A question about people in HR departments…

Kenny, she only did that because the paperwork for transfer is less than exit+recruitment 🙂

Kenny, I guess it depends on the company culture as well.

Everything else is just high 90 ‘s then

😛

Maybe middle class homeopath supporters and Audi drivers. Also, anyone who listens to Abba.

We have some really good ones. One of them basically got me back to work when I might not have done it myself and was generally superb through a bout of work related stress- she just quietly got on with it but it turned out she was basically fighting my boss and my boss’s boss at every step, too.

The HR admin folks are lovely too.

Kenny, she only did that because the paperwork for transfer is less than exit+recruitment

It was (and I no longer work for them thankfully) a company with an exit strategy of a letter (pre e-mail days) saying “Sling your hook mate”. 🙂

Kenny, I guess it depends on the company culture as well.

Quite possibly. I now work for a large Edinburgh financial services company and the people there, in every department, are almost all brilliant. Very helpful, friendly and good at their jobs. Which is very much the company ethos.

Imagine what the HR staff in an estate agents must be like? 😯

always knows what’s happening in folks lives outside of work, from a genuinely caring point of view.

Holy crap. Never since I worked for a tiny company in the 80s have I seen such a thing from HR. (Although Portsmouth Poly had a quite special HR lady, but that’s another story 😳 )

Can’t be as bad as NHS HR.

Junior doctors change job every 4-6 months. It’s been like this for several decades, so shouldn’t come as a surprise to HR. However, every few months, I have to fight to find out when and where I am working. It no longer comes as a surprise to me when I turn up on the first day of a new job and am told to go home as I’m on night shift/annual leave/day off that day. And forget trying to book holidays in advance…

My favourite NHS HR story is when a friend emailed a hospital HR department to ask for a specific weekend off, as she was getting married. She gave them 9 months notice of this. When she turned up for work on the first day, she found that she’d been put down to work nights on her wedding night. She stormed up to the HR office and asked WTF they were playing at. Their reply was that she’d only asked to have the weekend days[/i] off so they’d assumed she’d be happy to work the nights…

They were left in no doubt as to what she’d been planning to do on her wedding night (and it didn’t involve being in charge of a medium sized hospital as the medical registrar…!) but they still didn’t make any effort to switch her shifts (it eventually ended up in a horribly complicated swap and one of her best friends did the night shift instead of going to the wedding reception).

Portsmouth Poly sounds like a Viz character Dezzy 😀

Nah, they’re all nepotistic, conceited, Machiavellian fraternisers with less regard for privacy and discretion than in any profession I know.

Comprehensive bunch of control-freak ****.

IME, obviously. And not where I am now, obviously.

We have some good folk in HR who are helpful and do their job properly. We also have some who are so incompetent and uncaring that they are a liability and cause more unnecessary hassle and grief than you can imagine.

I think the problem is that it is one of those professions where people can just end up when they have been crap at everything else. A bit like estate agents but without the charm.

And to be honest “human resources” tells you everything you need to know about the mentality. Our good HR folk still refer to it as “personnel”.

One of my best mates divorced his first wife after he realised what the rest of us knew – that she was halfway to being a psychopath. She’s in HR.
I remember the look of horror on his face when he told me the story of how she went to an employee’s house who was on long-term sickness absence – to interview him to check he was genuinely ill (which I believe is normal procedure and fair enough IMO.)
Anyway – the sick employee pissed himself in his chair as he was too intimidated by this woman to say he needed to go to the toilet… Knowing her very well I can well imagine this happening.

She’s now very senior in HR – last thing I heard she was providing executive coaching to senior members of a FTSE 100… go figure how someone with so little empathy is now influencing senior people how to behave at work 😯

HR don’t make the decision as to whether or not to cut somebody, yes they will make a recommendation based on employee law but thats as far as it goes.

Did you read that in a book, because that’s not the way it is in the real world.

Portsmouth Poly sounds like a Viz character Dezzy

I knew her too, i think 😆

Tbf my elder brother is an HR Manager for a well known Uni and can concur, he is an aggressive asshole.

Have lost much respect for him over the last decade.

