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

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

#141

Post by kayodelycaon »

hardware2win wrote: post #31

I dont understand those bad experiences with HR here All hr stuff that ive been involved in was getting hired, questions about taxes, days off calculations and health provider related stuff Like... what happened to you?

I have a disability. A new HR person was hired and she started introducing policies as if we were a 100,000+ person company, when we had less than 400.

Most of those policies ran head first into ADA. Hard. My manager and I had worked just fine with my limitations prior to these rules. The new HR person wanted to overrule everything and then got pissed when she had to start tracking my time off per hour in a spreadsheet and manually adjust payroll because she didn't know how to enter it in the system properly.

She did some serious gymnastics to get me fired over the protests of several layers of management.

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

#142

Post by andix »

t43562 wrote: post #104
andix wrote: post #81

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, i…

Cheapest/most profit as the ultimate goal is potentially a cultural thing - long term versus short term benefit might be valued more e.g. in Japan. and less in e.g. the US or the UK. What you say about the cost of replacing people IS the argument I used for getting one of my team a raise. There's no doubt it's very time consuning and difficult to get suitable new people and well worth the small amount this one wanted…

Short or long term profit is a cultural thing, even some companies value the one over the other. There are also companies, that will never pay any employee more then the industry average. Those are factors that need to be considered.

About people who fight, that's often really hard to judge. In some companies this is how change happens, and it's appreciated in the end (or not).

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

#143

Post by clownshoez »

BeetleB wrote: post #138
clownshoez wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're making the assumption that although you're being harassed the best outcome for you and the company are aligned. This is definitely not always the case, if you are being harassed and it happens to be in the best interest for the company to get rid of you, for whatever reason, guess what happens next?

> guess what happens next? Lawsuits and bad press.

Are you making the claim that every wrongful termination ends in lawsuits and bad press?

Dubious.

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

#144

Post by dogman144 »

elil17 wrote: post #32
seneca wrote: post #6

I disagree with the "mostly harmless" take in the article. HR is the group everyone, regardless of where they stand in a company, must be the most careful in dealing with. They are beurocrats and, in modern western companies, are becoming ideological commissars. One of the strongest suggestions I would make to anyone going into white collar work is to avoid HR as much as possible, and be extremely careful of everythi…

If someone's going to drive company culture, why shouldn't it be HR? They seem well qualified to do so. For example, someone in HR would be in a good position to do the research to figure out if work-from-home improves productivity or employee happiness, and they would also understand the tax and legal implications of a possible work-from-home policy.

What? How are they well qualified to do so.

Culture comes from leadership and leaders. When this doesn’t happen, you get all sorts of organizational issues. HR are not leaders. Culture isn’t productive and clicks per hour research or something you can suss out from forced company fun sessions.

This is a root of an issue in corporate America where management (and it’s offshoots like HR) is considered the mindset, and really it’s about leadership.

Leaders set culture, build companies, grow visions. Managers execute that. Some managers can actually lead. HR supports it. When people hate working at places, it’s always back to a lack of leadership in some way.

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

#145

Post by fundad »

acover wrote: post #43
OnlineGladiator wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Personally, I'm so sick of the cynicism in general. Personally, I'm so sick of there not being nearly enough cynicism in general. I've met cops that aren't total pieces of shit (who all ended up quitting in less than 5 years), but that doesn't mean cops aren't total pieces of shit. If the nature of the job is unethical, you should rightly call it out as such. HR's job is to pretend to be your friend while doing wha…

Why is the nature of being a cop unethical? I agree there are abuses of the power but from what I've seen in real life it's important work.

Because policing covers up violence and murder committed by their own.

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

#146

Post by lapama »

The day I realised HR were (at my employer's) a bunch of liars and manipulating personas it was too late. Since then I am extraordinarily hardline in all my meetings with them. I cannot be sure it is actually working, but you need to be very demanding to get what you deserve (with my employer).

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

#147

Post by acover »

OnlineGladiator wrote: post #111
acover wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is the nature of being a cop unethical? I agree there are abuses of the power but from what I've seen in real life it's important work.

I should mention I am referring specifically to police in the United States. The short answer is because cops defend cops, including bad cops. People like to say it's just a few bad apples, but it's far more prevalent than that. And even if it were just 1 in 100, the fact that the cops band together to protect a rapist/murderer/whatever shows that they care more about unity than morals. I realize this answer is lacki…

Thanks for explaining. My experience is mostly with Canadian cops, which have some significant differences from American cops[0]. Though, consequences for cops are still rare[1]. However poorly executed, to me the service they provide is valuable and the cops I've seen at homeless shelters displayed patience.

[0] - https://vancouversun.com/opinion/columnists/douglas-todd-can...

[1] - https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/deadly-force-police-...

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

#148

Post by teawrecks »

ravenstine wrote: post #126
teawrecks wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> HR aren’t evil, they’re just doing a job Managers on the other hand may or may not work in your best interests, just like any friend. Meanwhile, HR is literally tasked with protecting the company from me. So I would not lump the two into the same basket. I've been lucky enough to have experienced managers who see my current position as inherently temporary, and would consider it a personal failure to not help me de…

Not only is HR incentivized to defend the company over its employees whenever possible, but I think it's a position that attracts psychopaths. Being in HR takes no extraordinary talent whatsoever, yet HR has massive power over the destiny of individuals. They get to decide whether you have a chance at landing a job you want, make your rent next month, whether a coworker who bullies you gets to keep their job, and so…

Actually, in all those ways, middle management and HR are actually very similar lol.

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

#149

Post by eschneider »

mananaysiempre wrote: post #91
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…

> [If] you're being harassed, it's very often in the company's interest to stop that happening. You’d think so, but (as you go on to mention) all too often that interest is mediated through some proxy metric such as legal or publicity risk, which can entail a reaction contrary to your interest: e.g. legal risk might reasonably be thought proportional to your legal budget, which is related to your position in the comp…

Sometimes the easiest way to make that 'stop happening' is to force out the person reporting the problem. :/

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

#150

Post by watwut »

mythhouse wrote: post #103
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…

> Need to fire that horrible employee who is demoralizing the team and not being productive? HR is your friend. Maybe if you are ending up with so many of these 'horrible employees' that you need to make friends with HR then maybe problem is somewhere else.

One is enough to make it sux for everybody. And fairly often, the team is assigned people without leader having the say in advance - especially when it comes to people from other teams.
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