Why are HR people so toxic?

[workingwork]

Bullying and gaslighting, making up complete lies about you, using minor irrelevant details about you to twist into a story.

I know I know, HR are there to protect the employer, not the employees, but come on.

One of the HR people is my line manager, I tried complaining to her manager and I should've known it would all backfire. They're always going to turn things around and blame it on you, aren't they.

I was in an abusive relationship once and the techniques they use are very similar. I'm not exaggerating.

I know there's nothing I can do about this. The only option I have is to walk out as it's clear their poisonous behaviour will never stop.

Sadly HR have to deal with a lot of toxic nutcases who have an enormous sense of entitlement. We all have people at work who every hates, who rip the piss out of policies, always off sick, always raising grievances etc. Imagine having to deal with that every single day.

I loved the explanations because I had no clue what the abbreviations meant. But, what's the point of GIL? surely if upu have a girlfriend it's assumed you love them. Otherwise they wouldn't be your girlfriend. Or do some people have GIHs? 😀

I'm not in HR but am in a role where I work closely with HR, and some of the most dedicated, compassionate people I have ever met work there. Yes, of course there have been people who were unpleasant and/or incompetent, but I have known plenty of people like that across the wider organisations too - including, gasp, plenty in teams doing the core business.

It doesn't matter where you work, every single 'grievance' and 'bullying' policy aren't worth the paper they're written on.

I've never heard of one of them going the individual's way.
There's always bullshit reasons why they are delayed, just prolonging the process.

They don't care. I've had 2 separate incidences of being bullied where i work, but I've never seen one (brought by other members of staff) be handled professionally.

Like any profession there are good and bad HR people/teams.

Without HR how would you get paid? How would you ensure you are correctly paid? How would you ensure your company complies with HMRC tax rules and reporting requirements?

How would you ensure you are lawfully employing people?

I cannot tell you how many times I have had to stop senior managers from making a decision that would break the law.

HRs role is to mitigate risks to the business by ensuring employees and managers comply with employment legislation. You would be amazed at what we have to consider, this is why employees and managers need to follow policies and procedures that they consider unnecessary.

HR should support an adult adult relationship between management and employees. Sadly many managers and employees expect HR to do their tasks for them, which leads to a parent child relationship.

HR are not mind readers or psychic, but many employees and managers think we are. If you don’t tell us how are we expected to know.

A really good example of why you need HR is this thread ( www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/4633160-if-you-dont-usually-work-mondays-and-now-theres-an-extra-bank-holiday?page=4&reply=120074338) about the extra Bank Holiday for the Queen’s funeral.

So many people don’t understand that in granting an extra BH, HR have to consider the following:

• What are the statutory entitlements to BH - none
• what are the statutory entitlements to paid holiday (leave) Working Time Regulations, Employment Rights Act.
• What are the legal requirements for part time staff - Equality Act, The Part-time Workers (Prevention of Less Favourable Treatment) Regulations
• what is in employees contracts about BH I.e. are they part of leave entitlement or on top of leave entitlement - contract law
• How do we need to configure the payroll and HR systems to administer and pay the extra Bank Holiday?
• How do we calculate part timer and compressed hours entitlement?
• How much will it cost the business? Lost productivity + Employer NI + employer pension contributions + additional admin time.
• How do we convince senior managers this is the legal requirement?
• How do we explain to staff what the business is going to do and what their entitlement is?
• Answering queries how we have calculated part time/compressed hour leave - not fair I’ve lost annual leave etc. because no matter how many times we explain the methodology, put examples on the website etc. everyone thinks we do it wrong.

I think how good the HR function is very much depends on whether the business model is old school transactional or strategic.

The former are far more likely to be combative and adversarial with employees, in my own personal experience. Not always but often, and it is unpleasant. The latter are far more likely to focus on improvements, support and preventing catastrophic idiotic behaviours from Line Managers etc through training.

Most people eventually realise that HR is not there for your benefit. 4 of my close friends work in HR. I loved it when my old company the horrible HR manager said something bad and I wrote about it.

My husband works for a big company and hires lots of people. His HR is so slow and useless, he now circumnavigates them and just hires the people himself ticking the HR boxes later.

HR aren't always like that fortunately! However the team I am currently in is :(

Praying I get one of the other jobs I have applied for so I can get the fuck out of there.

HR people in large / corporate organisations tend to be fairly bland and obsessively following the rules to avoid legal action. Don't recognise the wild accusations on here in any HR I've seen!

