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.

@family it depends - it should be an objective assessment on someone’s potential, as in, do they have the skills/capability/desire to progress to a more senior level. Not everyone has that or wants to so not everyone is ‘talent’ but if you know who your talent are you can target opportunities and specifically look at demographic groups within that if they’re under represented (which they unfortunately are)

That being said, a lot of companies use the word talent just to mean employees in general so in that sense it’s a bit more wishy washy! I’m more used to it being the former and I’ve worked with senior managers to identify who their talent are - not just based on who’s a ‘good bloke’!!

Agreed. I work for a bank. We've recently completed a restructure and I expressed an interest in a role the grade above me. The director decided not to give it to me based on his random opinion and my form for a role at a lower grade. He chose not to interview me.

Just had an email from HR saying it was lovely to meet me and I should feel free to ask for feedback from the interview to help with why I didn't get it. 👍🏼

As a previous poster pointed out, it doesnt help that people dont really know what HR as a function does and HR practitioners are not generally very good at communicating their role and the functions beyond the well known activities of hiring, firing and training, hence the enquiries about ‘talent’ and ‘outdistancing.’

I dont think the CIPD is helpful either. Their magazine is appalling too, reminiscent of a women’s magazine from the 1990s.

I have changed several jobs are n my 35 years of work. Not once have I signed a contract before starting. Often I haven't.even had a a formal offer letter. It usually seems to happen within a few months of starting work. I just assumed that was normal

I've never had a contract before starting either, in over 20 years of working.

Having worked in HR I found our hands were often tied by processing by other teams, such as IT and Payroll. I can’t really tell you it’s not my problem it’s another team not doing their job, I just used to get a lot of grief and apologise. I personally used to be proactive and ensure our side was all done.

As someone mentioned earlier we would get some downright nonsense. People not supplying bank details and complaining we haven’t paid them, not filling out their hours (hourly staff) and complaining we didn’t pay them, not notifying us of changes which we then didn’t know about such as bank details, addresses etc.

As a temp I was once placed in an NHS HR dept to cover a guy who’d just left. This guy was, by all accounts, the second coming - total golden boy of the department, worshipped by all the (mainly female, over 50) rest of the workers. He had been the hardest working, funniest, cleverest etc...

On my first day I received three screaming abusive phone calls from two nurses and a doctor who were all looking for “Craig” as he’d not processed their job applications properly and they’d missed out on crucial interviews. I then rummaged around in a drawer and found at least a month’s worth of applications that dear Craig hadn’t bothered processing before he left.

The vast majority of what we do is unseen and often can't been seen, because it's confidential

My Friday, in a small company:
Withdrew a job offer after the CEO realised there was a conflict of interest. Emails flying around. The recruiting manager was well aware of the potential conflict, but didn't raise it. Calmed the CEO down and stopped him from firing the manager. Rewrote the policy to make it clear that any potential conflicts need raising for discussion, not just those you judge to be serious.
Make a job offer to a candidate and sent the contract. Then realised we didn't have her ID documents as the recruiting manager didn't take them at the 2nd interview, despite 2 reminders, it being on their interview form and the candidate claims she tried to give them but was told they weren't needed. We can't complete referencing without them, she's now away on holiday for 2 weeks and won't resign without completed referencing. Took the paperwork back to him and stood over him whilst he completed the information correctly and signed it (avoiding the "I sent all the paperwork to HR!" Yeah, but not completed and we've been trying to contact you for 2 weeks to correct it - we're small, I can do this)
Coached 4 Managers at length through potential situations with their teams over hours of work, working from home requests and conflict between colleagues.
Discussed the plans for not replacing a particular member of staff who has resigned but would have been at risk of redundancy shortly anyway. This has also secured the job of someone else for another 6 months, due to the costs saved.

What is visible from all that? One pissed off candidate, one delayed start date, someone else not getting replaced. Great.

We send contracts same day, your IT will be waiting for you on day 1 no matter what, we be chasing you if you've not completed your bank details within 48 hours of starting and we actively offer salary advances if you've missed payroll. We also confirm your resignation same day and make sure you know how to access your payslips and P45 after you're gone. Do we sometimes send the wrong email from the automated system? Yes. We're not perfect. But you don't see all the other stuff going on behind the scenes.

I think you've probably just had bad luck
No , 40 years of working, 8 jobs, 4 industries, i have never come across a HR person who is not inept or knows what they are doing.

I’m not inept, thanks bruffin.

NHS HR staff are dredged from the bottom of a barrel full of crap. There is no culture of humanity or decency whatsoever and they make a lot of mistakes. I remember being overpaid, a lot of money, and they just refused to listen. I gave up in the end, it was a few years ago. I used it to go for private treatment.

On the whole, in various roles, I've found that HR (and they've told me) are basically there to protect the company, not employees.

I've actually had someone take over my duties because she 'wanted the work' and then had my position be slightly demoted to doing something I didn't want to do (work in accounts) and then end up with me being on an improvement plan (was a PA/team secretary in large accountants). When that happened I left. Was being set up to fail. I was told quite firmly by HR that if I sued them that 'they'd win'. Having retrained as a legal secretary/EA after this job I would sue the arse off them if this happened again.

Aha - another bugbear. I have a friend who works in a 'religious organisation' and was bullied for the 5 years she worked there (made them a lot of money too) - when she did want to make a complaint - the HR person there was helpful to a certain degree but was biased as she was friends with the bully and the bully's interlinked department. So the HR department was certainly there to again protect the organisation and not the employee.

I’ve also always thought HRs main role was to protect the company/directors. Sure they’ll advise you re your maternity rights but if you want to talk about bullying by a senior manager you become the problem.