Make of that what you will.

@ legolam

Why are any of your scenarios anything to do with HR? Do the NHS really use HR to determine staff scheduling? Surely that’s the role of first line management?

Not surprised there’s an A&E crisis if that’s true!

HR will have the master rota for each job in the hospital, and their only job is to assign names to “Dr 1”, “Dr 2” etc. the rotas don’t change from month to month, so it should be easy just to slot someone in if they have an important date they need off etc. But it seems to be too much to ask. “Fixed leave” rotas like A&E are renowned for this… Make of that what you will.

Bunch of useless muppets that despite umpteen training afternoons a month, still manage to screw simple things up!! *and breathe

HR? Really? You must all be very low down in your Co food chain if you still have to involve yourself with the HR dept.

I thought you were all high fliers.

Our Human Remains department rebranded themselves as People and something or other in the great revolution of 2013. Which I guess was meant to be a bit more touchy-feely and a bit less impersonal, but just sounds a bit retarded.

I work in HR and you lot would be the first I sack for spending too much time on the internet!

😉

HR departments are very like IT departments… utterly incompetent, time wasting control freaks.

What ^ said

IME:

HR Manager who I reported to ignored requests for assistance even though I was working 16-17 hour days.

When she finally broke me, she got me back in the office whilst I was certified off sick with work related stress and made me re-apply for my own job with an outside recruitment consultant. Unknown to me this involved an ad hoc presentation to the MD/Ops Manager/HR Manager and said Consultant. I had one hours notice of this. They ripped me apart for two hours, despite regular merit based pay rises for the last 3 years.

When I returned to work it was supposed to be a phased re-introduction on my Psychiatric consultants orders. After 2 days she ordered me to return full time.

Due to going back to work full time too early, they broke me again. I left work in an ambulance. She then sent me to the company Dr who sent her a letter after the consultation saying I was the most depressed and anxious person he had ever assessed. This was backed up by a report from my GP, a consultant psychiatrist, and psychiatric nurse.

She then wrote me a letter, copied to every man and his dog accusing me of faking all my symptoms in order to put a personal injury claim in. I didn’t. Eventually the company and I split with a compromise agreement.

She cost me three years of my life, so I pretty much subscribe to the “Oxygen thief” view of HR Managers…

Human Remains

I love companies that state that human capital (people) is their biggest asset and then have human remains departments to look after (sic) this asset.

Some people think HR depts look after staff. Doh, they are there to look after the firm first and foremost.

When I returned to work it was supposed to be a phased re-introduction on my Psychiatric consultants orders. After 2 days she ordered me to return full time.

Due to going back to work full time too early, they broke me again. I left work in an ambulance. She then sent me to the company Dr who sent her a letter after the consultation saying I was the most depressed and anxious person he had ever assessed. This was backed up by a report from my GP, a consultant psychiatrist, and psychiatric nurse.

She then wrote me a letter, copied to every man and his dog accusing me of faking all my symptoms in order to put a personal injury claim in. I didn’t. Eventually the company and I split with a compromise agreement.

She cost me three years of my life, so I pretty much subscribe to the “Oxygen thief” view of HR Managers…

Surely there was a libel and/or a harassment case there.

My favourite NHS HR story is when a friend emailed a hospital HR department to ask for a specific weekend off, as she was getting married. She gave them 9 months notice of this. When she turned up for work on the first day, she found that she’d been put down to work nights on her wedding night. She stormed up to the HR office and asked WTF they were playing at. Their reply was that she’d only asked to have the weekend days off so they’d assumed she’d be happy to work the nights…

I think we might know the same person through my OH (F2 at the QE)…

Surely all this thread shows is that there are people that are good at their job and people that are bad at their job. Why tar everyone of a profession with the same brush just because you’ve had some bad ones?
I’ve met some pretty horrible engineers, I don’t think they are all c**ts.

I think we might know the same person through my OH (F2 at the QE)…

It wasn’t the QE that were responsible for the wedding cock-up (it was a hospital a few miles further north-east), but it wouldn’t surprise me in the slightest if it’s happened to more than one person…

All HR Depts vary in just how bad they are.

