How can you lose something you never had? I've not ever once encountered anyone who trusted HR any farther than they could kick them. In most cases HR really c

How can you lose something you never had? I've not ever once encountered anyone who trusted HR any farther than they could kick them. In most cases HR really combines a number of things into one working group that none of them are good at. There's compliance, which really ought to be handled by attorneys; there's finance, which really ought to be run by accountants; and there's recruiting, which is really the only role that HR teams can hope to claim competence at. But most of them are bad at this as well. Some companies have event planning and employee sat programs. But HR people are typically not good at sat programs. Those programs need analysts and data scientists to perform experiments. So you've got maybe two real roles they could be good at: recruiting and planning parties. All of these things could easily be outsourced or handed off to other teams. Need a launch party? Hire a professional party planner once or twice a year. Need a recruiter? They are everywhere. Need to make sure everyone's got the required sexual harassment training? Bring in someone to do it once a year. I can't for the life of me understand how any company justifies keeping an HR team around. I mean, who do you really want dealing with a complaint? Someone who is going to try to smooth things over or ignore them because they have no clue about what's at stake? Or do you want to talk to the company's attorney, who will absolutely give a shit about how much hot water harassment can get them into? Everything about HR teams is utterly suspect and useless. Someone needs to start a business infrastructure as a service company that includes legal, accounting, hr, recruiting, and events. That company will clean house. The value proposition is that you, the client, focus on the business, the service provider takes care of everything else. Tons of money saved; happier employees who don't have to deal with shit; and a lot of trust earned along the way--trust in the company, where it belongs.