If you work in HR...

[Summertime777]

If you work in HR, do you often find yourself having to do things that go against your conscience? I was reading another MN thread where someone who worked in HR talked about having been ordered to find excuses not to pay some workers in circumstances where there was no legitimate reason not to pay them. I wondered how often HR professionals find themselves effectively being ordered by their bosses to do things that they know are wrong. I'm not talking about things that fall into the "difficult but necessary" category such as redundancies due to a businesses downturn. I'm talking about stuff that really isn't defensible, but the order has come from someone senior to you who could push you out of your job if they so choose. My reason for asking is that I'm trying to give good advice to a DC who has recently finished university and thinking about career options. Obviously it's his life and his choice, but he does ask my opinion on stuff like this, and I'd like to give good advice rather than duff advice! Interested in any experiences!

I work as a HR consultant and have to give varying advice to clients every day.
I'm there to listen to what it is they want to achieve and give options on how they can go about that and what the potential risks are.

Often decisions are made which are not what I would make personally. However my job is to make sure clients are aware of the risks. Not to make decisions for them.

There are a lot of careers where your DC could be ordered to compromise their ethical standards, quality assurance, safety, environmental, finance and accounting. The important thing is that they have ethical standards and are willing to stand up for them and take the consequences for doing that.

Anyone in law will have to advise clients on what's best for them - even if it's not best or strictly fair for "the other side".

Working in HR can be tricky.l and you can feel caught up in the middle at times.

You're there to support the staff but you are also paid by the employer.

I worked for a very large corporate and HR were a real mess and mismatch of people. Often young women who wanted to work part time and were pretty clueless. When I was there as a manager they wanted us to push downgraded appraisals on people (the bell curve) regardless of the fact you didn’t have anyone.

it caused immense issues and one women actually took the company to a tribunal because she was down graded with stupid things picked up on. She won.

Thank god I don’t work for them anymore.

"You're there to support the staff but you are also paid by the employer."

HR is not your friend. As an employee. They aren't there to support staff at all. They are there as an employee themselves, to support the employer / the business.

HR are not there directly for the employees; they're there to keep the business out of court!

Indirectly this benefits the employees by keeping the business on the right side of the law, but that is an added bonus and not the purpose of HR at all.

Thank you for the responses - some interesting perspectives! Re the comment about law, I think the dynamic is a bit different, for private practice lawyers at least, in that ultimately I think it's easier to say no to a client than say no to your boss. Obviously, you have to act in your client's best interests subject to complying with the law and professional standards, but there is that element of distance there if a client is pushing you to say something's allowed when it isn't. I guess there are few jobs (- at least not ones with reasonable pay!) where you never find yourself in a battle with your conscience or coming under pressure to do something that you know isn't 100% ethical. But maybe HR jobs tend to be worse than most on that front.

This is not just hr though. Eg h&s... being asked to approve things that aren't for by manager. Accountancy... being asked to approve transactions etc etc etc. It is up to you to have ethical boundaries and push back

I work in HR. I have never done anything I felt was “wrong” or unethical. Most of the time you’re trying to encourage managers to be more robust with people not less, and pointing out the company doesn’t have unlimited money not matter how worthy that person in their team might be.

Depends on the company. I've refused to do things before but normally it's a case of persuading them that the risk of what they're proposing is too high. Some companies are more ethical than others. Some are terrible and they couldn't pay me enough to work there.

As an employee HR is not your friend - they are part of the management team and always push the management agenda, while pretending to be sympathetic to the workers as they generally have good social skills.

I found them quite unethical at my last place of work, a school. But I still would't tell a young person not to consider that career if they thought it sounded interesting/had the right skills and personality.

This has been my experience of HR across several companies. Never been liked by employees either.

I work in HR. My job is to protect the business by making sure employment law is strictly adhered to, and ensuring staff members are performing to the best of their ability - and putting support in for those who aren’t. I’ve never been asked to do anything unscrupulous or against my conscience. In fact we often act to give what is ‘fair’ to employees, rather than what we can get away with excluding due to legislation. As a result we’ve got mostly engaged and happy staff and an incredibly low turnover - half what is usual in our sector. HR aren’t always the bad guys.

Basically this, except HR is not always part of "the management team" as such.

I'm not in HR, for the record. I am however, in management! Definitely wouldn't want an HR job at my current organisation:

On the whole, I even regard my employer as an ethical company (my main contender for complaints would be certain clients we still have on our books), but being on our HR must be an awful job regardless:

1. They're really junior compared to the managers they work with: our most senior HR person nationwide barely made the lowest official management level - everyone else doesn't have any executive rank.

