some truly horrible experiences but I always remembered the good people, and I wanted to be one of them! Change is only possible dependant on who is running it, and how much support they have from Senior Management in order to make change.

It is also interesting to see it from the employers perspective, and from the law.

Don’t often see people say things like this about male dominated industries oddly enough.

I don’t work in my company’s HR, but work closely with them in an adjacent team. Like everywhere there’s some good, some bad. Can’t think of a team I can’t say the exact same about. For the most part they’re all lovely people doing their best to help people on a case by car basis, or working on improving the organisations policies as a whole.

Why do we have to put 'professionals ' after their title? They work in a section of the business like everyone else. No more 'professional' than the next person.

HR 'employees' often have a very lofty opinion of themselves and their importance, I always have problems with them in my public sector role.

We used to have a great HR team originally, really fair on both sides, excellent. The head of HR retired and we got someone who was truly appalling, rude, indiscreet, all smiles to management but could be dreadful to staff. Gradually the good team left, and the head recruited in their own image. It was toxic.

We went through several bouts of restructuring and redundancies during my time at the firm. Thankfully I survived all of them, especially as at one point DH had been made redundant and I was carrying the mortgage and bills on my own. My boss had a bit of a temper on him and could be monstrous at times (nothing I couldn't handle) but one day I just leant back in my chair and said to my workmates that he was being such a pain I wished they had made me redundant. One of the HR team was passing behind me and did no more than go straight to my boss, and their boss and told them what I'd said.

HR manager went to my boss and asked him if he wanted to facilitate this, I was called in by my boss who asked me about it, and then I had to go and see the HR manager. Several frustrating meetings just to explain that someone had taken an off the cuff remark as gospel.

This was just an indication of the sort of thing they did. Several colleagues had overheard conversations represented as gospel, personal information disclosed outside of HR etc which caused problems between PAs and their bosses, between team members. It was dreadful.

It all came to a head and the whole HR team was restructured, but then management in their wisdom outsourced the whole HR function to the same company as they used for their accounting which was all well and good, except they were in India, and not much better than the UK team to be honest.

Sorry this post is so long, but just wanted to give my experience of HR.

I haven’t read the full thread but I would agree! I was thinking about going into HR as a career change, as I like people and thought it would be nice to help people in a work place. My friend who works high up in HR told me not to go into HR if that’s the reason. She said it’s not about the employee it’s about the employer, and they are there to fight the side of the employer. Which does make sense. But also put me off pursuing a career in Hr!

And...?

Why are you singling me out? And not even by actually responding to my points?

@NonPlayerCharacter

I’d say posters who can see issues with HR but don’t write off an entire group of people whether HR or other employees are fairly balanced yes.

Yes, and every other poster including you is a wise balanced judge on this matter.

I did not always feel this way about HR. Once when I was much younger, there were a zillion layoffs happening, all to people whose jobs quite clearly were not actually redundant (I've found very few redundancies to be real, but that's another matter). I was worried, stressed and upset (several friends and really talented people were getting cut, largely to serve the purposes of incompetent twats higher up, which seems to be how it usually goes) and went to see the head of HR who, to be fair, was really lovely and supportive to me. She has since left the industry.

Now, though, my lived experience is just as I've said. The department knows too much about you and will use underhanded techniques to try to get more information even when it is none of their business and they do not need to know. They are branded as if they are there to prioritise employees but they're not (this, I think, is the key issue). They're crap with paperwork. Etc etc.

The thing I find funny is that they're surprised when people notice this. Managers get a fair load of flak too, but they never seem surprised or offended by it!

There must be some good HR people, as evidenced on this thread, but I have not come across them.

I also dont nake sweeping generalisations about any other professions. I have come across good and bad doctors, GP receptionists, teachers etc.

Perhaps my choice of field (exclusively public and third sector) means I have come across the under funded, less specialised, incompetent HR professionals. I feel certain that my current situation would not exist in the private sector, my direct report would have been sacked months ago.

You are clearly looking for what aligns with your point of view and ignoring the many posts by HR people agreeing that there is a lot of bad HR out there and looking at why. You would rather only acknowledge the more defensive posts from people who object to being called stupid, useless, pointless, evil etc for their job.