I've assumed HR is primarily about providing legal cover for the business and it's upper management. HR exists primarily as a mechanism to minimize staff/employee lawsuits.
Sure, they also do the paperwork for health care enrollment and track your vacations and such, but that's a fairly minor role. At least that has been my experience. Maybe I'm cynical, though?
It is undeniably true that HR departments exist for the benefit of the company, not its employees, but I've never quite understood why that leads to the bad outcomes it does.
If an employee complains to HR of harassment, it seems like the most coldly rational, protect-the-company reaction they could have would be to do everything in their power to prevent the complaint from going public and creating a PR nightmare. Taking the complaint seriously is in their power, usually make the complainant go away peacefully, and makes you the "good guy" in the court of public opinion if it comes to that.
Furthermore, given a situation where one of your staff is abusing their position in any way, I would think most companies would rather find that out from their HR department than from the local newspaper or the district attorney.
So why isn't that the default strategy for HR departments? I understand that not every HR director is necessarily competent, and that large enough power discrepancies can overcome a lot of good intentions, but it seems like best-practice HR procedure is to essentially sweep problems under the rug and hope they go away instead of making an effort to honestly address them. That can't possibly be a good long-term strategy, can it?
> HR exists primarily as a mechanism to minimize staff/employee lawsuits.
And don't wait until it's too late to learn this!
I had a minor form of cancer a few years back, and I went to HR to let them know about it, thinking what I told them would be kept in confidence. I had been with the company for 11 months, and they didn't offer medical leave until 12 months, so I figured with my positive reviews to-date it'd be easy to just get that bumped up a bit.
The next day my manager knew, so everyone knew, and the HR folks that had been seemed so kind and understanding were cold and aloof. Instead of granting my request, they sent me a nice form letter reminding me to read the employee handbook around who would qualify for medical leave and suggested I postpone my treatment until I had been with the company for 12 months.
Of course, this had a lot more to do with me being a key player in helping them land a big project. I'd been the pitchman that the prospective clients liked, and had the most rapport with. To help ensure the company landed a stupid project they were willing to tell me to hold off cancer treatment. Ethical? I mean... it was legal, so they did it. (I resigned and got treatment immediately, also told the prospective client why I resigned. The company didn't get the bid.)
And, if you are ever laid off or fired, HR are the ones who will come down on you about talking to your old friends at the company and do everything they can to save the company every last penny (by screwing you out of it).
Another situation... I had a personal friend at a company, knew him before I got the job. Then I then got laid off with about half the team when the company didn't make numbers one-quarter. The severance package was very specific about us not talking to current employees or clients, but I figured since I knew the guy and he was a friend it wasn't going to be a big deal.
Someone in HR instructed IT to set up a filter to catch all the emails coming in, and when my buddy asked me a question and I responded (it was something silly like the combo to the paid gym in the building -- he wanted to use my membership since I wasn't going to need it), they ran it up the flagpole and immediately cut my health benefits (without warning) and demanded I repay my severance payment. It took a lawyer to get them to back down about repayments, and I never did get my health benefits back.
HR is not to be trusted. Get everything they say in writing. Don't tell them anything you aren't comfortable sending out in an all-hands email.
No, you're absolutely right. HR's role is to protect the company, which can be aligned or at odds with an employee situation. In most cases it is about eliminating or minimizing the company's risk of legal action.
> Here’s a story: I worked for a company that let an influential person go at the 11-month mark — four weeks shy of a stock option vesting date. This person, a public figure, unsurprisingly spent the next few years publicly badmouthing the company. It would have been trivial to grant him the extra month of vesting, and if he’d left with his options intact, the company’s reputation wouldn’t have taken repeated public hits. Instead, management went by The Rules, ignoring real-world repercussions. Perhaps an ombudsperson could untangle the administrivia that makes troubled departures worse than necessary.
While the concept of an HR-ombudsman is intriguing, this doesn't strike me as the kind of decision the ombudsman should be particularly tasked with. For one, I've always associated the ombudsman role as one that investigates complaints without being beholden to the corporate authority, i.e. the thing that constrains HR to act in behalf of the company's interests.
