Decisions by committee

HR is neither human nor a resource.

What do you expect from an organization whose sole purpose is to justify its own existence?

HR, like every other job, has its good folks and bad folks.

I see it from a top down perspective from the legal department. HR is trying to interface a bunch of managers with their employees, while at the same time maintaining minimum standards that meet or exceed state and federal regulations.

I'm guessing the rules that prevent people with merit from progressing faster than people with seniority is in response to laws that require equality in pay. Generally, a myriad of laws that vary from state to state require that people doing the same job should be paid the same amount, to avoid discrimination based on gender, race, or whatnot. The problem is that line managers rarely take the time to write comprehensive employee evaluations, and then take additional time to standardize the evaluations on a curve across an organization--it's often difficult to provide irrefutable evidence that one employee is "better" at his job than another employee. It's often nearly impossible to make these pay-differences-based-on-merit-only standardized across every manager within an organization.

So, in the end, you end up with metric that HR can gather on their own: a combination of positive evaluations over a period of time.

Yes, there are ways around this, and skilled HR people with good connections to executive leadership and the line managers can make things happen, but in the end, each decision HR makes is balancing meeting regulatory requirements and burdening managers with steps to meet those requirements.

In the end, it's probably not HR that is the bottleneck. It's probably a lazy manager somewhere that is causing the problems. Rules and policies are created to cater to the lowest common denominator. If 1 manager on the other side of the organization can't be bothered to write comprehensive employee evaluations, then the whole organization is stuck using some other metric to give promotions and raises to their employees.

I guess I qualify as a curmudgeon these days, but I can’t help but observe the changes in HR over say, 20-25 years.

25 years ago- the HR folks many times would get a call from a manager and the manager would say, "I have identified a candidate I want for a critical position. This is his/her resume/data. Can you please vet them?".
If there were no issues, then the manager would proceed with HR’s help to bring the person into the company.
(Occasionally HR would provide the candidate pool but the MANAGER controlled the process).
Internal candidates who "worked their way up" would be considered.

Now, from what I hear (can’t tell from outside the HR dept wall), HR gives YOU as the manager candidates (5 or however) to interview and the manager may not even have the final decision on either the candidate pool or the final decision.

HR drives and controls everything. Internal candidates who “worked their way up” are often not even considered. Flavor of the week degrees and favoring particular schools are the thing in HR.

I have too many friends and associates who are those managers and many times qualified people (usually with sufficient degrees but occasionally “mustangs") apply through the company @#$@#$@ website(s).
Because they know the manager he/she is looking for their resume in the stack because they applied. But it is NOT there.
Their resumes seldom get to the manager.

Most HR “professionals" blame this on selection filters the application website utilizes.
Hmmm...

quote:

Originally posted by Rinehart:

HR drives and controls everything.

Pretty much how it works where I am employed. HR are the ones hiring people and the managers who know what they need and what type of people are on the sidelines. The craziest thing I ever heard of because you have people who don't have a clue as to who they are hiring, they only see all the fancy buzzwords and schools on the resume.

An HR department is the substitution of bureaucracy for sound managerial judgement.

Years ago my friend and I both worked for the same company, in fact our desks were in the same area.

We were in an industry that had enormous and expensive turnover. HR decided that when an employee leaves, for any reason, that we would have to perform an exit interview with them.

That actually kind of worked pretty well for the most part. Many, but not all, were willing to sit there and grump and moan and bitch and get it out of their system about the way things happened to make them want to leave the company.

The funny thing was, however, my buddy had one employee die on the job. Well, the death was not funny, but the situation ended up being funny. The guy just flat out died while out on the road. And as such, there was no exit interview because, well DUH, it was not possible.

HR kept after him to get an exit interview, and he kept replying that since the employee died, it was not possible.

HR was about as dense as a big chunk of lead. He and HR kept tossing it back and forth about the exit interview.

He finally just decided to make one up and send it in. Never heard another peep out of HR about it.

This was in the late 1990's, almost the year 2000, when the comic strip Dilbert was first taking off and getting popular.

My buddy wrote a letter about this to Scott Adams, the creator of Dilbert. Mr. Adams was so tickled about this that he sent my buddy an autographed Dilbert book. My friend still has it to this day.

HR, gotta love them, can't live with them, can't live without them.

When I married a Catbert, I got to see how it all really worked. Then severe disillusionment and depression set in. It's a rigged system.

My old adage of 'If I can't resolve my issue with my boss, it's of too my lawyer.'

HR is there to turn out the lights when it is all done with.

HR folk are the political commissars of the company. Their job is to protect the company. You, like Mongo, are just a pawn in corporate life.

So I have a position for an entry level job. I already knew who I wanted. I told the guy, write your resume to the job posting, use the same phrases, keywords, etc. So he does this and we end up offering him a job. HR sends me the offer letter and I freak out, this salary is almost double what it should be for this position! I call them and they say, well he matched all of the points you listed on the job description so he must be a senior field rep. I said no, this is an entry level position, its like saying I have used excel vs I am a master macro writer. Not the same thing...

They had to cancel the posting and open a new one and go through the whole damn process again. What a joke.

quote:

What a joke.

Human Resources is a joke, they should have stayed as the Personnel Dept!