To ask what your HR department are like?

[chxm19]

Honestly just curious.

Whenever I've had to deal with HR at my work I've had nothing but unpleasant experiences and generally find them to be very inconsiderate and unhelpful.

Got signed off work sick for anxiety and depression and got hounded when I finally went back as it "wasn't fair" on the rest of the team..

The winky face was intended to be a friendly, de-escalating gesture btw.

My most recent experience with HR (huge multinational corporation, massive UK HR department) :
Day 1: I ask a question (relevant, related to career development)

Day 18: I receive a response pointing me to some Intranet resources completely unrelated to my question (may have been an automated response)

Day 29: a real person responds to the ticket saying unfortunately they haven't got an answer, they will raise my question at their next meeting, and now they'll close my ticket

Day 29: I am asked to provide feedback (lmfao)

Might as well have saved my breath.

Current HR seem okay, but my previous HR lady was an absolute sack of shit.

I went through a few issues with my ex partners new gf - she would send me abusive messages etc, make anonymous phone calls (all to my personal phones) so when I moved out of mine & ex’s home (and she moved in to it) the first thing I did was change all my personal details (inc address) with my HR department.

Three months later they sent a letter out detailing my change in contract & new salary details etc to the old address. Which of course the gf opened and then took the time to email direct into my company about

It's a hard job and people don't appreciate that. I spend alot of my time arguing against decisions of the SMT as I feel that they will impact our workforce negatively
If I lose I still have to push the policy through even if I don' t agree with it.

I care about our staff and we are just about small enough (92 employees ) that I know them all to speak to to and hopefully they find me fair and easy to approach if needed

They’re lovely, all of them.

I always remember when I was 18 and working in my first place which had an HR department, and the HR manager saw me wearing earrings I’d forgotten to take out and was really snide like ‘do you have a problem with taking your earrings off’. I had a pretty bad impression of HR for many years .

Ours have never won an employment tribunal.

And I've never lost one.

Despite having been in HR for over twenty five years, I agree most HR departments are useless, specifically at the transactional stuff.

This is the reason I did interim work and consultancy for many years, so I didn't get stuck in some hapless HR team or caught up in politics.

But I've always preferred the employee relations and law side than the looking after people side.

I've just taken a perm job and am in the upper part of the salary range mentioned, as are all people at my level, no matter where in the country (I am not London). It's not overpaid it's an equivalent job to an accountant and at my level they get paid this sort of salary.

As someone else said, HR don't make the decisions about how many of what jobs to cut. What we do is advise how it can be done within the law, and policy if there is one.

But I also have to deal with HR, for my own stuff, and yes, they are pretty rubbish.

Occasionally, you meet the odd employee who is nice, kind, diligent, etc.
But on the whole employees are a total bunch of incompetent, whining troublemakers. I once asked one to doa thing and they didn’t even do it! Useless.

Unfortunately, most of the employees are a profit centre, while HR is a cost centre ! don’t let us get in the way of you spending the £££ we earn, though ...

Totally shit

Jenny. You sound exactly like the kind of employee most companies would be asking HR for advice on how to get rid of!

Incompetent idiots, largely.

My late father, who spent most of his working life at the now defunct ICI, used to say, "Those who can, do. Those who can't, teach. And those who are no f-ing good to man or beast go into HR."

Mirrors my experience!

Wow I always knew HR were not particulary popular but this thread is something else.

I’ve worked in HR for 10 years and in my earlier career people used to make snide comments when I told them I worked in HR. I was in the Admin side then too.

I’ve always enjoyed my job and I do think of the employees along with protecting the organisation from the SMT who are very harsh or incompetent in their roles. That’s usually the problem. I work for a company where there are little disciplinary meetings and we actually engage with the workforce. I will be honest though, it’s the only company I have worked at in which they do care about employees opinions. The last place (a call centre environment) as I’m sure you can imagine was horrific, I actually left because I couldn’t deal with them ignoring basic advice and treating people like robots.

I do think though you could easily say this about any other profession, I’ve seen poor GPs before and provided with bad or lazy advice but I don’t think all GPs are the same.

