

Ask HN: Why most of the HR Departments suck? - webuiarchitect

Although I have worked only in IT industry, I have seen and experienced this over many years. Most of the HR departments for function very badly. I wonder why!
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WillyF
HR doesn't attract great talent. I know, because I almost ended up in a career
in HR (I hope it's not too presumptuous to consider myself great talent).

I was genuinely interested in learning about how organizations can improve
performance through a focus on people. That's why I went to Cornell's School
of Industrial and Labor Relations (which is regarded by many as the best HR
program in the world though most students don't end up going into HR). I also
interned in HR for two summers at a medium sized company.

After a lot of HR classes and two summers in a 5-person HR office, I was
certain that HR was not for me. It's a field that has the potential to be
interesting and have a major effect on businesses, but in practice HR is
boring (except for the fact that you hear all of the company gossip first) and
generally ineffective.

The truth is that most of the important stuff that could fall under HR is
taken on by managers and executive leadership. The HR department gets the
administrative stuff.

When I started thinking about my future, I realized that HR couldn't take me
anywhere else. My best possible outcome would be a role as VP of HR or doing
some sort of HR consulting. It wasn't for me—I wanted to be closer to the
business.

The odd thing is that I really enjoyed my classes and internships. I got to
work on exciting stuff. But I knew that it wouldn't get any better. There was
nothing to look forward to.

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eengstrom
As a senior manager type, I hire people for Human Resources to prevent
disgruntled employees and intentionally bad outcomes to my decisions with
people and local governments from taking everything we've built in some over
inflated complaint or class action. You'll see how easy it can happen after a
few mistakes are made.

Lawyers and HR aren't required to be nice, just act nice. Finding a creative
and caring HR professionals that can help your organization grow in a positive
way, in full compliance with thousands of little things (and with as few
impacts to the employee, manager and investors lives) is actually a great
investment for any company, especially one growing up with a strong financial
reality.

On hiring: I haven't used an HR department to hire since 1995. I've typically
worked with outside parties to gather pools of resources and my best method of
hiring has been through self-directed job advertisements that I handled from
first to last contact. When I can't handle it, or I don't have really the
right skill set to evaluate deeper understanding in the candidate, I delegate
the hiring decision and help the hiring employee complete the process
properly.

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bartonfink
I think, like almost every other problem, it's a matter of [not] getting the
right people for the job. The HR employees I've interacted with have, almost
to a T, been completely process-bound and extremely hesitant to take any kind
of initiative or show independent thought. They aren't problem solvers,
they're process followers. Even when the process is causing unnecessary
problems, they follow it unless directed otherwise. The result is the suck
you're describing.

I think the reason is fairly simple, although the solution might not be. Folks
who have strong soft skills but lack critical thinking ability aren't going to
flock to engineering or finance, for example. Even if they made it in the
door, they wouldn't last. These people might work in sales, but sales seems to
select for a certain ambition and ruthlessness that many people just don't
have. If you look at the pool that's left, there just aren't a lot of
qualities left that would add value apart from following a process, and in
that case, those employees will only be as valuable as the process lets them.
So what you get is sucky process (because the company doesn't want to expose
itself to lawsuits or get taken advantage of) and sucky employees who don't
know when or how to circumvent the process when it becomes counterproductive.
Add those together, and you get an HR department that functions very badly
and, at best, adds a kind of cynical WTF entertainment value to the employees
it's supposed to help.

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abeld
Because most employees are not the 'customers' of the HR department. They are
the 'product'. (The same way as viewers of a TV channel are not the customers
of that channel, they are the product, and the advertisers are the customers,
except that it is much easier to switch TV channels, than to switch
companies.)

This means that the average HR department cares suprisingly little about
pleasing the average employee. They will worry much more about pleasing
management, etc.

~~~
webuiarchitect
I think, I found an answer here. :)

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petervandijck
I think a lot of it comes from trying to protect/justify their jobs by
introducing process etc. See also "why do most IT departments suck"?

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ig1
Because they're a cost centre not a profit centre. Hiring talented people to
work in cost centres is always hard.

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geophile
You don't say what "bad" means.

My experience at larger companies is that, beyond providing the basics,
(payroll, benefits), an HR department exists to protect the company from being
sued by current and former employees.

~~~
webuiarchitect
Ok, here are few examples of being bad:

1) No communication, whatsoever, when somebody is expecting an answer -
especially, during recruitment process. All I meant is just a confirmation -
"We have received all the documents we needed to prepare the offer; kindly
allow us till Monday evening to get back to you."

2) Mistakes (Name/Joining Date/Designation) in official correspondence. Larger
companies might be getting this correct by having a central database driving
everything; but those with less than 500 employees act really bad here.

3) Not intimating enough in advance about events. E.g. I received a mail about
a next morning's get-together just the evening before; and that day I had left
office 15 minutes early and obviously didn't check the office mail that night
(I never do) - thereby completely missing the get-together; many people in the
office did. This happens often. I know, it might not be very common across
many companies; but I am just giving specific examples of 'bad functions'.

4) Last minute preparations. Some time ago I had to travel abroad. After
reminding almost every day during the final week before traveling, I was
handed over all the document just a couple of hours in advance. The tickets,
too, were booked with unnecessary delay; leaving me with very little scope for
advanced planning. The hotel bill wasn't settled so I had to use my credit
card on arrival and then claim reimbursement. Again, just giving an example of
what happened with me - I am sure, other people might be experiencing similar
things.

5) Attitude. I understand, HR is an important function in any organization.
But one needs to understand that, especially in IT industry (or any
manufacturing industry), non-technical departments are just support staff.
They are there to facilitate the technical guys to make the production happen.
The HR people should be highly accessible and easily approachable; very hard
to find.

I can give few more examples, but I hope you might have got an idea of what I
wanted to say.

~~~
ahi
A paraphrased email exchange I had last week:

HR recruiter: When are you available for a phone interview?

Me: I am available Tuesday mornings and Thursdays before 4pm.

HR recruiter auto-message: you have been scheduled for a phone interview with
Scott (no-reference to who Scott is) on Tuesday at 4pm.

Me: WTF?

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iamdave
I had a startup idea last night that was hoping to address this very problem,
though it was more focused on call-centers than other things.