The worry that an employee deserves special treatment because of that employee's connections/privilege does not strike me as a "complaint". Street-smarts, perhaps, but it's already the prerogative of management and PR to break the rules for public-facing real-world concerns. An ombudsperson being influential in bending the rules in favor of someone who is deemed important/better-than-the-average employee strikes me as the very opposite of the decision that the ombudsperson should be concerned with.
Sort of a tangent but I wonder, since HR reps can generally view employee salary info, that leads to higher rates of dissatisfaction. Moreover, I wonder what forces keep HR salaries lower, since they can view the entire "playing field"
My rule of thumb: Never, ever go to HR with an issue that is not clerical in nature. If you have an issue that involves things you'd expect HR to be responsible for (safe workplace, abusive behavior, etc.) you will be shafted. Simple numerical issues ("Hey, you paid me too much last month") will often be handled efficiently.
I'd make an exception for blatantly illegal behavior, in which case I'd report the issue anonymously.
I think HN titles should start carrying country codes just as they sometimes have dates. My experience of HR is that they are people trying to do their best for everyone. But this is in a different country (Norway). Of course I could just be lucky, perhaps it is just this company, or just the division, or the factory, or even just the people themselves.
Nonetheless I think it is time for HN to admit, and celebrate, that it has become an international forum and start behaving accordingly.
I always wince slightly when "people" are referred to as "resources." As in, "we need more dev resources for this project." You mean developers, which are people.
A bit confusing that this article starts out stating that HR is flawed fundamentally and irretrievably because of the nature of its inherent purpose, and then goes on to suggest ways to reform HR. Can you reform something (and also, why bother reforming something) that has, as its purpose, something diametrically opposed to all of your supposed reforms?
When I've had problems, my union has given me top-notch advice. They've provided expensive legal support. They've trained me up. They've helped me out. I pay ~£18/month to be a member. I consider it a form of legal insurance - and it is bloody cheap. Oh, bonus points, the settlement they got me when my position was made redundant has paid for the union dues for many years to come.
That's the theory. The practice is that unions worry more about campus carry than about treatment of adjuncts (yeah, I'm an academic scientist and can speak only from observations) and that they serve more as a shield from accountability than anything else.
After the local public-sector union made brief noises about unionizing postdocs - my then-supervisor, himself protected from accountability by the double shield of tenure and union, tried to discourage us from supporting the effort - and retreated quickly I changed my position. The local union boss graduated one (1) PhD student during his 30 years on the faculty. Other faculty members were on the record of saying they are ashamed to be represented by such a lazybag.
American unions somehow painted themselves into a corner.
I think unions are a great way of balancing the power of the employer and employee, but there are some major drawbacks.
I'm not sure how it is in Europe, but in the public higher education space here in the U.S. the unions are way to powerful.
An example of this imbalance:
All faculty and staff members for the California State University system are part of the same union. That means that the union has the collective bargaining power of all 50,000 employees. The union is very good at their job of protecting employees, and will always resist any disciplinary action by the administration, even if the employee is clearly in the wrong. This leads to a situation where administration will simply ignore extremely low-performing individuals because they would have to fight the union to do so.
Also, all CSU employees must pay the union dues, even if you are not part of the union, which is insane.
When unions are this big and this focused, their collective bargaining power, IMO, exceeds what is necessary to protect workers.
With the union you mentioned your a part of things seem to be better structured. Though it is large at around 140,000 members, they seem to be spread across many companies and I imagine that not every company is made up of 100% union employees. Also the fact that your union encompasses a wide variety of professions is definitely a big positive. That seems more like a fairer balance of power to me.
There's a lot of bad unions out there as well. My wife dealt with one as a cashier at a grocery store in high school. They did less than nothing for her and her coworkers. Never visited the store, never responded to significant issues including discrimination and harassment, never met with management. But they did make sure they got their cut of her pay which, as a poor girl who had to buy her own clothes and pay for everything from the money she earned, she desperately needed.
And vote the union bosses out? How was she to do that exactly? Maybe it's different over there, but unions can cover tens if not hundreds of locations at different businesses in the US.
