
HR has lost the trust of employees - ilamont
https://techcrunch.com/2018/02/10/hr-has-lost-the-trust-of-employees-here-is-who-has-it-now/?ncid=rss&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Techcrunch+%28TechCrunch%29
======
erentz
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
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
> 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
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
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
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
> _yada yada_

When all you've got is an agent, everything looks like a principal.

------
hrthrowaway
Posted with a throwaway, since my primary user is public.

I worked at a company in which my reporting manager was significantly
harassing me. He did so via recorded systems. The next day, after each time I
had a direct complaint and brought it to HR, he then walked through the
punishments indicated in the handbook. He indicated "we don't have good ways
to ascertain performance", and then said I had "bad performance" during the HR
meeting. This set up no bells and whistles with HR.

Eventually, he then made up data claiming that I didn't maintain a specific
system in a certain way. Truth of the matter was it was handed to me in a
failed state before I started working for him. HR was complicit in supporting
manager in a firing, even after proof of harassment and retaliation.

HR is only good for one thing - and that is defending the company. You're a
nothing; a cog that can be replaced. If you have problems in your company,
leave. It's not your duty to fix their problems. That's for the C()O
positions. Leave before they can make you do so.

~~~
ianai
On the upside, if you do sue them they’re likely to lose. It will be brought
before a jury of your peers. Your peers will see a large corporation bullying
a single person and side with you. It probably won’t matter what ever pretext
the company put as cause for termination. Just do yourself a favor and always
document well and know how to pick a fight you’ll win, when necessary. Also
spend fine finding the right representation.

~~~
dogma1138
The downside is that lawsuits are public in most places which might come up as
a negative for future job prospects.

Companies would be weary of hiring people that sued previous employers and not
for no reason no one can ever know the facts first hand and even borderline
frivolous law suits tend to be settled, so having the choice between someone
who sued a previous employer and someone who hasn’t most companies would opt
out for the latter.

~~~
ianai
That's valid, but probably has limits (i.e. if you leave town). I imagine
certain factors mitigate the negatives. For one, some industries are known to
be harsh to employees. I imagine the same factors that allow for such
harshness may also allow for legalistic backgrounds.

------
akulbe
Call me crazy, but as I've progressed in my career, I learned to be very wary
of HR.

It became evident to me that while there are multiple things they do, the
primary purpose is to shield the company from liability. Not to help you, as
is so often the claim.

~~~
aphextron
Totally agreed. They are basically paralegals, akin to tier 1 support for the
company's legal team.

~~~
walshemj
The average HR person has a lot less knowledge than a para legal.

We had one at a meeting at British Telecom address a meeting of or group when
asked about this years pay rise seem to think we where all the same blue
collar grades as the "engineers" or telecoms linemen and that we where getting
the CWU agreed increases.

I almost said so we are all getting the Band D increase then (4.6%)

------
koolba
> The obvious reality is that HR has never been “your friend.” Rather, it is
> an important component of a company’s legal strategy to document and
> mitigate any potential lawsuits that might arise from its employees,
> contractors, or anyone else who may interact with the firm.

Using the legal analogy should make this abundantly clear. Only a fool would
think the other side's lawyer has their best interests in mind.

Simplest advice for dealing with HR is: _Don 't talk to HR_

~~~
gnicholas
> _Simplest advice for dealing with HR is: Don 't talk to HR_

IANAL (anymore), but I'm not sure this is true. That is, there could be
certain remedies/benefits/claims that you might give up if you never put the
company on notice of the misbehavior. For example, if someone offers you a
promotion in exchange for romantic involvement, this would be illegal. You
could make claims against the individual. But if no one ever told the company
(HR or someone with mandatory reporting obligations), then the company might
not be liable. And if this were a one-off situation, this makes sense — the
company had no way of knowing that the bad actor was doing anything wrong. But
if you tell HR or someone who must report it to HR, then the company is on
notice and if they don't deal with the situation appropriately then you can
pursue legal remedies against them as well.

This is just my recollection from many workplace harassment trainings that we
had at the law firm I worked at — I would welcome a more nuanced analysis by a
specialist.

~~~
quasse
Having recently talked to a workplace attorney about this, you are correct and
the parent poster is pushing a naive and simplistic idea of how workplace
litigation works.

It is important that you give the company notice of bad behavior so that they
can be held responsible later if they fail to stop it. That notice could come
from your attorney if you want to feel more protected, but saying blanket
"don't talk to HR ever" is not correct.

~~~
koolba
The “don’t talk to HR” is the general case. The more specific one is don’t
talk to them till you’re ready to leave. That doesn’t mean you don’t keep a
log of transgressions and talking points prior. It’s critical that you do. But
if you approach HR with anything involving wrongdoing on the part of someone
associated with your company then you better be ready to leave as well. It’s
not how it should be, it’s how it is.

