[In]Human Resources
The Bane of Job Satisfaction
Welcome to Polymathic Being, a place to explore counterintuitive insights across multiple domains. These essays explore common topics from different perspectives and disciplines to uncover unique insights and solutions.
Today's topic explores the good, the bad, and the ugly about [In]Human Resources in most corporations. We’ll examine some of my own painful experiences, how others are facing similar issues, and explore a core driver of this problem, concluding with examples of where it can be done right.
The Ugly
When I first entered the corporate world, I was told that Human Resources (HR) was not there for the employees, but rather to protect the company from lawsuits. Given how kind and empathetic many HR personnel appeared, and their stated interest in being human-centric, I was flabbergasted. It took more painful experiences than I’d like to admit for me to learn just how right those warnings were.
For example, while at a large aerospace firm, I went to HR in the hopes of getting some guidance regarding a manager who was, let’s say, a little overbearing. I was told that the conversation was confidential, and I opened up about my frustrations. Two hours later, my boss was asking me numerous questions and had a thorough understanding of precisely what I’d said. In a separate experience, I was deposed in a lawsuit against the same HR department by a coworker (he won) who had been retaliated against. HR had taken offense to something he’d said, had manufactured a violation, and wrongly terminated him. You’d think I’d have learned my lesson.
Fast forward to a missile defense contractor, where I encountered a truly toxic manager, and entered a world of absolute ridiculousness. Here, they had an organization that acted as employee advocates, at least in name. I was not the only one who filed complaints; there were dozens, and yet, these folks came back and said, while they found evidence of a hostile work environment, it was likely because we, meaning everyone in the department, should be advised to look for new roles or just do what we were asked.
This is when I learned that HR can’t / won’t step in for bad leadership, and since that manager was liked by their manager, there wasn’t even a performance issue in play. What HR will address is unethical and illegal behavior, or, if your boss doesn’t like you, then they’ll do performance management. Sadly, the rot in that group became so deep that, after I moved to a different department, the manager in question was found to have committed serious ethics violations that we all saw coming a mile away.1
That company was also where I learned HR didn’t like true diversity. As I described in Are You Asking a Fish to Climb a Tree?
… they want the superficial diversity, but they don’t like the true diversity of different ways of thinking and doing. I experienced this as a manager of a very diverse engineering team. I had 16 young engineers who were more than 50% female and more than 60% non-white. I had both Jesus and Muhammad on my team, along with other diverse individuals that everyone says they want.
In the end, HR didn’t like the natural tension and disagreement that comes with true diversity of differing backgrounds, mindsets, ways of thinking, and more. They wanted the look while whitewashing the differences away.
Another jump forward, and I find myself at a different defense contractor. At this point, I knew not to go to HR regardless of how bad the leadership might be. I realize I may be starting to sound like I’m either complaining or an HR nightmare, but let’s just say this experience reinforced that the large corporation’s HR departments only see risk when considering whether to Embrace the Divergents. It also absolutely confirmed that bad leaders won’t be addressed if their leadership likes them, and it doesn’t matter how many lives and careers are ruined; nothing will be done unless there’s a legal risk.
In an absurd example, I was assigned a project and quickly realized the material provided was incomplete. I asked my leader for the supporting analysis and several clarifying questions. I was denied the material, told to continue, and ‘coached’ for “delays in kicking off the project.” When I submitted the team’s first analysis, they said I was missing critical information and then ‘coached’ me for not asking for it. When I pointed all this out in a meeting with HR and my leadership, my lead said, “Oh, you have access to that information,” and when she attempted to show me, she proved I did not have access. The kicker was that HR still turned to me and said I should have asked for the information when I knew I needed it, while they held a printed copy of that exact email, and the ‘coaching’ I received for asking for it.
It was at a blockchain startup that a new element was stacked on this already growing pile of inhumanity: Resume Inflation. Don’t get me wrong, they did everything else in spades, too, but while hiring a sizeable team, I learned that the Silicon Valley mantra of “Hire Fast, Fire Fast” just poured gasoline on the dumpster fire of HR:
Because what you are likelier to get isn’t the Servant Leadership you say you want, but the over-aggrandizing, braggadocio personality types that are Industrious but unproductive, often representing the Successfully Unsuccessful, and creating the foundation of Functional Stupidity.
Yes, this is ugly, and that’s because it’s built on a whole foundation of bad behaviors.
