HR dept gone...all on app now... is this the norm now?

[oldmanandtheangel]

I work for a worldwide company and my branch had a great HR department.
We could chat to one of the staff in a private office and I always found them helpful, caring and approachable no matter what the problem. We were also
allowed to leave our work in order to go and see one.. without an appointment..

Just found out the entire team was made redundant. It's obvious (to me) why...
because, they don't actively sell our products... they were just there for the staff.

Our so called 'HR' will now be through an app, or we approach our dept manager instead (my point is, what if the manager IS the problem?!) I do not
see how this can work, no doubt 'talking ' to some AI bot. Also... we can't leave
the shop floor that most of us work on, to do this, and we are not allowed our phones on us anyway. New store manager has made it a sackable offence to have our phones on the shop floor.

I feel sorry for the staff that lost our jobs and also for us that we obviously don't merit an HR team anymore.
Is this the norm now?

That should read, lost THEIR jobs...

This is the start OP... you have my sympathies. The tidlewave is coming.

That is shocking. It's gone the other way where I work, can't say HR any more, it's the people team, and there's more of them than ever.

I agree, this is the start. Time to look for something new.

I would be looking for another job.

This is a metaphorical - we don't value our staff. I bet they have a finance team.b3cause they sure as hell value money.

In my old workplace there's suddenly seemingly dozens of new staff, all with 'people' in their title, including two directors. When I was there, no HR for many years, suddenly panicked, they employed this poor woman as a 'recruitment officer', she didn't have a proper role and then they sacked her. Same with the HR assistant position they created then got rid of after six months?
I can only imagine your employer felt the HR team were more for the staffs benefit than their own.

yes of course they have the finance team!

Our HR did actually change to P&C last year (People and Communication)...

Bobbys, that's exactly it. And every day I walk up the stairs past all these signs saying things like, 'We invest in people'. They are also huge advocates for mental health...but it's all virtue signalling. eg they will pay for an animal farm to come in..we had a shetland pony and fluffy bunnies in the car park (just for staff) for MH week. Yet.....

HR are primarily there for the good of the company, not the employees.
Having no HR contact and expecting managers of all differing experience levels to manage all things HR without any guidance or advice is exposing the company to risk. I’d feel worse for the managers than the non-managerial employees to be honest.

Yes but they're also undermining the value for their staff as a 'human resource'...a good organisation recognises the value of nurturing human capital...not just for the good of the company but to meet corporate social responsibility and their duty of care...just because it's value can't always be quantified, HR so often gets pushed aside. It makes no sense not to have HR on the strategic table alongside Finance or any other key money focused areas, Marketing for example.

So there were multiple HR representatives in each retail outlet? I’d say that’s fairly unusual. Or have I misunderstood?

I'm sure they'll learn some extremely expensive lessons after a couple of employment tribunals.

If I were in this position, I would look to unionising if there wasn't one already on site.

Agree, everywhere I've worked has had the directors of those departments on the SMT, how can you have a coherent strategy otherwise.

Lapalma...I'm in a store with about 500 employees, our HR was five of them

I was thinking of joining USDAW (shopworker's union)