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Having friends in HR is fine, but HR is not your friend

cdoyle.me

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Re: Having friends in HR is fine, but HR is not your friend

#81

Post by andix »

HR is your business partner. You can be friends, as long as you are able to keep business separate from friendship. And stopping yourself, when the friendship exposes too much that influences the business.

I think business follows some very clear rules, compared to friendship. It’s always about money. The decision is always in the direction that is the cheapest and brings the most profit. Friendship can help there, if some options are equally priced, then the friend may be chosen, because of the friendship.

I think employees have a very powerful position, once they realize that. Replacing someone can cost up to 6 monthly salaries (fees for headhunters, trainings, …). If you find out where the tipping point is, you can negotiate better. It’s also important to highlight your employers benefits if you want something.

In corporations then currency is quite often not just money, but influence and power. A lot of managers decide based on what will give them more power. If you play along, they may give you much more money/benefits.

Re: Having friends in HR is fine, but HR is not your friend

#82

Post by briffle »

Spoom wrote: post #21

HR represents the company. Where your goals and the company's aligns, they can be helpful. Where they diverge, perhaps less so. I think a lot of these sorts of articles discount the idea that your goals and the company's will frequently align. For example, if you're being harassed, it's very often in the company's interest to stop that happening. It will cause you and perhaps more people to quit if they don't, and th…

> For example, if you're being harassed, it's very often in the company's interest to stop that happening.

Unless of course, the harraser is a top performer, or VIP in their market. Remeber all that fun with Susan Fowler, an engineer at Uber that went public with her harrasment?

Or the ever infamous https://archive.ph/dUJNs

In those cases, like you said, HR protected the interests of the Company, which was in preserving these high performers. And the people who should have been protected, were screwed over.

Re: Having friends in HR is fine, but HR is not your friend

#83

Post by Mountain_Skies »

epicureanideal wrote: post #45
Spoom wrote: post #21

HR represents the company. Where your goals and the company's aligns, they can be helpful. Where they diverge, perhaps less so. I think a lot of these sorts of articles discount the idea that your goals and the company's will frequently align. For example, if you're being harassed, it's very often in the company's interest to stop that happening. It will cause you and perhaps more people to quit if they don't, and th…

> HR represents the company. Where your goals and the company's aligns HR very often does not even work in the interests of the company. Instead, it works in the interest of the HR employees' own political beliefs, which they then cloak in the language of doing what's right for the company, and connect no matter how loosely to any laws, regulations, etc. that they can use to justify imposing the beliefs they wanted t…

A few years ago I read an article in a business magazine, Forbes or Inc., that surveyed CEOs and found over half of them fear their company's HR department. It seems HR has evolved to be independent of many company's management structure and answerable only to itself.

Re: Having friends in HR is fine, but HR is not your friend

#85

Post by epicureanideal »

throwawaysleep wrote: post #67
Spoom wrote: post #21

HR represents the company. Where your goals and the company's aligns, they can be helpful. Where they diverge, perhaps less so. I think a lot of these sorts of articles discount the idea that your goals and the company's will frequently align. For example, if you're being harassed, it's very often in the company's interest to stop that happening. It will cause you and perhaps more people to quit if they don't, and th…

> For example, if you're being harassed, it's very often in the company's interest to stop that happening. It will cause you and perhaps more people to quit if they don't, and there might be legal risk. Depends. You going to sacrifice a secretary or a engineering manager? You basically need to try and determine what your value is to the org before going to HR.

Related to the other comment about HR having their own goals...

HR may want to get rid of that engineering manager anyway, so they can be replaced with someone that improves their demographics quotas, I mean targets.

I have actually seen such targets in some OKRs for one or more HR teams, somewhere.

Re: Having friends in HR is fine, but HR is not your friend

#86

Post by andrewmutz »

frellus wrote: post #10

I get the whole "HR can be evil" point, but this article could have also been, "Having friends in management is fine, but management is not your friend". Personally, I'm so sick of the cynicism in general. Can we make points and articles about protecting yourself, as an employee, without resorting to such things? As a manager in a company, I've both had friends in HR and also had HR been my friend. Need to fire that…

> Personally, I'm so sick of the cynicism in general. Can we make points and articles about protecting yourself, as an employee, without resorting to such things?

I don't think this will happen anytime soon for two reasons.

The first is that cynicism always sounds smart. "Don't take the vaccine, big pharma doesn't care at all about your health and just wants to make money." If you assume bad intentions, regardless of if you have any evidence of bad intentions, you sound smart and people will listen to you.

The second is that cynicism is generally negative in tone, and as a result is much more likely to go viral on the internet. No one clicks on or shares articles that say "HR people are paid to protect the company, but they are good people like the rest of us".

Re: Having friends in HR is fine, but HR is not your friend

#87

Post by incongruity »

afarrell wrote: post #55
epicureanideal wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> HR represents the company. Where your goals and the company's aligns HR very often does not even work in the interests of the company. Instead, it works in the interest of the HR employees' own political beliefs, which they then cloak in the language of doing what's right for the company, and connect no matter how loosely to any laws, regulations, etc. that they can use to justify imposing the beliefs they wanted t…

Yep. And Engineers often have pet projects. Marketing often has a slightly odd artistic vision for something. People are gonna be people.

A very astute and true point -- however, their unique position and role make HR employees fall into a category I'd argue should be held to a higher standard, precisely because of their outsized potential for impact on the organization.

Re: Having friends in HR is fine, but HR is not your friend

#88

Post by jh00ker »

So, what are some things I should be doing (documenting?) now, as a happy and well-performing at-will US-based employee, so that I can have legal standing for a better "redundancy package" than what is offered, if I'm terminated, later?

This article kind of stops short and seems to just be saying, "get a lawyer before you sign anything," which I've heard before. How would I know if a lawyer would be able to help improve the offer?

Re: Having friends in HR is fine, but HR is not your friend

#89

Post by civilized »

throwawaysleep wrote: post #61
civilized wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The dehumanizing name "Human Resources" says it all, doesn't it? We're not people. We're not even workers. We're just resources that happen to be members of the human species. Similar to other resources like staplers. There's no perfect euphemism for what HR does, but something like... I don't know... Workforce Management? Would be a little less awful, I think?

Honestly, it is one of the few honestly named things in the corporate world. You are a corporate resource. Nothing more.

There is something to be said for honesty.

Re: Having friends in HR is fine, but HR is not your friend

#90

Post by t43562 »

You Americans brought us the term "Human Resources" which used to be "Personnel" after all. :-) OK I'm joking!!! I don't really know whose fault it is that we are considered "human things" now instead of "people" but it does beautifully demonstrate the attitude that we are like the office printer or the factory machinery but more finickety.

I think it's being public that screws things up the most - there is no loyalty but to the share price and there's nothing legal that management wouldn't do to make it go up apart from arranging their own golden parachutes. So all your efforts to work extra hard or go to the mattresses or whatever are totally pointless until they result in a raise or a promotion.

A private company might be able to weather some storms and take a longer term view. Loyalty might exist there up to a point.

Anyhow it is just silly to flay yourself, which I did in my youth, for some company which can never be grateful or loyal. If you're going to burn the candle at both ends you need to do it in a place where it's going to count. That might be better to do in a startup or smaller company or private company than in some corporation with a stock price.

......in my humble temporary opinion which I will probably change in the next 20 minutes....

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