People often propose HR departments as antidotes to some of the harm thatâs done by inappropriate working practices in EA. The usual response is that small organisations often have quite informal HR arrangements even outside of EA, which does seem kinda true.
Another response is that it sometimes seems like people have an overly rosy picture of HR departments. If your corporate culture sucks then your HR department will defend and uphold your sucky corporate culture. Abusive employers will use their HR departments as an instrument of their abuse.
Perhaps the idea is to bring more mainstream HR practices or expertise into EA employers, rather than merely going through the motions of creating the department. But I think mainstream HR comes primarily from the private sector and is primarily about protecting the employer, often against the employee. They often cast themselves in a role of being there to help you, but a common piece of folk wisdom is âHR is not your friendâ. I think frankly that a lot of mainstream HR culture is at worst dishonest and manipulative, and Iâd be really sad to see us uncritically importing more of that.
I feel at least somewhat qualified to speak on this, having read a bunch about human resources, being active in an HR professionals chat group nearly every day, and having worked in HR at a few different organizations (so I have seen some of the variance that exists). I hope youâll forgive me for my rambling on this topic, as there are several different ideas that came to mind when reading your paragraphs.
The first thing is that I agree with you on at least one aspect: rather than merely creating a department and walking away, adopting and adapting best practices and relevant expertise would be more helpful. If the big boss is okay with [insert bad behavior here] and isnât open to the HR Managerâs new ideas, then the organization probably isnât going to change. If an HR department is defending and upholding sucky corporate culture, that is usually because senior leadership is instructing them to do so. Culture generally comes from the top. And if the leader isnât willing to be convinced by or have his mind changed by the new HRO he hired, then things probably wonât be able to get much better.[1]
âHR is not your friendâ is normally used to imply that you canât trust HR, or that HR is out to get you, or something like that. Well, In a sense it is true that âHR is not your friend.â If you are planning to do jump ship, donât confide in the HR manager about it trusting that they wonât take action. If that person has a responsibility to take action on the information you provide, you should think twice before volunteering that information and consider if the action is beneficial to you or not. The job of the people on an HR team (just like the job of everyone else employed by an organization) is to help the organization achieve itâs goals. Sometime that means pay raises for everyone, because the arenât salaries competitive and the company wants to have low attrition. Sometimes that means downsizing, because growth forecast were wrong and the company over-hired. The accountant is also not your friend, nor is the janitor, nor is marketing executive, nor is any other role at the organization. So I guess what I am getting at here is HR is not really more your friend or less your friend than any other department, but HR is the only department that carries out actions that might adversely affect employees. And note that just because HR carries out the actions, doesnât mean HR make the decision or put the company in that situation; this is the shooting the messenger.
While this may be true that in some organizations and for some people HR is âprimarily about protecting the employer, often against the employee,â Iâm skeptical that this is representative of people who do HR work more generally. On the one hand, yes, the job is to help the organization achieve itâs goals. But when talking about the individuals that work in HR, when this topic comes up among HR people the general reaction is along the lines of âI want to do as much as I can for the employees, and the boundaries limiting me are from upper management. I want to give our staff more equitable pay, but leadership doesnât care that we have high turnover rates. I want to provide parental leave, but the head honcho disagrees. I really do not want to fire John Doe, because it seems unreasonable and unfair and unjust, but this is what leadership has decided.â[2]
The other thought I have about this parallels computer programmers/âsoftware engineers/âdevelopers and their thoughts on project managers. If you look at online discussions of programmers you will find no shortage of complaints about project managers (and about Scrum, and about agile), and many people writing about how useless their project manager is. But you shouldnât draw the conclusion that project management isnât useful. Instead, an alternative explanation is that these programmers are working with project managers that arenât very skillful, so their impression is biased. Working with a good project manager can be incredibly beneficial. So to leave the parallel and go back to HR, it is easy to find complaints on the internet about bad things that are attributed to HR. I would ask how representative those anecdotes are.
Alternatively, if the leader is simply unaware of some bad things and the new HR manager can bring attention to those things, then improvements are probably on the way. But having HR is not sufficient on itâs own.
The other common response that tends to come up is to focus on all the things that HR does for the employees, things which are generally framed as limiting the companyâs power over employees: No, you canât pay the employees that little, because it is illegal. No, you canât fire this person without a documented history of poor performance, and no, scowling at you doesnât count as poor performance. Yes, you really do need to justify hiring your friend, and him being a âgreat guyâ isnât enough of a business case. No, it isnât reasonable to expect staff to be on call for mandatory unpaid overtime every weekend, because we will hemorrhage employees.
I think mainstream HR comes primarily from the private sector and is primarily about protecting the employer, often against the employee. They often cast themselves in a role of being there to help you, but a common piece of folk wisdom is âHR is not your friendâ. I think frankly that a lot of mainstream HR culture is at worst dishonest and manipulative, and Iâd be really sad to see us uncritically importing more of that.
I see a lot of this online, but it doesnât match my personal experience. People working in HR that Iâve been in contact with seem generally kind people, aware of tradeoffs, and generally care about the wellbeing of employees.
I worry that the online reputation of HR departments is shaped by a minority of terrible experiences, and we overgeneralize that to think that HR cannot or will not help, while in my experience they are often really eager to try to help (in part because they donât want you and others to quit, but also because they are nice people).
