Ms monkey wants to know,

Thanks

In terms of function and duties they includ compensation and benefits, learning and development, work force planning (Inc sucession management), hiring/staffing, performance management Inc. areas of disciplinary policy and personnel I.e. Records and data.

There are a number of different models for service delivery as well e.g. The centre of excellence model but that's getting a bit more technical.

Thanks thats very helpful

Yeah helpful but not very interesting eh! Why doesnshe want to know? I've worked in hr consulting firms my whole career and have a ton of stuff about the subject if she is interested.

In my experience:
1) Incompetence.
2) Complete incomprehension of the output of the company within which they work.
3) Rehashing a performance management/personal development process that the employees saw 15/12/10/8/5/2 years ago, but changing some words for the latest buzz word.

all said with a hint of 😉 but not much. 🙁

She is thinking about applying for a job with sheffield council as "Human Resources, Organisational Development and Personnel Support graduate trainee" with a masters course as part of the role.

job spec here

so she's after any help filling in the application form .

Blob hence why there is demand for services from hr consulting firms!

If she has any specifc questions post them up and I'll do my best to answer them. The org. Development part is effectively another way of saying learning and development. It's usually abbreviated to 'OD'.

She might have some tommorrow if your about, thanks for your help.

Mike

1) Incompetence.
2) Complete incomprehension of the output of the company within which they work.
3) Rehashing a performance management/personal development process that the employees saw 15/12/10/8/5/2 years ago, but changing some words for the latest buzz word.

I'd like to add…

4. Insincerity.
5. Arrogance.
6. Humourlessness.

Like Blob, I'm only half serious – but it's quite a bitter half.

Yeah our HR department is about the least people-friendly department in the company which is odd (although seemingly not uncommon). No one trusts them (even if you've got nothing to worry about) – I think a lot of them are on power trips, they're basically just a cost centre to a business so have to exert their influence negatively rather than positively. That's my take anyway (and no I've never been disciplined or fired etc. :p ). Actually it really applies more the HR managers, the junior HR employees are usually just over-worked and under-paid and hate their manager just as much as the rest of us…

B Ark crew membership?

My memory of HR departments is quite distant, but I seem to only remember them as management puppets and strangely dislocated from the business activities of the company employing them.
And sadly when they did have something constructive to put forward it was often quashed by the management.
As I say it's been a long time, but I think it was the idea of BS5750 part something or other that was suggested to the company, the poor woman suggesting it was almost publically humiliated. A year later they brought in the whole BS5750 circus, procedure management mime acts the lot.

What is the B Ark ? Do you mean the B Ship like in The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy ? The one with the telephone hygienists etc

I'd like to add

7)Insensitivity
8)An inability to tell the truth (or recognise it)
9)Bullshit

Personal experience of HRM at City College Brighton up until May this year

10) Complete lack of a spine

Jeez this is really disheartening, that so many of you have had such bad experiences of HR!

There are many better examples of HR working as a partner in a business, adding value rather than simply being a cost centre. We work with HR to help them be more business oriented using a 'decision science' framework that goes something like this:

As a business you compete with other companies in a market where there is a demand for your service. That demand is differentiated and your company chooses to compete in such a way as to appeal to one or two segments of that market.
You've built your company around sustaining a competitive advantage based on those criteria; in order to survive and grow, you need to ensure that you maintain that competitive advantage.
Now, who are the people in your organisation that are the most critical in helping sustain that competitive advantage? Draw a line back from the thing that you do as a company that allows you to beat the competition to the people who more than anyone else in the company support and execute that thing.
These are your critical resources; these are the people that you absolutely need to:
– ensure are in role
– are performing 100%
– have clear identified succession plans in place for
– invest in for development as a priority
– hire the best in the market
It always struck me as odd that other 'cost centres' in a business, such as accounting & finance and marketing, were so much better regarded than HR. It's because they brought decision science to their discipline a long time ago and people can see a clear line of logic and therefore value between the decisions they make and the results they generate.
This is what HR needs to do; thankfully it's happening, but mostly only in the larger organisations.

I've been seconded to our HR department for a year or so to try to sort out their IT, and it's been interesting, to put it mildly.
The HR director has no qualifications at all, except that he apparently instigated the highest number of disciplinary actions in the company before he was moved to this department.
The HR manager (in charge of employee benefits and recruitment) has been known to pass on confidential conversations to the person who was being discussed, even when specifically requested not to.
The Personnel manager (disciplinary matters) hates people even more than I do.
And there are about 11,000 people on the payrolls here…

Well done Geetee….. I work in Recruitment and have seen many examples of the negative but also many of the positive! Fuzzywuzzy says they are a cost! Which we all are but what they do (if working properly) is streamline aspects of the business that the rest of the management team either don't want to, cant be arsed to or just plain do not know how to. A good HR team can make a massive difference to how a business works… As long as those people are not bitter!

I vote we should all have personnel staff like in Green Wing!

Human Resources is just a stop gap until they can bring in Robot Resources.

The clue is in the name as far as im concerned.

HUMAN RESOURCES

You are a HUMAN and you are treated as a RESOURCE. You are something to be used in the company to effect an output.

They are there to act on behalf of your employer in the interests of your employer.

Nicey nicey until the sh!t hits the fan and then the blank smile is dropped and true colours are shown.

Thank god i now work for myself and dont have to deal with these smug people that much anymore.

Im sure there are good HR people. Ive just yet to find one.

From GT's post:

BINGO!

😉