HR departments see employees as the enemy

[Donke]

I have worked in several public sector orgs (NHS, civil service etc) and their ability to stonewall and gaslight is unbelievable. Why are they so convinced that they can do no wrong and that employees are stupid/dishonest/incompetent?

I am currently fighting with HR over my T&Cs, which should follow a locally agreed protocol. They are refusing to accept that it exists or that they have the skills to use it which makes no sense because every other trust in the region uses it. They will not open their minds to an outside pov. I have had similar before where they insisted on refusing to pay me sick pay. Why??

These threads always go exactly the same way. Normal people understand that HR are just a function and will have good and bad people in it, the same way that the Finance team, or the Legal team, or IT has, and that those teams are often hamstrung by the wants and demands of senior management. But for some reason people always chime in going 'HR ARE ON THE SIDE OF THE EMPLOYER NOT THE EMPLOYEE' like its some great piece of wisdom - the same is true of absolutely every team in the company. Anti-HR threads bring about a lot of freeman of the land/sovereign citizen in the workplace types who claim to care not for policies until they can bleat about it affecting them negatively.

Oh and the endless 'my DH calls HR human remains 🤪 ' comments, well yeah, if that's what you consider to be witty and insightful, maybe it's no wonder you're having issues with them.

I work in the NHS and our HR support is horrific. However, I do not blame the individuals. HR is an extremely complicated area where some legal knowledge is often important. Our trust is employing many inexperienced and new staff who cannot be expected to manage the complexities of the role. They are cutting corners and need to pay more for experienced staff who have the relevant qualifications.

My main bugbear with our HR is that we have a few horrendous staff members. They are getting away with not working and really toxic behaviours. But they are not being managed properly and our team managers are struggling as to how they manage underperforming and difficult employees. We have a community staff member who has not seen one patient since Nov. Our manager wants to get rid of her but is unable to get the right advice from HR.

Also, the 'don't forget who pays their wages' comment - the same people as pay yours? Are HR supposed to work for free or something?

No it wouldn't. What's sad is that it's women bringing down women. I despair for the world my daughters are growing up in.

When people turn against an entire profession, e.g. GPs, health visitors, or HR professionals, it is worth taking a step back and thinking about what is going on. Very few people enter a job to do it poorly. Clearly institutions are not investing in HR and instead they are running HR on limited resources which then has an effect on staff’s ability to do their role to a high standard.

From what I can see, employers recruit one or two appropriately qualified ‘expensive’ senior HR staff. And then they have a fleet of junior colleagues who simply do not know about HR laws and practices. The senior people are thus overwhelmed with work and not supported in the organisation. This can create a toxic culture with low morale. And then, the good ones leave. And there are good ones. I don’t think it is fair to just put the blame on individuals. it is generally about the culture of an institution.

I think this is very true. The average ratio of HR to other employees is about 1:100. Way too many people to offer a good service to all. I’ve worked at organisations where it’s more like 1:300 and you can’t be more than reactive.

My current organisation is 1:30, every single HR team member is well paid and experienced and my team can actually get stuff done! It’s no accident that it’s the company with the best employee/HR relationship I’ve worked at.

It's like anything. If you invest in HR you get good people. If you invest in IT you get good systems and support. But the idea that HR is full of fluffy yet vicious women pursuing an evil anti employee agenda is ludicrous. I'm sorry so many people have had poor experiences. I've had poor experiences with individual doctors, nurses and hairdressers. But I don't go around saying they are all dreadful.

The other teams aren't branded as if their role is to protect you and don't pretend they're there to do anything other than handle the money or whatever. Maybe you should just be called Business Interest or Business Protocol or something. I think it's the pretence that gets a lot of hackles up.

The other teams also don't know far too much about you, nor try to pressure you into giving them confidential personal information that they haven't any right to get. And if any of them are as consistently bad with paperwork as Human Remains (was that term new to you?) are, I haven't experienced it. I suppose there's more incentive to get it right when it's HMRC or the CEO on your back rather than Anna in accounts, but it pisses people off!

When so many people in so many different organisations dislike the same department so much, perhaps the issue isn't the employees - but why am I not surprised that HR is blaming them?

Ok then, please share your wisdom….. what exactly did she mean?

I've come across good, indifferent and plain awful HR, in my working life. We call our company HR the Stasi, and the couple of good staff recruited (who were so much better than those already in post and it was obviously so) soon moved on. They have failed on numerous occasions, making some appalling mistakes and will always fall on the management side (which I understand, but not when law is broken!), even when legally wrong, which has happened a few times lately. I think the culture of the company has a lot to do with who is hired and whether the team is good, ours is awful and seems to hate people!

You are clearly looking for what aligns with your point of view and ignoring the many posts by HR people agreeing that there is a lot of bad HR out there and looking at why. You would rather only acknowledge the more defensive posts from people who object to being called stupid, useless, pointless, evil etc for their job.

There must be some good HR people, as evidenced on this thread, but I have not come across them.