1. As a result, they're hamstrung more often than not! They're simply not authorised to decide stuff. For us as executives/employees, it's tedious to deal with as it tends to result in my boss telling me to get X idea approved by HR, me requesting approval, them not being in a position to give it and having to run to someone else about the level of my boss to get approval in their turn. This happens about relatively trivial stuff such as "can we, as client XY account, please pay a retention bonus to critical employee AB out of our own pocket", etc.

1. Because of the way the company is structured, they're both paid less and have fewer promotion prospects than the operative workforce. Which tends to result in our HRs having lower job satisfaction and higher attrition than the rest of us. Oh, the irony!

@Littlegoth is right it’s about minimising risk to the employer. However, I have encountered times a senior manager has asked me to go against employment legislation and I have refused, putting in writing why and it was fine.

Usually senior managers and employees don’t understand the law and it’s amazing how they ignore HR/policies and are shocked when it goes wrong. Then HR get blamed.

And that last sentence is why you are finding it tricky. HR are there to protect the interests of the employer - you aren't just paid by them, you are there to service their requirements. Hopefully the employer will listen to your good advice (in that respect HR are no different han any other professional role the employer retains) and consider that advice in their own interests. But that is advice and it is advice for the employer.

Employees often get confused and think HR is there to support them. It isn't. It is never there to advise them on their best interests. That is why you make sure that you have legal insurance or a trades union. They are retained to represent your interests, not HR.

@Premiumbondbaby Yes. We very occasionally get someone who needs some silly idea correcting. Luckily nothing too serious.

My last job though, much larger organisation and a very small number of managers with incorrect ideas about employment law that needed immediate nipping in the bud. Nothing tribunal worthy in itself, but potential to escalate if not dealt with quickly.

Any good decent company would have a whistleblower policy to report situations that are unethical or illegal.

Or if it's a small company and the boss is telling you to do things you don't think are right then you move on.

And if a member of a professional organisation as part of your qualifications you can speak to them in confidence too.

I had to sack someone for not going to the Christmas party once. Junior manager had had a falling out with his manager and was upset, so said he was not attending the Christmas do ( night out/ hotel stay)

Director then told me to get rid of him. He had just under 2 years service so it was a quick 'see you later'

Of course the director didn't want to get hos hands dirty so didn't get involved in the actual doing.

Then you have your standard stuff like fudging redundancy scores to keep the people they like but that's pretty commonplace

For me it depends as much about the industry than the profession.

I am in a specialist HR function and have worked in many different industries as well as consulted and my take would be:

If you want to well paid, employee focused HR work then financial services/fintech/tech are the industries to go for.

Also think of the type of roles - ie you don’t have to focus on ER - L&D, Reward, employee engagement etc are more employee centric roles.

Ive never had to do something against my conscience - my biggest challenge is getting senior leaders on board. And in my employee centric type HR role, I am constantly working to show leaders the benefits of my work and how engaging employees leads to better results for the business.

Thank you to everyone for taking the time to respond. I think I shall suggest to DS that he reads the full thread. I was just wondering whether some industries tend to be better to work in than others when I read the comments from Trisolaris. If anyone has any further thoughts, I'm interested to read them.

I think choose carefully where you decide to work. IME the public sector can be toxic, with outdated and unworkable policies and procedures.

My integrity is very important to me, so I won't go with the flow; I will speak up and be counted and I can tell you, it does not go down well sometimes! I was once forced to carry out a disciplinary hearing where in the circumstances, I felt there was no case to answer, but I recommended the lowest level penalty to the panel and openly stated that I did not believe we should be doing this.

For all those of you who complain, "HR is not your friend", that's nonsense! By giving the best advice to managers, and following good practice, protecting the interests of the organisation is also about protecting the interests of the employee. They are intrinsically linked!

Does he have an ambition to work in HR then? If so he needs to be aware that he would always be working in the best interests of the employer, not the employee.

If he wants to support employee rights he should look into becoming an employment rights solicitor or working for a union.

@Summertime777 I know there are a lot of negatives but I always liked the problem solving nature of HR, usually someone has messed up and HR have to find a creative, legal solution. How to interpret case law and new legislation. Etc.

What I would say to anyone joining the workforce now is:

• you will spend 40+ years at work, so do something you enjoy.
• you have time to have more than one career
• transferrable skills enable you to move to different jobs
• it may take a few false starts
• consider which sectors have longevity e.g. AI is going to change work, and much more. Where will we still need people in 20/30 years.