idk IS hr: fRIEND OR fOE?
TRIGGER alert! TRIGGER alert! If you are a Human Resources Professional (HRP), please don't take offense, but I want you to take all the offense you want, because you know what you do. Now that the trigger alert is out of the way, let me talk a bit about Human Resources (HR). As always, this is my perspective from what I have experienced over my career. I do not intend to kiss ass nor deny the benefits of HR, but I will give you the real answers to our question.
(HR) came about circa 1893-ish and was popularized in the 1930s and fully adopted in the 1950s. Not much has changed in HR over the years, but everything has changed. HR is not your friend. HR is not your go-to with every problem. HR is not going to protect you in every sense of the word to protect. HR’s sole purpose is to keep the company away from legal liability. Does it always work that way? No! But the sooner you understand to pick your battles wisely and be very careful when you go to HR, you will navigate Corporate Speak. If you go to HR with every little issue, you will be a target, and they will see to it that you get out of the organization quickly and quietly.
I do not have anything good to say about HR and the way those departments are structured. There are more lies, backstabbing, and overall dysfunction in the HR department in an organization. They are the ones who know everything about everybody and play the game so well because they get to write the rules. Now, it is not all doom and gloom; we do have some protections here in America when it comes to our civil rights, but not many. We have the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993, and the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, to name a few. Within those landmark protection acts for employees, there are rules and consequences for breaking those rules. Two big enforcement agencies that enforce employment law are the Department of Labor and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. They enforce the laws and regulations and will sue if the situation requires it. You may be thinking that it is great; however, there are many loopholes, and organizations exploit those loopholes all the time.
One hot topic that is a loophole is the at-will employment decided by the individual state. That means an employee can, for any reason at any given time, be terminated without explanation. In theory, that sounds pretty crappy, and it is, but we do know that if the company violates the law in any kind of way, they will be held liable. Now you know why HR works twice as hard to cover or attempt to smooth things over when people decide to be stupid at work.
Read more about HR and its overarching power in Chapter 2: Hello, welcome! from my book Corporate Speak: Rebellious Change.