I wish I hadn’t opened this. What a nasty I work in HR to support people, not to protect the organisation. This happens naturally by having a positive culture with the right people in the right roles with the right support and training.

I really hope my colleagues don’t see me this way, but jeez, what a reminder of how many mean girls there are out there, and how unvalued our profession is.

People often don't realise that HR are there to protect the organisation, not the employee, because the 'spin' is about being caring and supportive.

I think this is one of the reasons people find HR difficult to deal with - because you're led to believe that when the chips are down they'll support you.

But the reality is, that'll only happen if it suits the organisation to do so.

I guess this naturally puts HR staff in a very difficult position and they'll often be seen as duplicitous as a result. Comes with the territory.

This thread is vile. I'm a HR Manager and I've made a conscious effort to get to know people in my organisation, to understand the issues employees face to try and break those problems down. Yes, my fundamental role is to protect the organisation (which doesn't mean fire anyone I possibly can) it also means protecting the business from high staff turnover, recruitment issues, employee issues, etc.

A tiny part of what I do is the negative stuff that people assume takes up 80% of my day.

I don't go looking for gossip, or policing things in the canteen, because quite frankly I don't need the additional workload/casework to add to my desk.

I leave it to the managers to come to me with their issues and unfortunately, if you are off sick etc for long periods, of course it seems a bit inhumane to try and encourage people back to work/dismiss on the grounds of ill health, but if I didn't do that then the business wouldn't be standing and employing the other 300 staff that work in my company.

Last year I did a benefits review, I really fought my way through our board of directors to get full private medical care for all staff, an annual bonus, additional holidays and better opportunities for training. How can that be a bad thing?

You might only see my face in meeting rooms during disciplinary meetings but the rest of the day, I've been training senior managers on diversity & equality because lord knows certain managers have no filter and need educating. Or I've been recruiting for a role that is adding additional pressure onto other members of staff, so it needs my full attention to get filled.

Oh and confidentiality will also be my number one priority.

Stop generalising occupations because my GP receptionist is great.

Sorry for the typos - my tiny human hasn't quite behaved in line with family policy last night so I'm tired and thinking of ways to discipline my 4 month old.

I was bullied out of a university by HR. They were very surprised when I turned up with a very expensive lawyer who my father paid for and took them to the cleaners. I have the message saved where they begged me not to take my story to the press. Toxic is too kind for them.

@Indigoo03
@monkeyupsidedown did you find out if he was guilty? I presume he would have to leave either way as being openly escorted from office is really bad optics.

We (I was secretary closely linked to the case viay job) already knew at the time, he had also sexually intimidated them via text and email. It still needed investigating of course to build an official case. He tried to run away when he saw the security guards snd tried to eat his sim card. This was years ago when texrs were still saved on the sim card.

I've only ever worked with wonderfully kind HR people. Who have supported me in getting rid of shit employees. I imagine the employees wouldnt be so positive about HR though

You sound like a lovely individual 🤦🏻‍♀️

Useless bunch of untrustworthy twats

Charming. I have nothing to do with HR but am surprised that MN have let this rather dusgusting pile-on stay up.

Oops, "...disgusting..."

This thread is utterly vile. Interesting to hear that no one talks about the incompetent managers which then HR have to sort out their mess to make sure employees aren't affected. I couldn't imagine being so utterly disrespectful of anyone's career....

I've worked with good HR teams who operate with professionalism, integrity and compassion and I've worked with some appalling ones. More often the latter. Always dictated by the competence of the person leading the dept - incompetent HR leaders = ineffective and unpleasant HR teams - and more often than not in my experience the HR managers at the top have somehow managed to fail upwards.

HR are always going to be hated. They don't have an easy job and don't always come with the best news. Some people in HR will be bad, some will be good. I'm lucky as our HR department are fab.

HR is a tough gig. They often get responsibility and blame, while having very little actual power since line managers make most key decisions. Unpleasant interpersonal situations get foisted upon them, often without the authority to do much about it. The only real power they often have is access to confidential information, and the ability to tell different and sometimes contradictory versions of the truth to different people.

Unfortunately this often seems to either attract toxic people, or make good people turn toxic, or a bit of both. i’m not sure which.

Hi OP,

We have received a number of reports about the title being offensive as it makes a generalisation about everyone in HR. Please could you get in touch with us about editing the title so we can keep it up. We'd love to remind everyone to also please be mindful of making generalisations about everyone working in HR to prevent posting in ways that break our talkguidelines.

@ImaniMumsnet Feel free to change the title if you want. It won't change the first-hand experience of any of the people who've commented here.