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.

As the poster up there said, all those saying help and asking for employment law advice normally ask HR. Most of what is described here isn’t even HR. It’s recruitment or basic admin. I describe what I do as a cross between employment law and psychology. And yes, I’m also one of those who could be on the earning 80k plus thread. People have no idea and I’m bored of trying to educate what a true HRBP or Director does.

Why would you expect HR to understand holiday entitlement? All the thing you mention are admin functions. Staff welfare maybe on a macro level but individually that’s a management function.

”Why would you expect HR to understand holiday entitlement?”

I would say understanding holiday entitlement is absolutely basic stuff for an HR person, speaking as one myself.

From my experience the only trouble we ever have is with HR. Several times our situation has just been too hard to
Work out so they’ve said no instead of referring to corporate and finding the answer and it has cost us financially. In fact our last move they cobbled together 2 policies and made one up to hire us on, as a consequence if we get made redundant we are stuck in a foreign country as they won’t pay to relocate us home.... and they did not even realise that’s what they did to us and were shocked when we told them (but still didn’t change the contract)

I have never encountered an HR team that couldn't have been abolished with no ill effects to the organisation.

It was also a place to shift unproductive and useless staff to, rather than bite the bullet and get rid of them.

But admin has a role in HR just like it does in lots of other functions.

As a former HR manager of many years, no matter what company or business sector I was in, the department was almost always viewed as a "cost" centre. We didn't generate revenue and were treated accordingly. When senior management realize HR can have a favourable impact on employees and ultimately revenue and growth, then you can expect an HR department that is well staffed and potentially held to higher standards.

But if the particular admin who deals with holiday allowance sits under the HR function how is that nothing to do with HR?

I posted previously. I’m an HRD. I have responsibility for HR Partnering, an L&D/OD team, HR Operations, Recruitment, a Systems Team, Occupational Health, Payroll, Pensions and a large casual staff agency. Those of you wiping your hands off the admin side should hang your head, that’s the bread and butter and if we can’t do that right we have no claim to contribute strategically. Those of you agreeing with the op, no idea what you all do professionally (or otherwise) but I hope to God it doesn’t rely on evidence-based thinking given your apparent reliance on anecdote derived from remarkably small samples. I agree there are some poor HR people out there (I partly blame the CIPD for valuing subscriptions over quality), but no different than any other profession.

Because they could sit under any department and the ops annoyance is directed at shit admin staff not HR. Shit staff exist everywhere including HR but don’t complain your garage bill was wrong and blame the mechanic. I’m sure there are some dreadful people working in HR just like there are terrible doctors receptionists and Lidl till operators but don’t tar everyone with the same brush. It’s lazy.

A lot of the HR function is to ensure managers actually stick to the law regarding employment. So employees are protected from people who have no training and no clue. Therefofre HR has a large impact on costs and productivity. They advise on redundancy, fair recruitment, the law, discipline and sanctions, best use of employees, job design, renumeration etc. I love the idea that company employees and managers just jog alog and sort it all out themselves.

Holiday entitilement is a contract term. Usually the person who wrote the contract knows the holiday entitlement. It is hardly difficult to work out. The contract usually spells out the holiday entitlement clearly if it is well written.

Exactly bubbles.

And the next time you want free legal advice on AIBU you may find the HR professionals a little less willing to help out.

Please take legal advice from qualifed lawyers not HR "professionals".

HR is constantly getting told that it needs to be strategic and farm out the operational stuff like making sure people get the right pat and annual leave to shared service centres, AI or overseas call centres. We don’t all agree and would love to help
You with this shit but we just don’t get paid to do that anymore. Unless we are adding value to the bottom line else have zero value. So we can’t deal with those issues any longer. It’s not that we don’t want to in fairness we just keep getting told that letting Sandra in marketing know how many days annual leave she has isn’t paying the bills. And that’s all it comes down to now. Sadly.

Yeah Hope. Because a masters of laws means you can’t give employment law advice. Go ask your high street solicitor with an LLb. They are way better qualified.

