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Who would have imagined that a department called “human resources” wouldn’t have your best interests in mind?
If you think about the phrasing of the title “Human Resources”, it makes sense that they are not your friends.
Let’s look at the definition of the word resource:
resource /rē′sôrs″, -zôrs″, rĭ-sôrs′, -zôrs′/
noun
- Something that is available for use or that can be used for support or help. “The local library is a valuable resource.”
- An available supply, especially of money, that can be drawn on when needed.
Those definitions describe disposable commodities; easily replaceable. The adjective “human” simply refines what type of disposable and replaceable commodities that the department deals with.
If you want someone to be your advocate your best interests at a job, you’ll need to hire a lawyer. In the meantime, make sure you take notes, and follow everything up with an email (bcc your personal email a copy of each correspondence).
If your state allows one-party consent, you can even record conversations; be very aware that despite being legal, it will likely get you fired with prejudice if anybody finds out you’ve been recording them without their knowledge.
It could also be interpreted as “resources for humans”, but you’re spot on
tbh I think that’s kinda the point, it’s corporate doublespeak.
That’s why forward-looking and thoughtful tech companies call them “People ops,” which changes absolutely nothing about what they do.
“The local library is a valuable resource.”
I wouldn’t call the local library a disposable commodity.
Where I’m working they rebranded HR to ✨“People & Culture”✨ so I don’t know what you mean. With that name, they simply must have our best interests in mind instead of always siding with the higher ranking individual.
Weird, at my company they changed it to “flesh asset repair and removal.”
Found the meatbag Amazon warehouse employee
Aperture science?
This was a triumph! I’m making a note here, “Huge success!”
Most functional HR departments actually do have the workers best interests at heart, because protecting the company and not screwing over workers usually has a ton of overlap. But HR does a lot more than handle workplace disputes.
I had a boss and mentor who happened to have a hot headed streak. He lost his temper with his boss during a meeting and was brought into a meeting with HR over it. He was able to spin the meeting with HR so it became as much about his boss’s failures to be an effective leader as it was about his inappropriate behavior so it ultimately worked out for him
Nah, HR is the employers support. The Union is the employees support.
Check this out, it works: https://www.sverigesingenjorer.se/kollektivavtal/the-swedish-model/
HR is employed by the company to protect the company/capital.
A regulatory watchdog (so not on company’s payroll) would be the one to protect the workers. Even a union could to a certain degree.
This can’t get said enough. HR is not there to help you. HR is there to keep you from being able to sue the company if something happens.
If you have, or someone gives you a cause to sue the company, before hiring a lawyer and possibly (likely) losing your job because you’re suing your employer, you can instead take the complaint up with HR. They should recognize the liability for the company in your situation and take steps to minimize or eliminate any possibly perception of blame that could be cast upon the company.
Here, I’ll give you an example of something that actually happened to me. I used to work at a grocery store and to say the “left hand doesn’t know what the right is doing” … Would be an understatement. It was a fairly large place in a national chain of stores. I was working in the produce department at the time… So, the supplier for grapes informed us that the location where the grapes are grown has black widow spiders in the habitat. Though every effort is made to prevent it, there is still the possibility that the grapes may contain traces of venomous spiders.
Corporate HR appeared, like a fart you didn’t hear, but you can definitely smell. They tasked my manager to get everyone in the department to sign a paper that said, and I shit you not: we’ve been made aware of the possibility of black widow spiders in the grapes, and that we understand that we should use specialty gloves that are bite resistant/bite proof when handling the grapes… As soon as I read that I turned to my manager and said what fucking gloves? Where are these gloves?
We, of course, didn’t have any such thing. I asked the manager if they could get some for us and they didn’t even know how to do that.
Simply: after everyone has signed the statement, and if anyone is bitten by a black widow, the HR dickwads that work at the company can hold up the form you signed saying “we tooky them to use the gloves for safety, and they were not using those gloves at the time of the incident” … Because nobody ever got the gloves. Regardless, it lets the company throw you under the bus for getting injured, while management won’t help you in staying safe on the job, often encouraging the behaviour that HR says you should not be doing.
HR is not your friend, they’re actively protecting the enemy (the business owners) from you, the worker.
"If you’re going to start a meeting with fat shaming me, then yes; I am going to fire back. Don’t dish it out if you can’t take it yourself.
If you have a problem with that, we can get the lawyers involved and discuss it further."
But I also live somewhere that actually has labour laws and where ‘at-will’ employment is a ridiculous concept. If you want to fire someone (after their three months probation), you’ve gotta have a good reason and you better document it throughly.
Saying someone has had quite a few cupcakes isn’t necessarily fatshaming. It can just be calling out someone hogging the cupcakes.
I’m surprised so many people still don’t realize that HR exists to protect the company, not the employee. Yes, since a bad or reckless manager can put the company at significant risk, sometimes they will take the side of the employee, but not because it’s their charter.
Everyone uses this cliche. Nobody seems to understand it.
a bad or reckless manager can put the company at significant risk
Yes. In this circumstance, the manager opened the company up to a lawsuit with his comments. It would have protected the company to punish him or have him take some sort of class.
You can just say that HR is usually bad at their jobs. “Protecting the company not the employee” is completely meaningless here.