I also think there is a load of time wasting BS initiatives that go on, particular in the public sector. I’ve worked in places where they have talent managers etc, do they really identify the best workers? No they tend to “notice” the ones who suck up or are pally with other senior staff. It’s like all the shitty CPD you have to do raise your profile. Great I’ve just done an hours course & received my certificate but do I know anything more than I did yesterday? No! 🤣🤣

@Pinktornado

There are loads of Craig's in NHS HR. Managers always learn that they can't just fill in paperwork, you having to keep calling HR and nagging them to actually process it. They often seem surprised that you want the stuff processed as if they think you may have just filled in a form because you enjoy filling in forms

I have worked p/t since children
Started job 5th month but worked all the working days. Ie normal work days tue,wed,thur. 1st was on friday so worked every day i should have worked, yet wages were proratared and refused to put right.

Only took 6 weeks maternity leave, was not paid in full for last week because she put down wrong date of return to work and refused to change it

P/t holiday calculation is always wrong.Usually shortchanged by a lot and had a fight for correct holiday
3 different companies issued with amended contracts with wrong job titles.

I know so many people who have got to interview stage then told they needed a degree or A levels not good enough, or even uni not good enough, despite all info on cv and application pack.

@trinitybleu
Well said!

What a depressing thread for people like me! Those who claim that ‘everyone’ they have ever met in HR has been ‘inept’ and ‘yet to meet a person in HR that works’, I’d be fascinated to know what jobs you do!

@trinitybleu love this!!! So accurate!

As others have said, I think people just misunderstand what HR are there to do.

I had an employee screeching down the phone at me that her rate of pay was insulting. Okay, so I don't get to decide who gets paid what - if you think you deserve a raise please speak to your manager about why you think it is justified, and if he agrees he can seek approval from the CEO and then I will gladly process that for you.

15 minutes later, the line manager (who is by the way a company director) screeching down the phone at me that Margaret is demanding a pay rise. Well, does she deserve a pay rise I ask, baring in mind the meeting we had last week about your overheads being too high and not making profit? No, she doesn't deserve a pay rise, he said, she is paid adequately for what she does and she has a bad attitude.

Did you tell her that? I asked? No, he said. I thought you could travel 4 hours to the office tomorrow to tell her.

HA. So HR, as per usual can look like the bad guy and you can continue to take home your ginormous salary without actually managing any of your staff.

And another one - "we need a project manager immediately", okay I will advertise the vacancy just now but as you will be aware, before an offer is made, approval must be sought from the CEO. "Can you not just get approval" no, I can't. When the CEO asks me why we need to increase our salary budget by £60k to hire a new project manager, what exactly will I tell him when I have absolutely no knowledge of your job forecasts, why you suddenly need an extra project manager and also why do you need one yesterday but didn't tell me this 6 weeks ago when that huge 5 year project came in?!

So anyway, I sift through 300 CVs and send through several that meet the requirements to the manager for review. No response. Chase them up. No response. Chase them up again. Nothing. 6 weeks later they come back and ask if I can invite x y and z in for an interview this afternoon because they need somebody by Monday at the latest or else I WILL BE SOLELY RESPONSIBLE FOR THE LOSS OF A MILION POUND CONTRACT.

of course since they all applied 6 weeks ago, they are either no longer interested or have found other jobs and the 1 that is still interested is on holiday for three weeks because hello its summer so can't come in this afternoon.

So ultimately, in that situation everyone thinks the whole shit show is my fault but what part of it, actually, is anything to do with me?!

So what i described isnt inept.
None of those things can be another depts fault.
Ive worked in accounts for 30 years, i get audited by 2 or 3 different organisations every year whatever industry I've been in.

I’ve had mixed experience of HR teams, but I do think it’s difficult as working with people and sometimes tricky situations means there often aren’t black and white answers.

Oh and another one - did an hour increase letter.

Employee throws it in the bin and emails me to say it's wrong and should be 30.5 hours not 28.5 (and for some inexplicable reasons copies in my manager, her manager, the CFO and CEO!)

I triple check it - definitely 28.5. Call her up and ask why she thinks it should be 30.5 - she thought it should include her lunch. Which is unpaid so not included in total hours worked.

Yes she admits she was wrong, reissue letter because she binned the first one but now I look incompetent because I can't really email my manager, her manager, the CFO and CEO to be like... Errr I was right ACTUALLY.

@Toystorypants " I can't really email my manager, her manager, the CFO and CEO to be like... Errr I was right ACTUALLY."

I absolutely would have done! She brought them into it.

I'm torn here because one of my best friends is an HR manager and she is a legend. The staff adore her and she even manages to manage out people who are shit at their jobs/take the piss. She works for a small company though and runs a tight ship.

I work for the NHS and when you manage to find a semi good HR admin person, you take their name, direct line number and hang onto them for dear life. All the time crossing your fingers that they aren't a temp (sadly the competent ones usually are). As a doctor/nurse/clinician, we aren't trained to navigate through the steps of employing new staff and we do it relatively infrequently. The process is tedious and tricky and designed so that if you slip anywhere, computer says no and all your hard work is cancelled out. You complete these on line forms which if you make a tiny error, get ignored or worse still cancelled. Employing someone is trying to navigate the complex interplay between HR, finance, management and pay roll. One mishap and you are set back weeks. Also a member of staff in any of those bits goes off sick and it's game over.

That said they are as understaffed as the rest of us so I get how soul destroying their jobs must be. At our trust, they sit in a building a mile away which is totally fustrating as you can't just pop in.

I previously worked at a very small NHS Trust and again while not perfect, all the offices were on site and shock horror next to each other so it worked better. They even had a drop HR service which was fab.

What is annoying is when we are made to attend mandatory fraud training every so often, yet we have someone who committed blatant fraud, it was reported and nothing was done. Sacking someone in the NHS is near on impossible.

So YABU, but I get your frustration completely.