Human Resources - friend or foe? (money, fired, business, good)

[fireandice1000]

HR in my experience tends to be the accomplice to a lot of management's screwups. I've been fortunate not to encounter bad HR although a lot of them come across as being a bit goofy. Realistically a lot of HR people are just dead weight; genuinely good HR people get the crap beat out of them and get tossed under the train just like good employees.

[Akaluv445]

HR is not your friend. They do what the managers what and that's it.

[cdubs3201]

HR is just like anyone else. They're job is to help create a safe, stable, and positive work environment. They handle the onboarding experience. And they too answer to someone and have to make decisions that make them look good to their bosses. If they make a bad decision that looks bad, they could lose their job.

HR, when hiring, really doesn't have interest in lying about the job just to get you to work there. The cost to advertise the position, interview, hire, and train someone can range up to 3 times the cost of the person's salary for a year. They lose a ton of money if a new hire leaves in the first year. That is investment money completely down the drain, not to mention the efficiency hit they take from having to go through the hiring process all over again.

It's in their best interest to tell you about a job with accuracy so that you like the job, it's a good fit, and you stay there for a long time. The last thing they want is to have you walk in the door the first day with a major surprise that is way below your expectations because then they know it's only a matter of time until you quit.

[robertpolyglot]

Originally Posted by Pear Martini

HR people have no hard skills. It's a landing pad for mediocrity and soft skills.

I stay far away from HR.

Sources: I was a recruiting intern at a F100 company. I learned that most people in HR are social people that aren't passionate about anything in life. They have preferences like only hiring people who grew up in affluent neighborhoods, or people who have a self-employed parent, or people who they only hire because they want to network with his/her father/brother/cousin.

Hr attracts shallow, social types who don't have much to offer the world. I took an Organizational Behavior class and the professor had worked in HR his entire life. He said the chance of hiring the right person for a job through the interview process was 50/50...might as well cut out HR and hire a coin flipper

I LOVE this post. It speaks to maturity, street smarts, and someone who didn't sleep in business school. I totally agree with you said, especially the bold.

In the Atlanta company in which I worked, the lady in HR who hired me was actually an Italian-American transplant from the Northeast who went for numerical business to soft business, meaning HR. She reminded me of Pat, the androgynous character from TV (forgot the name of the show), though someone actually married and impregnated her, given that she was unattractive. You would see her working the Southern "good ole boys," in the elevator lobbies, and exchanging all the artificial pleasantries. She eventually moved back up north, where she was from. I'm sure she asked herself: get paid for doing spreadsheets, or get paid for talking smack? I guess she preferred the latter. When I had decided to move back West, I asked this one girl, a coworker who had more time with the company, jokingly "Hey, what does it take to get fired around here?" She said "You practically have to assault someone or something along those lines." I then thought "Ok, there's a long leash on what you can do." My boss from North Carolina and I were tangling quite a bit, because he didn't want to release me to other departments that interested me. (The other 2 people in adjacent offices, my friends from UNC and UFl. were having the exact same problem with him.) So, I decided to push the long leash, coming in late, leaving early, and spending 3 hours at downtown's indoor Peachtree Center, eating lunch, reading books at the bookstore, and whatnot, with my monthly MARTA pass. I did not see any consequences, and this was a first for me, since I usually crank out work. My feeling was "mofos, you move me 2,200 miles and paid for it, then you need to give me a job aligned with my education, which is entirely reasonable in a company of this size." So, this lady from HR actually did a disservice to her company, because it was a real easy win-win. Instead, they got no productivity out of me, the learning curve was aborted, turnover occurred, it affected morale in the immediate vicinity, and everybody wound up losing. They found me a more plausible position within 2 weeks of the date I had all my moving arrangements in order, without their knowledge. I moved and got another job related to what I had studied, so I didn't care.

About your professor, I call those people "three timers." That means they most likely studied business THREE times, going from undergraduate business, to master level work in business, to a doctorate in business. They usually work between both degrees, and then they land in academia, where they then proceed to tell students how lousy the line of work/profession is. Most of these people should have been in another occupation altogether. I have friends who teach business in universities, and they fit this demographic.

The other thing is that there is very little opportunity to plan for a career in HR anyway. If a person gets a BA/BS in Business with a Human Resources emphasis, they may not even get a job in that field, and if they do, it's clerical and didn't require a degree. FWIW, the only MBA program that had this concentration and where it was somewhat viable was Univ. of Maryland College Park, with an HR emphasis including courses such as Compensation Analysis, Negotiations in Industrial Relations, and a handful of electives related to HR. I think it worked because they have one of the better local MBA programs near DC, and a lot of those people went to the Feds. I glanced at their website, and that specialization appears to have been dismantled, as they didn't show those kinds of classes. Becoming a HR department head just sort of happens. It's not a charted career course, most of the time.

Yes, HR is bad news about 3/4 of the time.

[KodeBlue]

The previous HR Manager I've worked with Have had sexual relationships with employees; fired other managers how got in the way of the sexual relationships; had sexual relationships with other managers; was appointed Asst.General Manager/ HR Manager; HR manager's wife comes to job threatening employee whom HR Manager was having sexual relations with.

The current HR Manager, who's son works at the same place, got into an accident with the company van. Standard protocol would be to have the employee drug tested immediately; Employee admitted to fellow employees on multiple occassions that he smokes marijuana;however, employee was never drug tested, and is still currently working.

[oberon_1]

Human Resources are an integral part of the picture. Employees should accept that and play accordingly (Though I found that difficult.) Although they smile and pretend being friendly, they are nobody's friend.
It is a difficult job and I wouldn't like being in their position. With the current recession, they are one of the most stressed departments in a company. Executives put much pressure on HR, sometimes expecting them to make miracles. Every employee should be in their shoes once, just to understand.

[vaughanwilliams]

I suppose long ago HR acted as a mediator between management and non-management. Now it's just a pseudo-scientific gobbledegook spewing enforcement arm of the bosses. A propaganda department with an evil twist, if you will.

[mikeyking]

Surely companies need HR to protect themselves from the hoardes of money grabbing employees who would try to sue company at the slightest thing, who take sick leave, and generally run riot if they could not be fired legally for not doing their jobs.

If i owned my own company, I'd want at HR department to financially/legally protect the company from my employees.

[I_Love_LI_but]

Originally Posted by sinsativ

Right, I love this, Only HR, works for the company?? lets see, every job in a company, "WORKS FOR THE BENEFIT OF THE EMPLOYER!" imagine that, HR gets paid to do their job, what do you do, work for free? no, you're out there working on a machine, not cause you love it, passionate, you do it cause you get paid, by the same company that pays HR. HR is not a charitable dept put in to protect the rights an privileges, after payroll, they are there to make sure that the rules are being followed, that people aren't absent, that the ins benefits are good. so many believe that HR is supposed to be like a Union Rep that goes and deals with the owners on their behalf. NO. HR is a dept in a company that makes sure problems between employees are represented evenly, when employees have a beef with management, that the message gets forwarded. We are not your personal fan that says, HEy, Joe needs a raise, Tom is a great employee. We keep records, we help support employees in benefit info needs, make sure your pay is correct. Not take sides in employee pissing contests. Once again, this stuff starts on the floor, its brought to HR to decide how to clean up the mess that the other employees created.

Good point!

[hopefulone]

Originally Posted by vaughanwilliams

I suppose long ago HR acted as a mediator between management and non-management. Now it's just a pseudo-scientific gobbledegook spewing enforcement arm of the bosses. A propaganda department with an evil twist, if you will.

This.