To think most HR departments are just a corporate shield?

[TaupePoet]

“Come to us, we care” and then nothing. HR isn’t there for the employee. It’s there to manage liability and protect the brand. Anyone who’s complained at work knows this.

Yes. That is why they are there. Trade Unions are the employees' advocates

The purpose of HR is primarily to protect the business- legally, reputationally and ethically. Line managers can’t be expected to know the ins and outs of employment law and practice, so HR exists

Yes I've not had to use it but I don't trust it either

Yes, agree it is there to protect the company/employer rather than the staff. I've always found the 'human' element has been very lacking in every HR department I've dealt with

Ours is about as effective as a sieve in this capacity (and many others)

Er, yes. They protect the interests of the company. It’s not in the interest of the company to mistreat staff, end up in tribunals, or have turnover that prevents businesses doing what they need to do, so they are quite keen on treating people legally, fairly, and well enough to keep them productive…

No they aren't. They are supposed to ensure that best employment practice, all employment law and health and safety are followed.

In reality they are filled with people too scared to rock the boat, want an easy life and who are not willing to make a decision or even ask their managers for advice.

I was a full time union rep, then manager in the same company and found 99% of them equally shite from both positions.

I thought it was common knowledge HR is there to protect the company not the employee

Nowadays it's to protect the business by equipping line managers with lots of intranet links and then throw them under the bus when there is any reputational risk...

Never worked anywhere where I would trust HR with anything.

The one time in my life (20+ years ago) I complained about a sleazy boss, nothing was done. I ended up leaving because of him - it was constructive dismissal really, but I wasn’t in the frame of mind for a fight at that time in my life. Low and behold, a couple of years later there was a big public scandal about HR failures and sexual harassment cover-ups at that organisation…

My current employer is no better. I have a disability I haven’t declared because I have seen the way it’s used against those who do. Inclusive culture my arse.

I worked in a large public sector organisation and worked quite closely with senior HR people. As a group they were the most sociopathic people I have ever had the misfortune to encounter. Anyone ethical left quickly. Their combined efforts made the whole organisation utterly toxic. Examples being ordering line managers to issue sickness warnings for really sensitive health cases - whilst the decision on whether to issue warnings or not was supposed to be down the line manager, it wasn’t really because if the lm refused they themselves would be threatened with unsatisfactory performance procedures. They don’t even pretend to be on the side of the employees. They also pride themselves on not upholding any grievances or B&H complaints, which means that they regularly get taken to ETs and lose. Meanwhile morale is so low that they are haemorrhaging people, who leave on ill health retirement, often after lengthy sickness. It’s a complete shit show and almost entirely down to HR. They might think they are acting to protect the organisation, but in fact they are causing the biggest harm, operationally, reputationally, financially.

Of course that is their job. They are employed to protect the interests of the employer.
If you want something that protects workers rights join a Union.

In other news, water is wet.

I can’t stand them. What kind of person wants to do that for a living?! We’re currently going through a restructure/voluntary redundancy and they are appalling in every way. Just bottom-feeders there to prop up the company. Weak, snivelling rats they are.

They police the rules
the problem is a lot of people don’t understand this and have very unrealistic idea about what they do and should do

also another reason hr get slated is there often the bearer of unpopular news and decisions

You get good and bad. I’ve been in HR jobs just weeks and left as I won’t bend my ethics (or legislation) to suit business needs.

I promise there are organisations with progressive and genuine HR teams out there. HR is meant to be people focused and principle led.

It’s a real shame not many people get to experience it.

Maybe I’m in the wrong role though as I enjoy working with the unions more than other HR people!

I’m a HR professional. Our job is to ensure the law and company policies are followed and we apply these equally to all employees regardless of their level of responsibility. The problem is HR are not decision makers, the business leaders themselves are the ultimate decision makers, we can advise bit ultimately it is on them to ignore us and put the company at risk. Thankfully I work somewhere where this isn’t the case and we have zero tolerance for bad behavior even if it is the CEOs best friend and long term colleague. It isn’t like that everywhere and that’s why everyone hates us. For things like restructuring and redundancies we have little control so long as the law is followed, again we are the messenger so get blamed for everything. You grow a thick skin in this job. However I will say that some employees are also awful and do really terrible things at work and they probably go around saying how terrible HR are but when they get drunk and grope their coworkers or threaten to kill their teammates what exactly to they expect?

Absolutely this.

I do but I’m not a weak, snivelling rat.

You should feedback to upper management about their behaviour and contact ACAS for advice. Hopefully you’re part of a union for support too.

How is this different than last week's version of the thread?

Ah great, think it's been less than a week since a HR bashing thread, that only goes to highlight most people have no idea what HR does 🤯

I didn’t see last week’s thread, this was just something that came up in a recent conversation and got me thinking. If it’s been discussed already, fair enough!

I work in HR.

I like helping people. I get satisfaction when I can do something for someone with caring responsibilities, health issues or whatever so that work is a little bit easier. I like making sure that staff know their entitlements, and reigning in the more ignorant “old school” managers. I don’t like disciplining people, but I’d rather do that so that our workplace is safer or a more pleasant place for my colleagues to be for 39 hours a week. I know my manager is the same.

There’s shady people in HR just like there are in every other industry. But if people swear blind that every HR professional they’ve encountered is unfair and unscrupulous, maybe they could do with looking at their own behaviour and expectations first.

I was an HR professional and one of the reasons I left is because it is such a thankless job. I left a toxic workplace after a few weeks because the HR director expected HR to persuade managers to issue warnings when someone had just been off sick for a few weeks and had a good record or would make people do training in their own time. I refused to do it so left.

I have also worked in really lovely places where we went above and beyond for employees. Making sure the policies were written so employees had lots of support. I spent hours with employees listening to their problems and then had meetings with managers to persuade them to be more supportive. Unfortunately there’s only so much you can do to influence managers, when managers don’t listen HR get the blame from the employee.

What people don’t realise is that HR are not the decision makers. Managers are. I left the profession because managers would ask me advice and either ignore it and do the opposite which would end up upsetting people unnecessarily creating more work for me down the line. Or if they didn’t like the answer they’d make sure to say it was HR’s decision when it wasn’t.

People don’t realise that managers have the power, not HR. And usually when HR are protecting the business, it tends to be persuading managers not to take drastic or unfair decisions because if they do, there is a risk that the employee will take the company to an employment tribunal. So actually they are usually helping the employee while helping the business

Another pet hate is when managers decide to restructure and expect HR to write all their paperwork and attend all the consultation meeting so HR get shit on from the manager and then shit on from the employees as they think HR are the bad guys making them lose their jobs.

And my absolute hate was you managers saying to employees, you need to do X, Y and Z or I’ll have to get HR involved, as if we’re the work police

There are definitely bad HR professionals out there, usually working in a toxic company but we’re not all bad. And the poster who said HR are all rats. Am guessing you’ve had a shitty experience but please don’t tar all HR with the same brush

Depends on the issue. If there's a dispute between you and the company (i.e. management) then HR are probably somewhat limited in what they can do for you personally as above all they have to act in the interests of the company.

But they deal with plenty more than that and a good HR function will use its initiative to take decisions without always seeking approval from higher up. When I had a complicated miscarriage and needed a morning or two off for further treatment, I asked our HR if they could keep the reasons for the time off confidential. I was expecting them to at least want to tell my line manager but they were fantastic and kept it entirely to themselves. They even credited the annual leave I'd taken during the miscarriage without me asking/seeking approval from management and without there being a formal policy on it.