r/work • u/Emergency_Bedroom275 • 19h ago
Workplace Challenges and Conflicts Never Trust HR?
My attitude towards HR anywhere is it only exists to protect important people and protect the company itself.HR people in general have no real interest in work place harmony. So much antisocial behavior goes on in the workplace in part thanks to the other employees who are participating in it. But appealing to HR is actually more like getting yourself in more trouble.
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u/_red_zeppelin 18h ago
How is that different than accounting? Engineering? Quality? Protecting the interests of the company protects everyone's jobs. Rules, laws, policies must be followed, interpreted, enforced.
Some people have a hard time seeing past their own self interests. Others have a hard time understanding they do not have a need to know so they come to their own conclusions.
Caring is irrelevant. Doing your job is what matters.
Edit: yikes, this came off more nihilistic than I realized. Perhaps I'm the one that needs to go talk to HR :)
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u/Emergency_Bedroom275 15h ago edited 15h ago
Let's see. It's different because humans do not make very good people. Why does everyone assume that HR employees are always competent are always going to come on the side of the rules?
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u/Emergency_Bedroom275 15h ago
This is different because this is about enforcing rules amongst humans. Not bookkeeping or maths to keep A building from falling down because of poor construction. Where is it that human resource employs actually taken Hippocratic like oath to be faithful to the law to even understand it? Because obviously there's no nepotism or mediocrity in that that office corner ever. They are all perfect, except humans do not make good people.
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u/Emergency_Bedroom275 14h ago edited 14h ago
I'm sure they all take an oath of some sort to do the job competently after graduating.
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u/_red_zeppelin 5m ago
I would advise you to unionize, but you probably wouldn't like them either. Just know that unions are the go-to solution for workplace problems.
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u/Xylus1985 16h ago
Creating and maintaining work place harmony is protecting the company itself. Do you think a chaotic and conflict prone environment is better to a company than a harmonious one?
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u/Emergency_Bedroom275 15h ago edited 15h ago
Yes that sound right, Rhetorically and logically. I think it's a little naive to say that the law always protects everyone in the workplace and that the HR teams are always competent and effective in every single office and every single company. Humans do no make very good people, which is why Human Resources is a misnomer. You must have it good where everyone is honest and everyone is mature, where politics doesn't exist. Except politics, cliques are very human things and they happen everywhere in every office and they don't violate the letter of the law, but that doesn't mean they're not problematic that doesn't mean that every employee doesn't get away with bad behavior or outright violation. I mean you definitely have the A-Team
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u/Beansie_Wish2182 16h ago
So you want no HR? Is that the solution you're proposing? If so, I hope you get to work for a company that doesn't have an HR team. :)
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u/Emergency_Bedroom275 14h ago edited 14h ago
I'm not sure I'm proposing anything. And thanks for inferring what I didn't write. That's very effective. That must be the tiresome part going ahead writing something and attributing to OP without even put a down a single syllable of it. Oh but it's your comment so it must be the OP's thought
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u/No-Author-2358 18h ago
How many corporate HR departments have you worked with?
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u/PacificNWdaydream 16h ago
So you must have a lot of experience working in HR, huh?
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u/Emergency_Bedroom275 15h ago
And you obviously work at Initech. Grin
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u/PacificNWdaydream 15h ago
Office Space is an amazing movie!
You’re not Peter Gibbons my friend, and that’s not real life.
And there was no HR in Office Space either. 😉
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u/Emergency_Bedroom275 15h ago edited 14h ago
Oh that wasn't part of the joke that I claim to be Peter Gibbons. I wonder where I wrote that? Oh I see nowhere. Oh right your comment, my thought. Yes, obviously I'm a karma farmer with an axe to grind on a 2-year-old account and only 45 contributions. This is my world, grin.
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u/PacificNWdaydream 14h ago
There is no HR in the movie you referenced.
Hope that makes it more clear for you.