>Oh, bonus points, the settlement they got me when my position was made redundant
I'm curious why you felt you deserved a settlement just because your employer didn't need you anymore. Did your employer violate relevant laws in your country regarding termination of employment or perhaps violate a contractual obligation on their part that you negotiated when you were hired?
[+] [-] webnrrd2k|8 years ago|reply
Sure, they also do the paperwork for health care enrollment and track your vacations and such, but that's a fairly minor role. At least that has been my experience. Maybe I'm cynical, though?
[+] [-] vec|8 years ago|reply
If an employee complains to HR of harassment, it seems like the most coldly rational, protect-the-company reaction they could have would be to do everything in their power to prevent the complaint from going public and creating a PR nightmare. Taking the complaint seriously is in their power, usually make the complainant go away peacefully, and makes you the "good guy" in the court of public opinion if it comes to that.
Furthermore, given a situation where one of your staff is abusing their position in any way, I would think most companies would rather find that out from their HR department than from the local newspaper or the district attorney.
So why isn't that the default strategy for HR departments? I understand that not every HR director is necessarily competent, and that large enough power discrepancies can overcome a lot of good intentions, but it seems like best-practice HR procedure is to essentially sweep problems under the rug and hope they go away instead of making an effort to honestly address them. That can't possibly be a good long-term strategy, can it?
[+] [-] dbg31415|8 years ago|reply
And don't wait until it's too late to learn this!
I had a minor form of cancer a few years back, and I went to HR to let them know about it, thinking what I told them would be kept in confidence. I had been with the company for 11 months, and they didn't offer medical leave until 12 months, so I figured with my positive reviews to-date it'd be easy to just get that bumped up a bit.
The next day my manager knew, so everyone knew, and the HR folks that had been seemed so kind and understanding were cold and aloof. Instead of granting my request, they sent me a nice form letter reminding me to read the employee handbook around who would qualify for medical leave and suggested I postpone my treatment until I had been with the company for 12 months.
Of course, this had a lot more to do with me being a key player in helping them land a big project. I'd been the pitchman that the prospective clients liked, and had the most rapport with. To help ensure the company landed a stupid project they were willing to tell me to hold off cancer treatment. Ethical? I mean... it was legal, so they did it. (I resigned and got treatment immediately, also told the prospective client why I resigned. The company didn't get the bid.)
And, if you are ever laid off or fired, HR are the ones who will come down on you about talking to your old friends at the company and do everything they can to save the company every last penny (by screwing you out of it).
Another situation... I had a personal friend at a company, knew him before I got the job. Then I then got laid off with about half the team when the company didn't make numbers one-quarter. The severance package was very specific about us not talking to current employees or clients, but I figured since I knew the guy and he was a friend it wasn't going to be a big deal.
Someone in HR instructed IT to set up a filter to catch all the emails coming in, and when my buddy asked me a question and I responded (it was something silly like the combo to the paid gym in the building -- he wanted to use my membership since I wasn't going to need it), they ran it up the flagpole and immediately cut my health benefits (without warning) and demanded I repay my severance payment. It took a lawyer to get them to back down about repayments, and I never did get my health benefits back.
HR is not to be trusted. Get everything they say in writing. Don't tell them anything you aren't comfortable sending out in an all-hands email.
[+] [-] mediaserf|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] danso|8 years ago|reply
While the concept of an HR-ombudsman is intriguing, this doesn't strike me as the kind of decision the ombudsman should be particularly tasked with. For one, I've always associated the ombudsman role as one that investigates complaints without being beholden to the corporate authority, i.e. the thing that constrains HR to act in behalf of the company's interests.
The worry that an employee deserves special treatment because of that employee's connections/privilege does not strike me as a "complaint". Street-smarts, perhaps, but it's already the prerogative of management and PR to break the rules for public-facing real-world concerns. An ombudsperson being influential in bending the rules in favor of someone who is deemed important/better-than-the-average employee strikes me as the very opposite of the decision that the ombudsperson should be concerned with.
