Greg Ferro has some wrong opinions, but he’s correct about the misconceptions many people have about the human resources (HR) department at their company. Although the people in the HR department aren’t necessarily bad (in fact, HR often attracts very kind and caring folks), their organizational mission is service to the company and the law, not service to the employees. They’re usually happy to help employees if it helps (or doesn’t hurt) the company, but that’s about all they can do.
Perhaps Greg is emotionalizing a bit when he says “Human Resources exists to protect the company from its employees not to protect you from the company”, but he’s mostly correct. Management consultant, Dave Ulrich, has laid out the functions of HR “champions” as follows:
- Aligning HR and business strategy
- Re-engineering organization processes
- Listening and responding to employees
- Managing transformation and change
These sound like positive goals, but even this message doesn’t prioritize the needs of employees.
Read more at: Human Resources Is Not Your Friend
Aligning HR and business strategy = digging up dirt on employees to weed out the bad apples
Re-engineering organization processes = assisting in assuring that only potential “yes” men/women get hired instead of the best person for the position
Listening and responding to employees = accusing employees of shit they may not have done based on a simple claim by another employee with little to no investigation
Managing transformation and change = keeping everyone in a constant state of chaos to ensure their own job security
Look no further than the recently fired Google employee for evidence of what I am saying here.
I have been in the workforce since the day I turned 16 and I just turned 50. I have NEVER been called HR for anything positive in 34 years. NEVER, not 1 single time. Human Resources are neither human, nor are they a resource.