------
throwaway666911
One thing I have seen HR do: Manager has a really good employee and wants to
pay them $X. They have the budget to do it, they think the employee is worth
it (they don't want to lose them), their own boss approves. But HR says "No,
that is too much, we won't let you pay them that."

An employee's own management has a much better idea of how much they are worth
to the company than HR does. The folks in HR don't even understand what the
employee actually does, or how they compare to their peers in the industry,
all they have is meaningless tables of job title vs. salary range that they've
purchased from some remuneration consulting firm.

------
newscracker
_As seen in big companies that have been around longer than a few decades,_ HR
exists only to protect the company and to make as much money for the company
(which usually aligns with higher executive compensation than being anything
meaningful for lower level employees). HR is also inaccessible and useless in
such companies since many things are outsourced and there is no "one neck to
choke" if there are serious issues. Heck, even getting answers on benefits is
getting close to impossible. Everything is driven from the top with the
executive compensation in mind. So called "employee friendly" measures are
such an eyewash that it's trivial to see through all those sugar coated
messages where their priorities lie (hint: it's not you, the employees).

If you're someone in an entry level HR job in a large company, I pity you,
because all your dreams about having a really employee friendly and helpful
function will be crushed beyond recognition within a year on the job. If
you're someone at a higher level HR job, I totally despise your existence in
the organization, despise your methods, your way of thinking and acting. You
aid and abet "crimes" against employees to satisfy the executives, just like
bureaucrats do with politicians. I have no respect at all for you!

P.S.: This may not apply to all companies, but it's true for most.

------
notacoward
As long as they juxtapose "human" with "resource" the role of HR is going to
be problematic at best. Everyone else treats us as resources already. If you
help employees _as humans_ then you need to hire people who have nothing to do
with the "resource" part. Some companies have this, and it's never anything to
do with HR. It's life coaches, educational programs, employee assistance
programs, hotlines of various sorts, quasi-official employee groups, etc. HR
is OK when it's hiring and benefits, downright evil when it's policy police
and executive ass-covering. I'd rather deal with _actual_ police and lawyers
than people who smile and pretend to be anything else.

------
ianamartin
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.

------
k__
I worked in HR for a few years and had the general feeling that most people
there really cared about employees.

Sadly these weren't the people who made the decisions.

So you have like 1-10% of people who make decisions for the company wealth and
90-99% who have to realize these. Often they aren't happy about this :(

------
jarjoura
HR is many things though, and I think this article focuses solely on the HR-BP
(Business Partner) role. That's the person your org/division reports to for
matters of policy and disputes. Of course they will always side with
management, that's their job. If you go into it knowing that, having a good
relationship with them can be beneficial to your career. Besides, they really
can't be your friend, and I'm not sure when anyone was lead to believe that
was the case. There's this thing called conflict of interest, still, that
doesn't mean they can't be friendly to you and offer you advice.

~~~
TheSpiceIsLife
> There's this thing called conflict of interest, still, that doesn't mean
> they can't be friendly to you and offer you advice.

That's _exactly_ what _conflict of interest_ means: a situation in which the
concerns or aims of two different parties are incompatible.

They can't offer you advice. Well, I mean, they can and they do, but take it
with a Ganymede-sized grain of salt.

------
herge
I am sure everyone has stories about how awful their HR department it, but if
you do not trust HR, then who do you trust in your company? Your boss? Nobody?

And, assuming you are a white collar worker (like a programmer) with a full-
time permanent job, if you do not trust anybody where you work, why have a
permanent position? Why not either become a contractor, or join a job with a
union to collectively bargain for you? Are you not the ultimate chump in
participating in a system where you are bargaining implicitly from the weakest
position?

~~~
fatjokes
Nobody. Trust nobody. It's sad, but it's true. They're your employer---not
your friend, not your family.

The upside: you don't have to feel bad about being a mercenary about it. You
can feel shameless in trying to negotiate higher pay (regardless of your
performance or ability).

A permanent position is only good because it's effectively higher comp (i.e.,
benefits, severance, etc). Most programmers are at-will employed anyway so
it's not _that_ much different from contractors.

A union is also, in theory, a good thing. However, over time it's evolved into
a different beast with its own set of problems.

~~~
HumanDrivenDev
> Nobody. Trust nobody. It's sad, but it's true. They're your employer---not
> your friend, not your family.

It's not sad to me. It's common sense. In life, you trust your family and your
friends - that's it. Anyone who isn't family or friends and who wants you to
trust them is suspect (your boss, other companies, your government).

Of course you can have friendly relations with all and sundry in your company.
I am on good terms with everyone where I work, from the cleaners to the
regional CEO. But trust is a different matter altogether.

~~~
TheSpiceIsLife
> In life, you trust your family and your friends

Should we believe that family and friends are beyond the reach of the cardinal
sins? I'm going to proclaim loudly: No! Family and friends are ideally placed
to defraud us and sleep with our partner.

This isn't and indictment against trust, because, in practice, we trust family
and friends anyway, and are rightly surprised and disappointed when they let
us down.

