That HR are useless in whatever setting they’re in?

[MiffyMiffed]

Bear in mind, that people don’t usually have to deal with HR as a new starter all that often, unless they’re serial job jumpers.

I started a new job for NHS 4 years ago and it took HR 6 weeks to process my paperwork. I had to actually ring them up and tell them I was starting on so and so date so send the paperwork to my new manager ASAP. They managed to do it in 5 mins after the phone call. 🙄.

Now I’ve got a new job, different setting, in a university. Again, absolutely useless. I’ve been emailed forms to fill out and send back. I emailed on the first day to confirm whether they wanted them back by email. No reply. So filled out forms online and sent them back. 3 weeks later I’m being told to post them. Then I’m told to scan a picture and send it. Next day I’m told everything has to be by hand. Tomorrow I’ll be told something else.

I’M SO FRUSTRATED.

Both examples - NHS and University are public funded jobs- Huge cuts, both use recruitment systems and both public sector.

Give them a break.

”So overall, people have had bad experiences with HR, which just proves my point.”

Yes, absolutely, some people on the internet who’ve had bad experiences with other people in a certain profession definitely proves your point that “HR are useless in whatever setting they’re in”.

🙄🙄🙄🙄

HR back in my days of having a proper career were brilliant. Sorted out my maternity leave stuff to my maximum benefit (and I had no guilt about that as a manager had previously buggered me about and caused me a huge amount of stress plus a delayed promotion).

DH's HR experiences have been much less sunny. They ran a course recently. DH turned up but nobody else did. He never bothers phoning them as either he can't get through or he's told he'll be called back and he isn't.

I've seen some terrible, unethical HR practices in previous jobs but HR where I work now are fantastic. First time I've ever worked somewhere that HR seem to have any sort of humanity, or empathy for other employees. They are efficient, professional, and are back up their 'employee wellbeing' talk with actual action.

As it happens, the absence rate in the organisation is so low that when figures were submitted to an outside organisation for research purposes, the organisation collecting the figures came back querying them, thinking there was a mistake. I can't help but think that the overall ethos of the organisation, implemented by a very pro-active HR department, are responsible for that.

Topcat24 is right, HR exist to stop an organisation being sued and protect management from its employees.
WTF is "talent" and "business partnering" anyway?

I work for a University. Central HR have nothing to do with recruitment, it's all done by our team admin and line managers up to the point a contract is requested. Ironically I work in an office where complex contract negotiation is part of our remit but we have to wait for HR to send out a simple template employment contract to a new starter where they frequently get details such as probation period wrong.

HR took 4 MONTHS to re-grade a post for me recently as only 2 people are trained to do it for an organisation of thousands of employees. It's an absolute joke.

We have a training team but they are quite separate to rest of HR.

I once worked somewhere where an opportunity for promotion came up and someone who would have been eminently suitable but was on maternity leave wasn't informed, let alone taken into consideration. People in her department raised their concerns in a meeting with HR and expressed the view that it was an equality issue. HR person got incredibly huffy and said that of course it wasn't, what absolute nonsense. Only the department concerned was stuffed with employment law specialists. That didn't go well

Agree with poster upthread other departments like finance or marketing never have such sweeping generalisations made about them

I've worked in HR for 15 years great to know my career and efforts is so looked down on.

A lot of what you are complaining about are recruitment issues which need my company HR are nowhere near as it's a separate function. In terms of how grievances etc are managed I do think expectations vs reality of what Hr role is is again a problem.

You will get good and bad people and processes in every company it's to say poor practice or performance is universal like you have

My HR colleagues put up with a lot of crap. I regularly hear them fielding phonecalls from people who have seen a job advertised but want to bypass the recruitment process and arrange an interview then get abusive when they are told that that won't be happening

@ChiaraRimini just because you haven’t heard of some terms doesn’t mean they’re ridiculous or made up.
Talent look after things like apprenticeships, schemes to get more people from under represented groups into senior positions, making sure people are given development opportunities if they’re high potential etc.

Business partnering is a bit more difficult to explain but basically working with senior leaders on their people strategies which basically covers everything else on that list - expected to be an expert in all of the above basically.

Clearly in a small company these distinct areas wouldn’t exist - you’d have one person trying to do everything which I am sure inevitably leads to the delays people have complained about here.

It’s a totally thankless job as people only notice HR when things have gone wrong, but it’s intellectually stimulating and interesting.

University HRs are a beast unto themselves. I work in the sector and have never come across a good HR dept in any of the five I've worked for. They're renowned for being shit!