So I’ll generalize:

HR = Feckless types with no regard whatsoever for those who’s income depends on having employment.

tenacious_doug – Member

Surely all this thread shows is that there are people that are good at their job and people that are bad at their job. Why tar everyone of a profession with the same brush just because you’ve had some bad ones?
I’ve met some pretty horrible engineers, I don’t think they are all *****.

You know? In an age where children of an early age can now use tablets and computers. It disappoints me to still see others post words such as the one I’ve asterisked. Really, was there a need for that ^^^ Is one’s vocab really so limited.
🙄

May I suggest folk ensure they possess a vocabulary powerful enough to afford them a choice about the words they type, if they feel the need to post online.

Pah … HR

You wanna try working/conversing with a Compilance dept.

The only way they can justify themselves is to find things that you do wrong…. and then find more things… and then more and then more.

But if you go to them for advice or with concern…. I kid you not…. they are not allowed to help you.

You know? In an age where children of an early age can now use tablets and computers. It disappoints me to still see others post words such as the one I’ve asterisked. Really, was there a need for that ^^^ Is one’s vocab really so limited.

If your children are using the internet without being monitored then they’ve seen much worse than swearing on singletrack.

The HR dept in my firm are a funny bunch.
The woman in charge (or Cruella as she is known) is a nasty piece of work who resembles Winston Churchill in a frock.
She gets involved with the bad stuff.

However they also have a very curvy, and very tactile late 20’s lady who generally wears stripper heels and dresses that are a size too small.
She is sent down to our place as the friendly face of HR, as they think we are more likley to talk to her.

HR are there to get the most out of you for the least outlay. If that means screwing you over, well I think most of them see that as a perk of the job. They are generally a horrid, incompetent, nasty bunch. That said, I should be thankful because their incompetence meant that I got an extra £350 pay rise this week because they couldn’t get the sums right on my promotion. 🙂

You know? In an age where children of an early age can now use tablets and computers. It disappoints me to still see others post words such as the one I’ve asterisked. Really, was there a need for that ^^^ Is one’s vocab really so limited.

It’s probably going to do them more harm to read that it’s appropriate to be prejudiced against an entire group of people based on nothing other than their career choice.

I’d certainly rather my son grows up dropping the c bomb on occasion than being a bigot…

prejudiced against an entire group of people based on nothing other than their career choice.

What if the vast majority are completely useless?

To be honest, if this thread gives them a healthy disdain for HR, then it’s done your children a great service which will reward them later on in their careers.

What if the vast majority are completely useless?

While I can’t be totally certain, I’m fairly sure you won’t have had so many jobs, in so many countries, that you can really say the the “vast majority” of an entire profession are useleas.

In one of my finer moments, my boss and I were talking to our depts HR rep, she said that they had just been thru an office move up to the fifth floor next door to the staff canteen, “what about the smell” my boss asked, before she could reply I chipped in “the canteen staff don’t mind” he had tears coming down his face stifling has laughing, whilst she was giving me daggers and did do for weeks after.

I was once told I would be investigated for “putting the company at risk of prosecution and loss of revenue” brought on by a department my department did work for.

I asked what it was about but the HR chap wouldn’t tell me. He got a bit irate when I pointed out that the HR manual stated that I must be informed clearly in writing what the case was about and it was his manual I was referring to. He still wouldn’t tell me .

Anyway, in the interview two weeks later I was asked what odours I was aware of on the day in question, I replied “Alpine flowers, pine, burning brake smell and dry dust ” why, where were you?” I was mountain biking in the Alps that week.”

Their faces were a picture. The manager taking the case (not any department involved) was gobsmacked at the utter waste of time for everyone.

Ends up the department who’d brought the case against me were while responsible for the mess they’d tried to pin on me, oh how I laughed when I proved beyond doubt that they were to blame.

So in answer to the OPs question, I think HR are generally ineffectual muppets.

The good side of this is I found out I only needed to give 1 months notice. I left shortly after, set up my own company and the company I used to work for hire my company to do numerous tasks for them. I get more money from them now than I did when I worked there! 🙂