[+] [-] JSeymourATL|8 years ago|reply
True. Coincidentally, HR has some of the lowest-paid professional roles on the org chart. You get what you pay for.
[+] [-] JTon|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kabdib|8 years ago|reply
I'd make an exception for blatantly illegal behavior, in which case I'd report the issue anonymously.
HR is not there for employees.
[+] [-] tlogan|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mywittyname|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kwhitefoot|8 years ago|reply
Nonetheless I think it is time for HN to admit, and celebrate, that it has become an international forum and start behaving accordingly.
[+] [-] moron4hire|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nkrisc|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] HarryHirsch|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rdiddly|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] edent|8 years ago|reply
No results.
How many lawyers does your employer have? How many do you have? Equalise things. Join a union!
Don't have the clout to change something yourself? Join a union!
Worried that the boss will retaliate and you won't be able to do anything? Join a union!
Want a friendly, non-judgemental ear to give you advice? Join a union!
Want to gather lots of information about working conditions in a safe a anonymous way? Join a union!
Worried that you're being discriminated against? Join a union!
Need to bargain for better rights or pay? JOIN A UNION!
Want to improve the way the "lazy fat cat union bosses" work? Guess what - unions are democratic! Join a union and improve it!
I'm in a senior(ish) position in the tech industry and I'm a proud member of https://www.prospect.org.uk/
When I've had problems, my union has given me top-notch advice. They've provided expensive legal support. They've trained me up. They've helped me out. I pay ~£18/month to be a member. I consider it a form of legal insurance - and it is bloody cheap. Oh, bonus points, the settlement they got me when my position was made redundant has paid for the union dues for many years to come.
tl;dr Unions work.
[+] [-] HarryHirsch|8 years ago|reply
After the local public-sector union made brief noises about unionizing postdocs - my then-supervisor, himself protected from accountability by the double shield of tenure and union, tried to discourage us from supporting the effort - and retreated quickly I changed my position. The local union boss graduated one (1) PhD student during his 30 years on the faculty. Other faculty members were on the record of saying they are ashamed to be represented by such a lazybag.
American unions somehow painted themselves into a corner.
[+] [-] colemannugent|8 years ago|reply
I'm not sure how it is in Europe, but in the public higher education space here in the U.S. the unions are way to powerful.
An example of this imbalance:
All faculty and staff members for the California State University system are part of the same union. That means that the union has the collective bargaining power of all 50,000 employees. The union is very good at their job of protecting employees, and will always resist any disciplinary action by the administration, even if the employee is clearly in the wrong. This leads to a situation where administration will simply ignore extremely low-performing individuals because they would have to fight the union to do so.
Also, all CSU employees must pay the union dues, even if you are not part of the union, which is insane.
When unions are this big and this focused, their collective bargaining power, IMO, exceeds what is necessary to protect workers.
With the union you mentioned your a part of things seem to be better structured. Though it is large at around 140,000 members, they seem to be spread across many companies and I imagine that not every company is made up of 100% union employees. Also the fact that your union encompasses a wide variety of professions is definitely a big positive. That seems more like a fairer balance of power to me.
[+] [-] strictnein|8 years ago|reply
Fixed.
There's a lot of bad unions out there as well. My wife dealt with one as a cashier at a grocery store in high school. They did less than nothing for her and her coworkers. Never visited the store, never responded to significant issues including discrimination and harassment, never met with management. But they did make sure they got their cut of her pay which, as a poor girl who had to buy her own clothes and pay for everything from the money she earned, she desperately needed.
And vote the union bosses out? How was she to do that exactly? Maybe it's different over there, but unions can cover tens if not hundreds of locations at different businesses in the US.
[+] [-] Consultant32452|8 years ago|reply
I'm curious why you felt you deserved a settlement just because your employer didn't need you anymore. Did your employer violate relevant laws in your country regarding termination of employment or perhaps violate a contractual obligation on their part that you negotiated when you were hired?
[+] [-] ManFromUranus|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dragonwriter|8 years ago|reply
This is kind of obvious from the name.
[+] [-] ika_|8 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] pklausler|8 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] dang|8 years ago|reply