Maybe itâs also related to minimum-wage non-skilled jobs vs higher paying jobs, where employment tends to be less adversarial and less exploitative.
People often propose HR departments as antidotes to some of the harm thatâs done by inappropriate working practices in EA. The usual response is that small organisations often have quite informal HR arrangements even outside of EA, which does seem kinda true.
Another response is that it sometimes seems like people have an overly rosy picture of HR departments. If your corporate culture sucks then your HR department will defend and uphold your sucky corporate culture. Abusive employers will use their HR departments as an instrument of their abuse.
Perhaps the idea is to bring more mainstream HR practices or expertise into EA employers, rather than merely going through the motions of creating the department. But I think mainstream HR comes primarily from the private sector and is primarily about protecting the employer, often against the employee. They often cast themselves in a role of being there to help you, but a common piece of folk wisdom is âHR is not your friendâ. I think frankly that a lot of mainstream HR culture is at worst dishonest and manipulative, and Iâd be really sad to see us uncritically importing more of that.
I feel at least somewhat qualified to speak on this, having read a bunch about human resources, being active in an HR professionals chat group nearly every day, and having worked in HR at a few different organizations (so I have seen some of the variance that exists). I hope youâll forgive me for my rambling on this topic, as there are several different ideas that came to mind when reading your paragraphs.
The first thing is that I agree with you on at least one aspect: rather than merely creating a department and walking away, adopting and adapting best practices and relevant expertise would be more helpful. If the big boss is okay with [insert bad behavior here] and isnât open to the HR Managerâs new ideas, then the organization probably isnât going to change. If an HR department is defending and upholding sucky corporate culture, that is usually because senior leadership is instructing them to do so. Culture generally comes from the top. And if the leader isnât willing to be convinced by or have his mind changed by the new HRO he hired, then things probably wonât be able to get much better.[1]
âHR is not your friendâ is normally used to imply that you canât trust HR, or that HR is out to get you, or something like that. Well, In a sense it is true that âHR is not your friend.â If you are planning to do jump ship, donât confide in the HR manager about it trusting that they wonât take action. If that person has a responsibility to take action on the information you provide, you should think twice before volunteering that information and consider if the action is beneficial to you or not. The job of the people on an HR team (just like the job of everyone else employed by an organization) is to help the organization achieve itâs goals. Sometime that means pay raises for everyone, because the arenât salaries competitive and the company wants to have low attrition. Sometimes that means downsizing, because growth forecast were wrong and the company over-hired. The accountant is also not your friend, nor is the janitor, nor is marketing executive, nor is any other role at the organization. So I guess what I am getting at here is HR is not really more your friend or less your friend than any other department, but HR is the only department that carries out actions that might adversely affect employees. And note that just because HR carries out the actions, doesnât mean HR make the decision or put the company in that situation; this is the shooting the messenger.
While this may be true that in some organizations and for some people HR is âprimarily about protecting the employer, often against the employee,â Iâm skeptical that this is representative of people who do HR work more generally. On the one hand, yes, the job is to help the organization achieve itâs goals. But when talking about the individuals that work in HR, when this topic comes up among HR people the general reaction is along the lines of âI want to do as much as I can for the employees, and the boundaries limiting me are from upper management. I want to give our staff more equitable pay, but leadership doesnât care that we have high turnover rates. I want to provide parental leave, but the head honcho disagrees. I really do not want to fire John Doe, because it seems unreasonable and unfair and unjust, but this is what leadership has decided.â[2]
The other thought I have about this parallels computer programmers/âsoftware engineers/âdevelopers and their thoughts on project managers. If you look at online discussions of programmers you will find no shortage of complaints about project managers (and about Scrum, and about agile), and many people writing about how useless their project manager is. But you shouldnât draw the conclusion that project management isnât useful. Instead, an alternative explanation is that these programmers are working with project managers that arenât very skillful, so their impression is biased. Working with a good project manager can be incredibly beneficial. So to leave the parallel and go back to HR, it is easy to find complaints on the internet about bad things that are attributed to HR. I would ask how representative those anecdotes are.
Alternatively, if the leader is simply unaware of some bad things and the new HR manager can bring attention to those things, then improvements are probably on the way. But having HR is not sufficient on itâs own.
The other common response that tends to come up is to focus on all the things that HR does for the employees, things which are generally framed as limiting the companyâs power over employees: No, you canât pay the employees that little, because it is illegal. No, you canât fire this person without a documented history of poor performance, and no, scowling at you doesnât count as poor performance. Yes, you really do need to justify hiring your friend, and him being a âgreat guyâ isnât enough of a business case. No, it isnât reasonable to expect staff to be on call for mandatory unpaid overtime every weekend, because we will hemorrhage employees.
I see a lot of this online, but it doesnât match my personal experience. People working in HR that Iâve been in contact with seem generally kind people, aware of tradeoffs, and generally care about the wellbeing of employees.
I worry that the online reputation of HR departments is shaped by a minority of terrible experiences, and we overgeneralize that to think that HR cannot or will not help, while in my experience they are often really eager to try to help (in part because they donât want you and others to quit, but also because they are nice people).
Maybe itâs also related to minimum-wage non-skilled jobs vs higher paying jobs, where employment tends to be less adversarial and less exploitative.