The Bad
Recently,
wrote When the Kiss Cam Broke the Culture: HR, Hypocrisy, and the Collapse of Corporate Credibility. It’s a long title, but a concise read which uncovers how the recent exposure of infidelity during a Coldplay concert between Astronomics’s CEO and HR VP merely demonstrates a deeper rot in the culture. Namely, that what business leaders say is not what they do, harkening back to that original advice that HR isn’t there for the employees, a fact , a former Amazon VP, discusses in Straight Truth: HR is not there to help you.
Joining the conversation,
recently made waves by writing a Washington Post OpEd titled “I’ve ditched HR to free my company from the social-justice police,” and wrote on Substack on how “Everyone hates HR” along with the subsequent backlash from the HR community. She’s certainly not alone, shares his insights on how “HR Must Die or Pretty Quickly Reinvent Itself.” Let’s just say if I had an ugly experience, the bad part is I’m not alone, nor even an outlier.For all the issues that these writers discuss, I’ll only add one observation: I think this bad reputation is driven, in part, by the Toxic Empathy we explored here recently. While we looked at how empathy can be weaponized in each of us individually, HR departments represent the corporate weaponization of empathy. These may be well-meaning people, but they’re put into a position where their natural empathy is exploited, and the outcome is, well, bad.
The Good
This essay hasn’t been a happy topic thus far, and it personalizes some of my past writing in an attempt to show the honest pain behind the words. Frankly, I’ve got enough scars for a lifetime and enough bitterness to rival a double-hopped IPA, which, incidentally, helped me survive. So, let’s shift our focus and see the good that HR can do.
The Director of the employee advocacy team at the missile defense contractor was a legitimate advocate. She was tough as nails, no-nonsense, and fought the good fight. She didn’t coddle anyone who came to her, nor did she coddle the company management. I learned a lot about strong leadership from her, and I value that.
But a special place remains in my soul for Paige, an HR rep who saw me for who I was and took me under her wing. In a whirlwind month, we met at least 10 times for 1:1 coaching, and I call her my ‘cheese grater,’ as she chewed away my self-defense mechanisms. She helped me see who I really was and how the stories I told myself contributed to some of the problems I was facing. Numerous times, I’d have to stop her while I processed the feedback that uncovered raw, typically unmet, needs.
Through her, I learned that I have a need for validation. Now, if you’ve met me, you know that I exude anything but that. When I shared that need with my wife, she was also surprised, even though we’d been married 8 years. I was constantly trying to prove myself, and that was backfiring. I just needed to stop trying. (and that worked) Paige also helped me uncover that I have a higher standard of correctness and when to let things go, along with my short fuse for bad leadership, which I still struggle with today. She was fantastic, exactly what I needed at the time, and helped me build a major cornerstone for my career.
Notably, neither of those two HR ladies exhibited the toxic empathy that I critiqued earlier. They were compassionate, caring, and tough, and both of them ended up moving on to different companies that valued those traits. They were perfect examples of the good that HR can do in an employee’s career.
Summary
HR isn’t there for the employees, and that simple truth feels inhumane to say, considering the potential it has to help employees flourish. I agree with Jennifer Sey that, at this point, we’d be better off without them, as they’re often used as a liability shield to protect bad leadership more than empowering a productive workforce. Without an HR department, perhaps leaders would do more leading instead of weaponizing empathy with the ubiquitous threat of being sent to HR.
It’s a messy topic with a lot of highly charged opinions on each side, but in the middle, what you see is that the casualties are people like me or my awesome team, who, while being everything they said they wanted, were just a little too divergent for what [In]Human Resources could handle. That’s the ugly truth, driven by the bad focus on the wrong values, which hides the good that motivates many professionals to enter the field of Human Resources, and that’s the bane of job satisfaction.
What is your experience with the good, the bad, and the ugly of HR?
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I filed those ethics complaints after being told, “You can go to ethics, but you don’t want to be known as the guy who goes to ethics.”
This has definitly been my experience as well. Glad to see it's not just me!
Defund HR!
My experience with HR has always been individuals that are trying their best to help although I’ve mainly been in smaller companies than I think you mention here.
The biggest issue has really been that they’ve been overwhelmed and under resourced. That has permeated frustration across the organisation and a lot of the criticism that came their way was because of that.
Also, much of their time was often taken up with unions.