No, there’s more to it than that. Immediately taking the manager to task gives more credence to an employee lawsuit. Their “best” first approach is to talk to the employee, even scold them. What they want is for the issue to go away without the company getting bad press or a legal issue. It’s not that they’re bad at their job, it’s that their job has zero to do with being an employee advocate.
They might also scold the manager, but that will happen off the record and behind closed doors.
The fact that it’s called human resources instead of something less dystopian should be a hint. If you want an actual ally as an employee you gotta unionize.
Also if someone says something fucked up and you clap back and they report it. YES HR WILL SPEAK TO YOU!
If you want to nail someone with the rulebook you cant respond like two people talking shit on twitter. You have to call them out on what they said respectfully and professionally, preferably with witnesses or go straight to HR.
Yeah, that’s a good point.
Its also a big contributor as to why a lot of people think HR are useless. Once you respond in any way that could be considered unprofessional you just made it messy and increased the risk to the company of doing anything other than issuing slap on the wrist warnings.
Take the meme for example, now the company has to make a morality decision on whats worse, an unprompted and inappropriate but not deliberately hurtful comment from a manager vs a deliberate and highly personal barb from an employee to a manager… I can see the warning letters for both of them from here.
What’s worse between a manager who’s supposed biggest strength is soft skills being fucking terrible at soft skills and being higher in the liability hierarchy or a rank and file employee who clapped back.
Maybe it’s just the system always leans towards the company having no wrong doing rather than any kind of sane logic.
Humans are the resource.
Exactly. They’re not there for you.
I’m kind of surprised (yes, naively) that some people aren’t even aware enough of the wider culture to think twice about saying things like that.
Somewhere along the lines a lot of people in HR and upper management in some companies (cultures) forget that you need people and that you need to listen to then to make it all work
Did boss’ daughter have an eating disorder, because that’s a pretty savage callout.
Either way it’s a goddamn amazing comeback.
If boss’ daughter did have an eating disorder and the boss is still calling out employees eating habits rudely and unprompted, then maybe a firm dose of reality is overdue.
A coworker drunkenly made out with my face at a work event and HR tried to send me to a sexually harassment seminar so I could “learn what sexually assault really is”
Another great quote from that meeting: “if you knew she was a sloppy drunk, why were you hanging out with her?”
HR is there to protect the company - not you
Ayyyy~ what the fuck?
It was crazy. What made it worse was that I didn’t even report it…my friend was so upset about it, he told his boss.
When the HR director asked me what I wanted to happen to the girl, I told her NOTHING. I don’t want her fired or anything, I don’t even work directly with her. Then she asked why, if I didn’t want anything to happen, I reported it? BITCH I DIDN’T I was going to find a new job and move the fuck on with my life
“I wanted it documented so if she is involved in another incident, this one can be referenced”
That last line is the key take-away for dealing with ANY HR.
Never forget who signs their paychecks.
Yes. The acronym stands for Human Resources and it’d be a stretch to think they consider us human!
Jokes aside, I actually really liked most of the leadership at that company. I really only disliked the CEO and HR director.
On the flip side, corporations are people and have more privileges than you
one time i had to interrupt an hr sensitivity seminar because the trainer casually threw down an ethnic slur for me
What the fuck?
Did he not know it was a slur? Was he ignorant, or just plain awful is what I’m wondering?
she seemingly forgot the word “biracial” and decided to go with the first thing on her mind
Was it the word mulatto? That is definitely regional on how offensive it is, or more accurately how offensive it used to be. I didn’t know it could even be considered a slur til I moved 2000 miles away. Again, this was in the late 90s and I know language evolves with time.
nope! worse :3
Man you got me curious
If you’re supposed to run a sensitivity training you’d better master the subject and people sensitivities, so this was a 2 x 0 loss
Oh, shit, apparently I’m nearly as bad. I didn’t realize that was offensive(assuming google even found the right word lol). I absolutely see how it is after thinking about it, though. Thankfully I don’t think I’ve ever actually called anyone that.
deleted by creator
Gy*** or ab*?
Probably called match!! a mutt instead of a goldendoodle.
spoiler
/s obviously, because of the instance posted from and the biracial explanation.
I had an elected official chuck pens at the HR lady and reference her recent weight loss during a training about professional behavior in the workplace. Unironically. But the HR lady laughed it off and then kind of flirted with the elected official and a program manager.
He was already on the way out but it did provide a good orientation for the workplace culture.
“Tina, there are six of us. Learn to share”
That’s what I imagined the situation to be at first, her reaction does seem in that situation to be pretty wild
So the other day at a metting we had some cupcakes laid out. One worker took three of them (there was 16 cupcakes and 8 of us). I tried to politely call it out. But she freaks out and starts accusing me of giving my daughter an eating disorder (I don’t have a daughter). The HR lady was in the room too.
I assume they talked to you about your poor grammar and spelling ? What was the outcome ?
Edit: the people downvoting this are promoting, or at least accepting poor education, and trump is the result of a poorly educated society. Think about that next time you say that spelling and grammar don’t matter.
Damn there are a lot of ignorance loving fascists here. It’s great being able to so easily identify and block every single one of you.
It is completely normal human behavior to use different dialects of a language with different levels of formality depending on the context. That’s what makes language beautiful and expressive!
Dat is stupid.
I guess dat makes me a trump voter now…
He could be dyslexic.
Oh come on. Trump has become the new Hitler. How long does it take before completely random topic is brought around to him?