@Figgygal you’re right about the expectation of what HR is vs. Reality. It’s often seen as a way for senior managers to not manage properly because everything can just be blamed on HR or it’s expected that if it’s to do with a person then it’s totally HR’s job to solve every problem.

One of the pp up thread said something about an issue being taken to HR - did the manager or senior manager attempt to solve the issue themselves first? Probably not!

Ah, my lovely DH used to say "HR are there to make Finance look good"! (He was Finance, I'm HR.) His point was that in most cases, employees will only interact with HR or Finance when something has gone wrong with their pay or contract.

The purely transactional part of both payroll and recruitment relies on attention to detail, at scale. Sometimes errors happen. Sometimes they take longer than anyone would like to correct. I think everyone would like to see that improve. Often that work is done by relatively junior staff, and I've found the best solution to be to make sure they have a varied workload with opportunities to learn other skills, as that keeps them fresher and less likely to slip up on the process-type stuff.

"HR" and "Finance" both do quite a lot more than payroll and recruitment, but a PP's comment about it being invisible when done brilliantly is spot on. We have to be ready to handle: employment law, government entitlements, training line managers to lead well, developing other staff so there is equitable access to development, strategic planning about the skills the business will need in future years to support growth, mediation, retirement planning ... It goes on. All very interesting to me, thankfully!

Agree. have yet to meet an HR person who actually works....

Watermelon5 I work in HR too and have done for nearly 20 years. I’ve got a masters and take my professionalism very seriously and it makes me so sad and frustrated when these threads pop up periodically.

That said I know a lot of HR work goes unseen, especially if it’s in relation to individuals since it would be wholly inappropriate to breach anyone’s confidentiality, but I know countless stories of big and small differences my colleagues and I have been able to make for people. I regularly hear half versions of situations at work via the grapevine, where I know the full story, and it’s frustrating to know when half-truths and misinformation abound and I can’t correct them. I can definitely see where this influences people’s views.

The vast majority of HR people I’ve worked with have been talented, dedicated and committed, and done a great job. Of course there are some who don’t as there are in any job, anywhere.

And it’s very easy to blame HR for things - I’ve seen many situations where managers haven’t dealt with something well, and they have hidden behind HR as a cover for not making their own decision. The fact is we are not decision makers - we advise, guide and support managers but they are the ones managing their teams, not us.

@Watermelon5 In two different jobs, annual leave was incorrectly worked out (less than it should have been), leaving me in each instance to send across the government’s web page with an explanation of the law and how many days I should have.

In a third company, my final pay (with outdistancing leave added on) was incorrectly worked out - again less than it should have been - again I had to go back and explain the law to them.

On a similar note DH and I have worked in a number of companies with rubbish Payroll - I’ve had to explain income tax and tax codes to them a few times too!

Outstanding, what the fuck is outdistancing?!

For those claiming their manager has done everything required for their issue - if they have, that'll be because the HR Business Partner has coached them into understanding the importance of it and the associated processes.

Calculating annual leave for part timers or anyone doing anything other than the norm is one of the first things I teach a new HR Assistant. It's not easy! But a fundemental, I believe.

I work for a major global company and our HR are absolutely shocking. There’s something about that job that seems to attract people who actually hate other people!

For all the HR people on this board defending their specialism, I think you really do need to consider why it is that HR has such a bad reputation. Maybe you as a discipline are not very good at communicating what you do and why it is valuable to other areas in an organisation.
Recruitment and retention is a problem for me as a manager but to be honest the main problem is low pay and short term contracts. I do not get any help or advice from HR in how to mitigate this.

All I expect of HR is that they actually process the stuff they are supposed to. We shouldn't have to keep chasing things up just to get basic things done.

@Watermelon5 Your list was interesting- what does “talent” mean?

@family I explained talent a few posts up.

@ChiaraRimini if I could single handedly sort out low pay and contract issues for my company I would do but unfortunately HR is the influencer and not the decision maker - if you have a board/CEO who are not interested in those as issues then you won’t get anywhere. Obviously that’s a motivation to get better at influencing but it takes time and if you’re snowed under with process rubbish then it makes it even harder.

Wondering why I work in HR to be honest!!

Our HR used to regularly muck up new recruit's pay. Quite usual for them to go 2-3 months without getting paid on the usual payroll run. Then having to to get line managers involved to get money transferred.
I was given two months of full pay after maternity leave even though I had gone down to part time hours.
Our little team is responsible for producing analysis from HR data - we aren't part of HR but the HR manager gave it to us to do as, in his words, "HR are useless".

@Watermelon5 thanks. Do you think every organisation defines “talent” in that way?