Speak to HR

[QuertyGirl]

Why do people keep saying this on threads where somebody has an arsehole employer?

HR, works for and in the best interests of the employer, *not the employee,
*
The employee, needs to find the correct legal position themselves via a union, Acas or the gov website.

HR departments can and do, lie both directly and by omission.

As you were.

Best interests of the employer often chime with dealing robustly with harassment/discrimination/bullying and all forms of fuckwittery, as well as being able to distinguish between genuine grievances and lazy and/or incompetent arseholes who will seek to blame their employer rather than own up to their own failings. HR, like every profession, has good and bad practitioners.

I think because it’s best for the employer to not have kamikaze managers doing whatever they like. Get the employer into all sorts of legal and financial issues, not to mention tribunals take up a shed load of time and effort. All together best avoided.

It is a stock response trotted out on here and it assumes that all employers are businesses big enough to have an HR department anyway.

I used to work in a small firm where there were only three of us anyway. We did it all ourselves.

That's true in theory, the reality is that they may well back up the manager and try to smear the employee. Seen it done