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This meme gets repeated on HN quite frequently but a good HR department can help a lot with engagement across the company. Sure, they can't solve specific team

This meme gets repeated on HN quite frequently but a good HR department can help a lot with engagement across the company. Sure, they can't solve specific team problems but if they work as a channel for employees to be heard and upper management trusts them, they can be a positive force.

chillwaves 7y ago
The interests of HR are opposed to the interest of the worker 9 times out of 10. There is no way to reconcile this fact.
- MegaButts 7y ago
  I wrote a long rant but deleted it because it was so personal. But I cannot agree more that HR is not on your side.
  - bunsenhoneydew 7y ago
    This very much depends on the culture of the company. I've experienced toxic HR, indifferent HR, incompetent HR and awesomely helpful HR. It depends on the people in the HR team and the people on the exec team. HR is a really hard job too, very hard to do well and very stressful. Most people never get to see this as it's part of their job that they can't talk about most things they are having to deal with. Bad HR is a nightmare, good HR can make a massive difference to a company.
  - wastedhours 7y ago
    > But I cannot agree more that HR is not on your side. Just to add a counter in case early career people see this and take it as truth - there are companies out there who have really good HR teams who are aligned to their employees. Don't put up with shitty HR because you think all HR teams are shit. Org I work for has really good HR teams for both the boring process stuff, and fostering a decent working environment. It's one of the strings still holding me to stay.
duxup 7y ago
I don't doubt it. I just haven't had that experience / have not heard from many people who have.
- tlals 7y ago
  I worked for a private (venture backed) company that actually had a stellar HR team who seemed to think about the employee's needs first. Or rather, they considered the company's needs first and the company* (ie, the executive team) believed that having an HR department who prioritized employee's needs was the right choice. The most obvious standout example was an employee with health problems who might not be able to return to work. She was kept on the payroll for a full year without working. She never did end up returning to work. This kind of thing paid off in retention, which was wildly high compared to other companies in the market. But that company was acquired by a massive public company. And now HR is half adversary + half bureaucratic nonsense. Interestingly, the company still offered great benefits. I assume that is because the benefits package is an easy-to-measure piece of compensation, while HR quality is something that is much harder to shop around for. * caveat, I have no idea how HR would have acted in a situation where an employee brings up concerns that would put the company in legal jeopardy. If I had to guess, they would do the right thing in a "senior harasser vs harassed subordinate" situation. If the the company was clearly in the wrong, I think they would work hard to satisfy the employee to prevent legal jeopardy. If the employee could not be satisfied without a significant hit to the company, I'm pretty sure they would do anything they could to protect the company. And that reflects that at the end of the day, the company comes first. A good HR department can just push much harder for win-wins (and probably only under market conditions that give labor leverage).
jessaustin 7y ago
This has never been the case in any firm anywhere.
swiley 7y ago
This was the case in neither of the larger companies I've worked for.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
munchbunny 7y ago
My experience with HR is that there are: (1) Companies where HR is mostly administrative stuff plus risk management. (2) Companies that claim their HR is more than that and for the employees, but when the situation seems to actually come close to resembling a dilemma, they're mostly administrative stuff plus risk management. I have yet to hear of or experience a company that claims the latter and actually is the latter.
sidlls 7y ago
I have yet to see an engagement program run by HR that wasn't some asinine extrovert-centric activity or obviously propaganda. They are concerned with protecting the company. For some that means viewing employees as liabilities, for others it means viewing them as resources to be kept as happy as necessary for as little cost as can be got away with. It's a rare HR department indeed that ignores its own title and thinks of employees as something other than resources.
PeterisP 7y ago
The way I see it, employee engagement is primarily the work and responsibility of middle management, direct supervisors, team leads, etc. They are the ones handling the personal one-to-one relationships between the employee and the company. As you say, good HR department can help a lot in this regard - but in this function it's the same as in other main HR functions (recruitment, training, discipline issues and firing, compensation, legal compliance); most of what HR departments generally do is support for these line managers in their job of managing the employees, not support for the employees themselves.

chillwaves 7y ago

The interests of HR are opposed to the interest of the worker 9 times out of 10. There is no way to reconcile this fact.

MegaButts 7y ago
I wrote a long rant but deleted it because it was so personal. But I cannot agree more that HR is not on your side.
- bunsenhoneydew 7y ago
  This very much depends on the culture of the company. I've experienced toxic HR, indifferent HR, incompetent HR and awesomely helpful HR. It depends on the people in the HR team and the people on the exec team. HR is a really hard job too, very hard to do well and very stressful. Most people never get to see this as it's part of their job that they can't talk about most things they are having to deal with. Bad HR is a nightmare, good HR can make a massive difference to a company.
- wastedhours 7y ago
  > But I cannot agree more that HR is not on your side. Just to add a counter in case early career people see this and take it as truth - there are companies out there who have really good HR teams who are aligned to their employees. Don't put up with shitty HR because you think all HR teams are shit. Org I work for has really good HR teams for both the boring process stuff, and fostering a decent working environment. It's one of the strings still holding me to stay.

duxup 7y ago

I don't doubt it. I just haven't had that experience / have not heard from many people who have.

tlals 7y ago
I worked for a private (venture backed) company that actually had a stellar HR team who seemed to think about the employee's needs first. Or rather, they considered the company's needs first and the company* (ie, the executive team) believed that having an HR department who prioritized employee's needs was the right choice. The most obvious standout example was an employee with health problems who might not be able to return to work. She was kept on the payroll for a full year without working. She never did end up returning to work. This kind of thing paid off in retention, which was wildly high compared to other companies in the market. But that company was acquired by a massive public company. And now HR is half adversary + half bureaucratic nonsense. Interestingly, the company still offered great benefits. I assume that is because the benefits package is an easy-to-measure piece of compensation, while HR quality is something that is much harder to shop around for. * caveat, I have no idea how HR would have acted in a situation where an employee brings up concerns that would put the company in legal jeopardy. If I had to guess, they would do the right thing in a "senior harasser vs harassed subordinate" situation. If the the company was clearly in the wrong, I think they would work hard to satisfy the employee to prevent legal jeopardy. If the employee could not be satisfied without a significant hit to the company, I'm pretty sure they would do anything they could to protect the company. And that reflects that at the end of the day, the company comes first. A good HR department can just push much harder for win-wins (and probably only under market conditions that give labor leverage).

jessaustin 7y ago

This has never been the case in any firm anywhere.

swiley 7y ago

This was the case in neither of the larger companies I've worked for.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

munchbunny 7y ago

My experience with HR is that there are: (1) Companies where HR is mostly administrative stuff plus risk management. (2) Companies that claim their HR is more than that and for the employees, but when the situation seems to actually come close to resembling a dilemma, they're mostly administrative stuff plus risk management. I have yet to hear of or experience a company that claims the latter and actually is the latter.

sidlls 7y ago

I have yet to see an engagement program run by HR that wasn't some asinine extrovert-centric activity or obviously propaganda. They are concerned with protecting the company. For some that means viewing employees as liabilities, for others it means viewing them as resources to be kept as happy as necessary for as little cost as can be got away with. It's a rare HR department indeed that ignores its own title and thinks of employees as something other than resources.

PeterisP 7y ago

The way I see it, employee engagement is primarily the work and responsibility of middle management, direct supervisors, team leads, etc. They are the ones handling the personal one-to-one relationships between the employee and the company. As you say, good HR department can help a lot in this regard - but in this function it's the same as in other main HR functions (recruitment, training, discipline issues and firing, compensation, legal compliance); most of what HR departments generally do is support for these line managers in their job of managing the employees, not support for the employees themselves.