That’s not true in every organisation though. I’ve never worked anywhere where recruitment, appraisals, absences, annual leave, occupational health were not managed by HR in-house.

Yeah Hope. Because a masters of laws means you can’t give employment law advice. Go ask your high street solicitor with an LLb. They are way better qualified.

Nope, but the employment lawyers that have been retained by every company I have ever worked for are. Good for you on your qualifications but most HR people are not qualified lawyers and so it is not because you are a HR "professional" that your legal advice has any weight.

Sometimes there are particularly knotty issues that get referred to an employment lawyer by a company. These, in my experience, were very few. It is the job of HR to stop anything getting this expensive or difficult to resolve.

Day to day employment law should be handled by HR and they willhave good enough knowledge for this. Of course if you wanted to go to court about an issue you could hire a barrister and sometimes that happens but it is fairly rare. Many issues arise because anagers have ignored HR advice and done their own thing causing constructive dismissal for example. Day to day legalities are usually covered by HR mainly because they are not particularly complex. Often it is a untrained manager who has caused the problem anyway. Ditto employment tribunals.

Lawyers, given their expense, are the last resort for companies and individuals.

Most companies could not afford loads of employment lawyers as staff and they really shoud not need them. Some rather silly comments here!

Most companies could not afford loads of employment lawyers as staff and they really shoud not need them. Some rather silly comments here!

Never said they were employed as staff, just that they were retained. Of course they shouldn't need them but most companies of any size will do at some point. Also suggesting that it only happens in instances where the manger has ignored HR is also rubbish as well.

I was responding to the suggestion that HR people can go around giving people legal advice. No, that is the job of lawyers. If you are going to try and get people to treat your profession seriously then it is probably advisable not to tread on the territory of other professions.

It's really disheartening to read this thread..It's funny because if everyone piled on on any other job, they'd be told off but HR is fair game I suppose.

The thing about HR is, you only seem to notice it when things go wrong. HR is also not a revenue-generator and one of the first places to be cut during cost optimisation exercises. Also, HR is an internal customer service department. Employees generally won't regularly liaise with certain departments like QA/QC, legal, production etc but everyone deals with HR so obviously there will be more to talk about that department. Also, a lot of things people complain about has very little to do with HR as we are the facilitators, not the decision-makers...no email login? That's usually IT but we have to explain. Low salary?That's usually a line management decision but we get blown up. Performance issues? The line refuses to manage their own staff and waits until things are irreparable and then come to us to deal with it or fire the person No, we can't...there's a process to be followed if we don't want to be sued. Inaccurate salary? Maybe the timewriters made an error but we have the responsibility to explain.

There're a lot more examples I can give but what's the point. We are all inept admins who hate people and only want a fancy title.

In my experience HR are fine for the small things such as pay etc but their main remit is to support the company leadership team and not the overall staff population.

I was on a staff council of sorts, where representatives of various departments came together to discuss issues raised by their areas, and to what i naively thought bring change and improvement to staff and morale.

The group was facilitated by HR. Initially lots gushing talk about how our group was so important and great things were going to happen. Our council became very organised, had some great ideas. Then once the meetings started it became very clear that the council wasn't what we thought. It seems it was a legal obligation for company to have one but it didn't need to be listened to. It's main purpose was for the company executive committee to get feedback on how to communicate generally bad news that was impending, usually some sort of restructure or mass redundancy. And HR was complicit with this.

Then every two years the results of the staff survey would come out and management would be surprised that nothing had improved. We'd sit in meetings with HR reps pleading with them to listen to us and the issues we've got that bring morale down (mostly around no payrises ever and poor career progression) only to have them ignore us or patronise us. Always side with the executive committee because that's who butters their bread.

They'd then think a pizza day or introducing a running club would solve the issues.

The main thing I notice senior HR people doing is desperately trying to palm the hard bits of the job onto other people. Contribute strategically? Not so much.

I don't get the "it's admin" argument. Don't HR professionals expect better from their support staff? None of the consultants I've worked for would shrug their shoulders and say "it's not our fault it's admin" they'd be talking to us about what went wrong and we'd be trying to work out a better system.