HR has mostly become useless – What's your opinion?

[nicksbg]

One of the things that I have noticed in my career as a Legal Specialist HR, is how HR has become useless to the company. It is sad to see that a lot of people are chasing this job out of illusion of easy job and money. This in turn makes the HR hated across industries.

First, a lot of HR personnel is hired not because of a merit, but on a whim of a manager. There are some golden exceptions where HR is really good, and the hiring was done in accordance to what the company needs, but they are just that - exceptions.

Second - The education is simply lacking when you have the HRM, HRS coming from majors such as Literature, or even in some cases Biology. In reality, regardless of country, they do not know anything about procedures, CoC, contracts, salary calculations, personal dev etc. A lot of these are handled by different types of HR focused on Economy, Psychology, Law and Management. People with majors in other fields are simply not capable to handle it, without any training or complementary HR education.

This leads to education based discrimination, where in some cases candidates for HR positions are discriminated by HRM with less or no required education to be an HR. To talk about gender based discrimination would be rather pointless since we can see that the ration is 80/20 when it comes to female to male comparison.

The less knowledge HR has, the less power it has, and it is in the hands of the management to with them as they want.

In lot of cases we hear that HR is there to protect the company. However, HR is there to protect itself. HR will pick less qualified HR to become part of their team, to be sure she/he is not endangered with potentially better candidate, especially if other candidate is better fit than HR Manager. How can someone that does not know the intricate workings of the company protect it? HR should be there to be a middle man to find solution that does not screw the employee and protects the corporate image.

When this happens, companies start losing money because they are potential not hiring best engineers, administration staff, due to HR not realizing what the company needs. Both the candidates and the companies lose in the end.

Due to sheer incompetency, it is not rare case in my country to see HR related jobs outsourced to law firm. This is a travesty in itself, since outsourcing the HR makes it harder for employee to connect with someone to discuss his problems and resolve it. Law firms should be used to handle stuff such as acquisitions, lawsuits, drafting of highly specialized contracts etc.

Personality tests are given by non-psychologists or themselves are non viable to be used. In a lot of countries, this is a breach of law and ethical norms. You can't write contracts as legal specialist and give tests to candidates. This is plainly illegal.

Third - Disinterest in what the company is doing - It is sad to have HR that does not know what the company they are employed at does. In tech companies, this is especially the case where they are disinterested in learning to understand either tech or the sector that company belongs to.

There is a a lot of buzz about employer branding. It should be a job where marketing collaborates with HR on how best to promote the company and its activities, benefits, making sure that employees are happy with employer and their ambassadors in outside world and not a separate position.

Fourth - Expensive ATS systems are being unused - BreezyHR, Workday or any other are used and integrated into websites. At the same time, a lot of the candidates never hear back from the companies. Rejection emails are the norm today because they are a way for HR to shield from counterfeedback, and liability. There is no excuse on not sending even those templates since they can automated. Why waste money on something that someone does not want or does not know how to use? You would be surprised on how much ATS and other modules are unused.

[elmerfud]

Much of what HR used to do seems to be automated away and they seem to be glad that it was. Every company that I've worked at for the last 20 years HR doesn't manage your payroll or deductions or any of that they have a system you log into and you do it yourself. Along with all the other benefit styles systems they are not something they manage individually anymore they have outsourced it.

Most of the people that I see who are attracted to HR positions or are in current HR positions remind me very much of that high School click of kids that thought they were better than everyone else, but they didn't have any tangible merits or reasons for this self-belief, and for some reason everyone wanted to suck up to them. So HR seems to be this popularity contest people that are meant to resolve interpersonal disputes that arise from work but those disputes don't get solved on any kind of merit. Those disputes get solved in one of three ways usually; by the popularity of the persons involved, the dei initiatives that the company needs to adhere to or, the person who cried first. There's nothing about merit or an unbiased investigation or attempting to truly resolve things. HR seems to want to put together yoga and wellness classes and other nonsense because they literally lack any other job function in the company now because it is all outsourced.

There are of course exceptions but those exceptions are becoming quite exceptional nowadays. I am not a fan of AI but with as bad as most HR is at any company I've worked at replacing it with AI I would literally notice no difference.

[nicksbg]

I would like to add that (and not since I come from law background) today the HR can be mostly automated for a lot of stuff as other said in this thread. Some processes such as personality tests can be outsourced to outside psychologist. I always like to add that having with knows ins and outs of business and legal, is far more beneficial for business. To be fair everyone will always calculate costs & benefits of each position, and at this point, HR as it is now is large expense.

[pyeri]

Earlier HR had two main functions viz. recruitment of candidates and secondly, act as a shield for top management and save them from embarrassment (of firing peeps without giving them any reason, for example).

In the last 1-2 decades, the first function has gradually been eroded as social media made finding folks very easy on linkedin, etc. Now only this second function stays in most companies.

[PaulHoule]

Also I see the hiring manager can take a lot of responsibility in terms of the first or the firm can take on an outside recruiter, which is often a good idea, because the outside recruiter has a financial incentive to succeed and can help a firm cut through bullshit why it won't hire this person or that person.

[silisili]

HR was much more useful when they did onboarding, payroll, benefits, etc.

Much if not all of that is now outsourced or automated, so having a department feels a bit of a relic.

At my current small company, the CTO is HR, in that he takes care of setting people up in those aforementioned systems. It's really not much work.

[re-thc]

> HR has mostly become useless

When was it useful?

The function of HR is set up to fail. There's a lot that it can do but the way companies structure it as of today it's not much more than a glorified assistant.

[ungreased0675]

I agree with all of your points. From my limited exposure, HR departments are an anchor the business must drag.

Seems like a good opportunity for disruption and competition.

[codingdave]

> The education is simply lacking when you have the HRM, HRS coming from majors such as Literature, or even in some cases Biology ... People with majors in other fields are simply not capable to handle it, without any training or complementary HR education.

Are you serious on this point? That unless you studied the right subjects in undergrad, you are not capable? Oof. Being that close-minded to people's abilities makes me question the validity of everything else you have said. You may have some valid underlying points - HR is definitely imperfect. But the opinions are running more strongly than facts on this post.

[nicksbg]

Not quite. Would expand on it more but there are character limits on HN. My main point is that if you are coming from other field, you need to prove yourself - take the necessary education, some kind of courses, earn a certificate that proves you are willing to dedicate yourself to new career. Simply giving someone job that they do not how a good grasp on, is more of a favour than a logical business decision. It is better for them to get quickly on track via courses and education, as well the company that has chosen such candidate for HR.