It’s pretty thankless.

I’ve generally found that those who don’t have a good relationship/experience with HR are the employees who have interactions with them because they aren’t performing, there are concerns around attendance or some other issue. None of which are going to be enjoyable.

If your interaction with HR is for promotion, development etc then clearly your experience will be a positive one.

So I suppose in that sense, maybe you reap what you sow.

HR don't care about the person, they care about the company.

My manager spoke to me in the most awful way, so explained that while I understand what she's saying I'd appreciate if I wasn't spoken to like shit. She blew up and we'd had a bit of a row. Fast forward a week or two and two managers from other areas had come in, pulled me to one side and had to interview me on the incident. Manager had told her line manager that I'd told her to F off (which I didn't) and that she had a witness. Also, that since said argument, I hadn't done a single bit of work (not true). The two that interviewed me had basically called me childish and that I need to get over myself.

I felt so intimidated by the whole situation, being questioned as if I'd done something absolutely terrible. Manager didn't have to go through that. All she did was make a quick phone call, make up a few things about me and all was good. This is on my file, I look like an utter pain in the arse and all the while, being pregnant too. It caused immense stress. I cry going to work. Having to leave my lovely little boy to go and work somewhere I detest, it breaks my heart.

She has done many other things that are morally and legally wrong since then, but have us to just ignore (and I never ever rise up to) just to get by. Never get HR involved as too scared in case the impact while working with her and what would actually happen to me in regards to my job etc. Like I said, HR don't care about the person, they care about the company.

Like I said, HR don't care about the person, they care about the company.

That’s like saying all pies are made of chicken.

Absolutely not the case where I’ve worked.

So, you chose not to speak to the HR team for support and yet, somehow, that is still their fault despite the fact they know nothing about the incident you've described? Right.

I had a very poor opinion of HR until I started working for my current employer. The HR department are really professional. In previous jobs, HR were terrible for implementing policies but refusing to adhere to them themselves, and frankly they seemed to get enjoyment out of making people's lives a misery. I always wanted to work in HR because I wanted in on the power trip that they were on, if you can't beat them, join them.

Now that I work somewhere that HR seem more professional, I'd have no interest in doing their job at all because they are treated the same as all the other staff and don't get to break the rules.

Mind you, I have a relative whose favourite part of her HR job is disciplinaries and sacking people. Hearing story after story about what a hard ass she is does rather leave me feeling a bit nervous of HR people.

Lovely day to day. Absolute shameless bitches in any firing scenario.

One of our colleagues has just been let go through sheer incompetence... of our boss. He said awful things to her (drunk) and the company have made out it’s her fault, and tried to completely randomly question her performance. HR have done a great job of grinding her down and twisting the situation so she’ll leave without a fuss. She’s having a breakdown trying to leave on whatever good terms she can (she didn’t want to bring a claim as in precarious financial position). Worked at three different places and seen the same at each, through different circumstances. Yes I’m bitter, we’ve just lost an incredible colleague due to our boss’ incompetence. No worry, HR just ruins her life and clears it all up.

HR are not there for you, they work for the management. If they are nice to you, they are stalling - otherwise they’re hurrying you on your way out. It’s sick and they’re complicit in a lot of completely unethical practices. I’d love to be able to speak freely and name names!

Totally inhuman resources.

“Mind you, I have a relative whose favourite part of her HR job is disciplinaries and sacking people. Hearing story after story about what a hard ass she is does rather leave me feeling a bit nervous of HR people.”

I work in HR and it is true that it does attract a fair few people like that. They always get theirs though sooner or later, they push their luck too far, fly too close to the sun and when the get themselves in trouble they find their is no good will built up to get them out of it.

The normal people in HR tend to last and tend to get on rather than bouncing from job to job.

Notmyrealname. If your colleague has such clear proof and witnesses who can back her up why on earth would she not make a claim?

Our HR team is quite good, one of my very good mate heads the team, but they are a pain in the ass about recruitment. I know you have to be politically correct nowadays, but they are trying to impose completely unrealistic nonsense. Of course they are protecting the company, but if people can't do their job properly, there won't be a company to protect.