Assume you are the majority shareholder of a company with 25 employees in 3 departments: OPs, sales, and finance/accounting
I don’t mean to sound rude or ignorant, but what would think about having an HR professional vs not having one?
Is HR supposed to be there to advocate for the executive leadership or for the employees?
If it’s for the employees, isn’t there a conflict of interest because the compensation comes from the execs?
Why is recruiting important? Wouldn’t a department head be more equipped to find relevance in a resume than an HR person who has no experience in those specialities?
In the first company I worked at, the HR person was just a compliance officer who would get in the salespeople’s way. Nobody liked her. And when it came to recruiting, she went on this huge power trip about it (she was recruiting salespeople when she herself had failed in sales).
At my last company, we had some pleasant HR lady give me an exit interview. She listened very patiently for 60 mins and then told me " Everyone shares your complaints. I keep sending people’s complaints to the execs and they read my comments, and do nothing about it. There’s nothing I can do" I can’t tell if that’s just shitty management or the status quo, or what.
The job of this HR is to protect the company and advise them on how to treat employees in terms of legal matters or compensation. So yeah, it is sort of like compliance in some ways. HR also might handle payrolls or recruiting as you mentioned. In a big company, it’s obvious how HR is needed. In a small company, maybe it takes more to justify the role.
Once you’ve been a manager, you’ll understand the value of HR. There are so many people legal/admin headaches out there that they are a huge asset. But yeah, like Ohai said, they’re there to protect the firm. I think this is especially important at a small firm where one bad HR decision could sink you. No need for a full time person necessarily, I’m sure there are folks that consult on such matters until you’ve got scale. On your third point, I do find HR a bit of a headache with recruitment. Though my last posting had some several hundred applicants so I’m glad someone could toss out half the crap anyway. But yes, they’re bad at screening talent and many good people get cut before the manager sees the resume. And some real stinkers get through.
So this is why people hate HR - because you’re defining them as corporate stooges that are built in to advocate for the company, and against the employees. There’s gotta be a better way!
they are there to keep the peace. Somebody has to make sure payroll happens. Somebody has to deal with benefits. In a small company, surely the few employees have other things to do like running and building the business.
Possibly, but at the end of the day it’s in the employers best interest to keep their employees engaged, retained, and working hard. That requires a middle ground of employers getting more value out of the employees than the employees receive. But if it skews too much, you risk losing people you need. One side shouldn’t be taking the other to the cleaners. It’s an unsustainable business model in the long run. Ask my most recent ex-employer, though they are probably too tone deaf to realize it.
You have any idea how many job applications companies get? We recently had a posting for a junior gas analyst and got something like 300 applications. The people in the business don’t have time to wade through that many, likely crappy resumes. They forward their preferences to HR and let them do the first pass. They/we are busy doing work.
I do think HR gets a bad rap in general, but I’ve worked with both good and bad HR people. IMO a lot of it also comes from how empowered they are to do what needs to get done, rather than cut costs and do the bare minimum.
Good HR people are about managing the relationship between employer and employees. They will have to come down and defend the company in a crunch, so yes, they are there to protect the company and perform various CYA actions, as well as keep more mundate personnel issues off of the desks of managers who are trying to get other projects done.
A good HR department is more about making the relationships between the company and employees as smooth and effortless as possible than about crushing the employees in the interest of management. Of course, a really really good HR department will accomplish the latter without the employees feeling any pain or reason to complain. “Yeah, I love the entrepreneurial environment here. I could get sacked at any time, but Eddie in IT got a million dollar bonus back in '94, and I’ve been told i have a chance of beating that next year if I just keep my head down and do what I’m told.”
Precisely - so how do we incentivize HR to be sensitive to the needs of employees without them worrying they’ll get fired for not falling in line with management?
If HR can’t be sensitive to the needs of employees without pissing off management, then that means management isn’t sensitive to the needs of employees. If management isn’t sensitive to the needs of employees, they’ll lose higher level talent. This shortcoming comes from management, not HR. HR isn’t a third party that comes in to protect employees - they’re there to manage the relationship between employees and higher level management in a way that higher level management feels will strike the right balance between providing a good work environment for employees and getting as much out of them as possible.