We shouldn't be surprised or disappointed when HR, Legal, Management, etc,
turn against us.

~~~
candiodari
All trust is relative.

Is HR more trustworthy than, say, the Chinese government ? Yes

(in most cases) is HR more trustworthy than far-off management of the company
? Usually, yes.

Are your friends and colleagues more trustworthy than HR ? Definitely

Is your family more trustworthy than your friends ? Usually

Of course your situation may differ, and some common sense needs to be
applied, but HR is VERY low on the trust ladder.

------
bb88
To a company, Humans Are Resources, period. Hence the name "Human Resources".

More to the point, a Human Resource professional is only doing a good job with
respect to the company if he/she only sees "Humans As Resources". The main job
of HR is Hiring and Firing, and the more exposure one has to employees, the
harder this is to do.

------
jenkstom
HR does a few things, but mostly they hire and fire. It's unlikely my second
experience with HR will be a positive one.

------
ghostcluster
HR is frightening because one can be sabatoged by blank slatist idelogical
puritans who write stuff like this:

> Affirming our commitment to diversity and inclusion—and healthy debate

> Googlers,

> I’m Danielle, Google’s brand new VP of Diversity, Integrity & Governance. I
> started just a couple of weeks ago, and I had hoped to take another week or
> so to get the lay of the land before introducing myself to you all. But
> given the heated debate we’ve seen over the past few days, I feel compelled
> to say a few words.

> Many of you have read an internal document shared by someone in our
> engineering organization, expressing views on the natural abilities and
> characteristics of different genders, as well as whether one can speak
> freely of these things at Google. And like many of you, I found that it
> advanced incorrect assumptions about gender. I’m not going to link to it
> here as it’s not a viewpoint that I or this company endorses, promotes or
> encourages.

> Diversity and inclusion are a fundamental part of our values and the culture
> we continue to cultivate. We are unequivocal in our belief that diversity
> and inclusion are critical to our success as a company, and we’ll continue
> to stand for that and be committed to it for the long haul. As Ari Balogh
> said in his internal G+ post, “Building an open, inclusive environment is
> core to who we are, and the right thing to do. ‘Nuff said.”

> Google has taken a strong stand on this issue, by releasing its demographic
> data and creating a company wide OKR on diversity and inclusion. Strong
> stands elicit strong reactions. Changing a culture is hard, and it’s often
> uncomfortable. But I firmly believe Google is doing the right thing, and
> that’s why I took this job.

> Part of building an open, inclusive environment means fostering a culture in
> which those with alternative views, including different political views,
> feel safe sharing their opinions. But that discourse needs to work alongside
> the principles of equal employment found in our Code of Conduct, policies,
> and anti-discrimination laws.

> I’ve been in the industry for a long time, and I can tell you that I’ve
> never worked at a company that has so many platforms for employees to
> express themselves — TGIF, Memegen, internal G+, thousands of discussion
> groups. I know this conversation doesn’t end with my email today. I look
> forward to continuing to hear your thoughts as I settle in and meet with
> Googlers across the company.

> Thanks,

As if anyone can't take a trip to Google Scholar and find that even _at the
average_ , men have the equivalent of a 13 IQ point advantage in measures of
mechanical reasoning [0], or that in every nation surveyed, men and women
prefer sex-typical careers when asked, and culture has no to modest impact on
these choices [1].

Bringing up these scientific results, even carefully, when asked for pertinent
feedback on a policy, even in a company entrusted with shepherding the world's
information, will cost you your job and reputation because of the chilled
walking on eggshells environment they enforce.

Or fired from Apple after a 20 year career for saying diversity isn't just
about identity quotas.

[0] [http://atavisionary.com/study-index/intelligence-
psychometri...](http://atavisionary.com/study-index/intelligence-
psychometrics-psychology/sex-differences-on-g-and-non-g-intellectual-
performance-reveal-potential-sources-of-stem-discrepancies/)

[1]
[https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10508-008-9380-7](https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10508-008-9380-7)

~~~
TheSpiceIsLife
> _Part of building an open, inclusive environment means fostering a culture
> in which those with alternative views, including different political views,
> feel safe sharing their opinions. But that discourse needs to work alongside
> the principles of equal employment found in our Code of Conduct, policies,
> and anti-discrimination laws._

That jumped out at me as the one sentence that most strongly supports your
claim of _ideological puritanism_.

I mean, it _wouldn 't be_ an _" alternative view"_ if it didn't rub _The
Current Standard_ [1] the wrong way.

In practice what this says is: we want you to feel safe to express your
alternative views, so we know who to fire. Which is perfectly rational from a
company's perspective, and we should all know this by now; _choose your
battles_.

1\. The current standard is the equivalent of an adolescent restricted to the
diet of an infant. The rapidly changing body would acquire dysfunctional and
deformative symptoms and could not properly mature on a diet of apple sauce
and crushed pears. - Saul Williams in Coded Language.