I also dont nake sweeping generalisations about any other professions. I have come across good and bad doctors, GP receptionists, teachers etc.

Perhaps my choice of field (exclusively public and third sector) means I have come across the under funded, less specialised, incompetent HR professionals. I feel certain that my current situation would not exist in the private sector, my direct report would have been sacked months ago.

Yes, and every other poster including you is a wise balanced judge on this matter.

I did not always feel this way about HR. Once when I was much younger, there were a zillion layoffs happening, all to people whose jobs quite clearly were not actually redundant (I've found very few redundancies to be real, but that's another matter). I was worried, stressed and upset (several friends and really talented people were getting cut, largely to serve the purposes of incompetent twats higher up, which seems to be how it usually goes) and went to see the head of HR who, to be fair, was really lovely and supportive to me. She has since left the industry.

Now, though, my lived experience is just as I've said. The department knows too much about you and will use underhanded techniques to try to get more information even when it is none of their business and they do not need to know. They are branded as if they are there to prioritise employees but they're not (this, I think, is the key issue). They're crap with paperwork. Etc etc.

The thing I find funny is that they're surprised when people notice this. Managers get a fair load of flak too, but they never seem surprised or offended by it!

@NonPlayerCharacter

I’d say posters who can see issues with HR but don’t write off an entire group of people whether HR or other employees are fairly balanced yes.

And...?

Why are you singling me out? And not even by actually responding to my points?

I haven’t read the full thread but I would agree! I was thinking about going into HR as a career change, as I like people and thought it would be nice to help people in a work place. My friend who works high up in HR told me not to go into HR if that’s the reason. She said it’s not about the employee it’s about the employer, and they are there to fight the side of the employer. Which does make sense. But also put me off pursuing a career in Hr!

We used to have a great HR team originally, really fair on both sides, excellent. The head of HR retired and we got someone who was truly appalling, rude, indiscreet, all smiles to management but could be dreadful to staff. Gradually the good team left, and the head recruited in their own image. It was toxic.

We went through several bouts of restructuring and redundancies during my time at the firm. Thankfully I survived all of them, especially as at one point DH had been made redundant and I was carrying the mortgage and bills on my own. My boss had a bit of a temper on him and could be monstrous at times (nothing I couldn't handle) but one day I just leant back in my chair and said to my workmates that he was being such a pain I wished they had made me redundant. One of the HR team was passing behind me and did no more than go straight to my boss, and their boss and told them what I'd said.

HR manager went to my boss and asked him if he wanted to facilitate this, I was called in by my boss who asked me about it, and then I had to go and see the HR manager. Several frustrating meetings just to explain that someone had taken an off the cuff remark as gospel.

This was just an indication of the sort of thing they did. Several colleagues had overheard conversations represented as gospel, personal information disclosed outside of HR etc which caused problems between PAs and their bosses, between team members. It was dreadful.

It all came to a head and the whole HR team was restructured, but then management in their wisdom outsourced the whole HR function to the same company as they used for their accounting which was all well and good, except they were in India, and not much better than the UK team to be honest.

Sorry this post is so long, but just wanted to give my experience of HR.

Why do we have to put 'professionals ' after their title? They work in a section of the business like everyone else. No more 'professional' than the next person.

HR 'employees' often have a very lofty opinion of themselves and their importance, I always have problems with them in my public sector role.

Don’t often see people say things like this about male dominated industries oddly enough.

I don’t work in my company’s HR, but work closely with them in an adjacent team. Like everywhere there’s some good, some bad. Can’t think of a team I can’t say the exact same about. For the most part they’re all lovely people doing their best to help people on a case by car basis, or working on improving the organisations policies as a whole.

I think its really dependant on the company though. I switched to HR, because I had some truly horrible experiences but I always remembered the good people, and I wanted to be one of them! Change is only possible dependant on who is running it, and how much support they have from Senior Management in order to make change.

It is also interesting to see it from the employers perspective, and from the law.

Ultimately HR will act to protect the organisation they work for.

I’ve worked in HR for 35 years and have never encountered someone with the job title HR Professional. If that’s the case in your organisation then it’s as wanky as it comes. However if you’re talking about the profession collectively then it’s perfectly appropriate to refer to HR professionals, the same way you’d refer to Accounting or Legal or Estates or Marketing professionals etc. You might want to take the large chip of your shoulder and keep your “lofty opinions” to yourself.

I just use ‘professional’ instead of worker. To define their area of expertise. I also say IT professional etc. I have never thought about it much!

Those who can, do; those who can't, work in HR.

In the earlier Cormoran Strike books by Robert Galbraith, there's a subplot where Robin's relationship is under strain. Her fiance/husband (can't remember where they're at at that point) is a bit shallow, corporate and materialistic and he wants her to take a job that's secure, relatively well paid with higher salary likely to come, corporate, boring and fairly cushy rather than the low-paid, unpredictable private detective work that she actually loves. The job he wants her to take is in HR.

I don't think Rowling was insulting people in HR personally but I think she was being pretty honest about the nature of it as a job.