4 ms·

HR has never, ever been on the side of helping employees and should never have had employee trust in the first place. They’re there in theory to serve the inter

by erentz 9y ago

HR has never, ever been on the side of helping employees and should never have had employee trust in the first place. They’re there in theory to serve the interests of the company. But increasingly they seem to have become a kind of self serving force of their own that is bad for the companies (though maybe I’ve just been in a streak of bad companies over recent years).

nathanaldensr 9y ago
It's hard to know for sure, since usually only bad HR events get reported. However, I certainly agree with your feeling. HR is there purely to be administrators of processes involving people (hiring, firing, etc.) and also as a way to shield executives from a) having to spend time managing said processes, and b) being found culpable when their companies break the law.
- TheSpiceIsLife 9y ago
  > It's hard to know for sure I'm going to strongly oppose this, with a simple statement to support my claim that HR is decidedly not on the employees side when a conflict arises: Follow the money. Who pays the HR bill? It certainly ain't you. Edited to add: when a conflict arises in response to @Joky
  - yardie 9y ago
    If you expand it out logically. Since all companies make money from providing services and those services are provided by employees then employees are paying the HR bill through the carrying costs of being employees.
    - TheSpiceIsLife 9y ago
      To continue this line of reasoning: ultimately the customer, or end user, pays the bills. Which is nonsense, of course: Neither I, nor the customers, nor the end users, have the authority to hire HR staff, sign off on their salary payments, or set their working policies.
      - mcny 9y ago
        I learned of something called principal agent problem not too long ago and now I want to fit it everywhere (when all you have is a hammer yada yada). I think it works here Even when HR is perfectly operational, it favors the institution over anything else. Of course, in real life we have difficulty favoring the institution over the management. I imagine some questions are out of HR's reach though. Why is the pay highest at the top? Why should a supervisor need more pay than the people they supervise? Why can't we make all pay information public in a public company? Could we recruit, hire, and keep talented people (especially at the top) with something other than simply better pay? How "hands-on" should HR be?
        philipov 9y ago
        > yada yada When all you've got is an agent, everything looks like a principal.
    - monocasa 9y ago
      Capital != labor.
    - evanlivingston 9y ago
      Oh so if we follow that out further we find that managers and COs work for the employees too!
    - Avshalom 9y ago
      Good luck convincing anyone of that; capitalism is basically built on the idea that employees can't create value only owners.
  - Joky 9y ago
    The thing is that your premise is about two opposing sides: the employee and the employer. In this case sure, HR represents the employer, it isn't supposed to be some sort of independent council. On the other hand, HR is involved in more situation than just conflicts between employee / employers and it seems to me to be very overly simplistic to just see this as a manichean environment.
    - TheSpiceIsLife 9y ago
      You're right. I'll edit my comment to add: "when a conflict arises".
walshemj 9y ago
The problem is in order to be seen as core HR increasing try and pitch themselves as some elite function that is key to business success when in fact they are there just to service the needs of the company. Building services are another culprit. This leads to fads such as stack ranking which in 99% of cases causes huge damage to companies by being penny wise and pound foolish.
foobarian 9y ago
I don't disagree, but will just add that we seem to be viewing HR focusing on the various harassment/lawsuit/firing processes. I feel like HR has more value than just shielding a company from some hypothetical lawsuit; the fact that so many companies have them must mean that they are revenue positive on average. What would happen if your company did not have a HR dept? - who would greet and onboard new employees? - who would sign them up for health care? - who would pay them and send out tax forms? Even if there may be other roles that take care of the above I'm sure a lot more stuff I'm not thinking of right now would get a lot more annoying without a HR dept.
- megaman22 9y ago
  Accounting for 2 & 3, and the team they work on for 1. I dunno how big a company you need to be to need a single full-time HR person, let alone a department... 50, maybe? HR are what would be called in the military REMFs. Most corporations I've worked with have an order of magnitude more "support" staff than people who are actually doing revenue-producing work, and the bigger they are, the more wastage of this type they can afford to support, which feeds upon itself to produce yet more management and ancillary positions.

by erentz 9y ago

nathanaldensr 9y ago

It's hard to know for sure, since usually only bad HR events get reported. However, I certainly agree with your feeling. HR is there purely to be administrators of processes involving people (hiring, firing, etc.) and also as a way to shield executives from a) having to spend time managing said processes, and b) being found culpable when their companies break the law.

TheSpiceIsLife 9y ago
> It's hard to know for sure I'm going to strongly oppose this, with a simple statement to support my claim that HR is decidedly not on the employees side when a conflict arises: Follow the money. Who pays the HR bill? It certainly ain't you. Edited to add: when a conflict arises in response to @Joky
- yardie 9y ago
  If you expand it out logically. Since all companies make money from providing services and those services are provided by employees then employees are paying the HR bill through the carrying costs of being employees.
  - TheSpiceIsLife 9y ago
    To continue this line of reasoning: ultimately the customer, or end user, pays the bills. Which is nonsense, of course: Neither I, nor the customers, nor the end users, have the authority to hire HR staff, sign off on their salary payments, or set their working policies.
    - mcny 9y ago
      I learned of something called principal agent problem not too long ago and now I want to fit it everywhere (when all you have is a hammer yada yada). I think it works here Even when HR is perfectly operational, it favors the institution over anything else. Of course, in real life we have difficulty favoring the institution over the management. I imagine some questions are out of HR's reach though. Why is the pay highest at the top? Why should a supervisor need more pay than the people they supervise? Why can't we make all pay information public in a public company? Could we recruit, hire, and keep talented people (especially at the top) with something other than simply better pay? How "hands-on" should HR be?
      - philipov 9y ago
        > yada yada When all you've got is an agent, everything looks like a principal.
  - monocasa 9y ago
    Capital != labor.
  - evanlivingston 9y ago
    Oh so if we follow that out further we find that managers and COs work for the employees too!
  - Avshalom 9y ago
    Good luck convincing anyone of that; capitalism is basically built on the idea that employees can't create value only owners.
- Joky 9y ago
  The thing is that your premise is about two opposing sides: the employee and the employer. In this case sure, HR represents the employer, it isn't supposed to be some sort of independent council. On the other hand, HR is involved in more situation than just conflicts between employee / employers and it seems to me to be very overly simplistic to just see this as a manichean environment.
  - TheSpiceIsLife 9y ago
    You're right. I'll edit my comment to add: "when a conflict arises".

walshemj 9y ago

The problem is in order to be seen as core HR increasing try and pitch themselves as some elite function that is key to business success when in fact they are there just to service the needs of the company. Building services are another culprit. This leads to fads such as stack ranking which in 99% of cases causes huge damage to companies by being penny wise and pound foolish.

foobarian 9y ago

I don't disagree, but will just add that we seem to be viewing HR focusing on the various harassment/lawsuit/firing processes. I feel like HR has more value than just shielding a company from some hypothetical lawsuit; the fact that so many companies have them must mean that they are revenue positive on average. What would happen if your company did not have a HR dept? - who would greet and onboard new employees? - who would sign them up for health care? - who would pay them and send out tax forms? Even if there may be other roles that take care of the above I'm sure a lot more stuff I'm not thinking of right now would get a lot more annoying without a HR dept.

megaman22 9y ago
Accounting for 2 & 3, and the team they work on for 1. I dunno how big a company you need to be to need a single full-time HR person, let alone a department... 50, maybe? HR are what would be called in the military REMFs. Most corporations I've worked with have an order of magnitude more "support" staff than people who are actually doing revenue-producing work, and the bigger they are, the more wastage of this type they can afford to support, which feeds upon itself to produce yet more management and ancillary positions.