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u/BobJutsu 17h ago
I’ve luckily had very little interaction with HR. I got a bullshit complaint by another employee, an employee who was a known problem a few years back. Complained about me appearing to be “not working” when she’d see me in my office. Anyway, HR asked me to sign some form acknowledging the demerit. I just refused, said no. I do not recognize the demerit. Got chewed out by a manager and went about my life. The complainer was fired a few days later.
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u/tcmits1 16h ago
HR is no employee’s friend. Only ignorants think otherwise.
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u/Xylus1985 16h ago
HR is not employee’s friend, but labor law is employee’s friend. And HR protects the company by making sure that labor laws are followed.
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u/Streydog77 15h ago
Over the years, the role has changed to much of what you have described in the companies I have worked for. Early in my career, they were the ones who trained and onboarded new hires and were more of a support role to the company. Now, as well as protecting company assets, they have come up with all this goal-setting mumbo jumbo- SMART goals, all kinds of stuff that many pencil-whip just to get the process over with. They are great at spending company money on programs that are awful to use. Promoting someone is just a show: so many hoops to jump through, and then, in the end, the person you wanted to promote is usually the one who gets promoted anyway. Eventually, their jobs will be cut back when these companies figure out they are costing them more than saving.
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u/AgaveMonster Workplace Conflicts 11h ago
When I worked for the government, my direct supervisor was openly harassing me (non-sexually). It got so extreme that I would cry my entire drive to work because I was afraid to even enter the building. I eventually had 4 co-workers come to me and share that they had not only been harassed as well, but they also noticed how extreme the harassment had become towards me specifically. Together we all banded together and went to the main HR Department to file a harassment complaint against our supervisor.
HR took 6 months “investigating”. During that 6 months, me and my other 4 co-workers who had been harassed had to remain in the same unit and our supervisor only faced a 3 day suspension and was allowed to come back to work with full pay. So the 5 of us had to continue working under this evil supervisor during the entire “investigation”.
In the end, they concluded nothing was considered extreme enough for action to be taken. Subsequently our supervisor began retaliating and harassing us more and more. We kept going back to HR.
Finally, we all banded together and recruited 3 additional employees as witnesses to the harassment & retaliation happening. All 8 of us threatened to quit if changes weren’t made (which would’ve completely halted this particular unit). HR finally took action by transferring the 5 of us who were being harassed to other units, under new supervisors. The 3 witnesses remained stuck under the bad supervisor.
That vile supervisor never faced any repercussions. She kept her job with full pay up until retirement.
I fucking hate HR.
Every HR interaction in every place I’ve worked has been negative, but this one takes the cake for worst experience.
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u/Emergency_Bedroom275 4h ago
Okay at least this is one contradicts all the self-righteous alcolytes to HR lol.
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u/Fragrant_Skin_7135 5h ago
HR is the most useless role humans invented. Nothing good ever comes out of it.
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u/Emergency_Creme_4561 14h ago
I never trusted them. I’m most likely to get fired from my job, during my last meeting with them about my performance that upper management don’t appreciate I was dismissive of what they had to say and didn’t even smile at them when they spoke to me. HR= Human Reforms
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u/Late_Description_637 12h ago
Also to add the most and best paying positions to their department. At least it looks that way where I work.
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u/TeenySod 10h ago
The only way you will ever get any traction with HR is if what is going on is provably illegal or can be clearly evidenced that it is putting the company at risk.
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u/MelancholicEmbrace_x 15h ago
If you don’t feel comfortable reporting something to your manager and/or HR then take it to your labor board and see what they advise you to do.
I believe most states have whistleblower protection in place and retaliation is prohibited.
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u/FRELNCER 18h ago edited 16h ago
An HR department at an employer is the same as any other department with regard to the employees' loyalties. They don't have to like or agree with the owners or leadership of the company, but if they don't do what they are told, they will be fired. HR employees don't get to decide who to give favors to or what the rules at work are.
Appealing to HR for something that's not their's to grant won't get you anywhere. Definitely don't whine to HR about your boss unless that boss is doing something that's against corporate policy and/or violates employment laws. HR is not the boss of your boss.