HR people- do you always side with management?

On the up side, they are there to manage risk to the organisstion.

Risk includes managers being a-holes and caussing high turnover of staff (recruitment being a major cost to business) so if this dude’s got previous then they may listen.

Just be sure you’ve got everything in writing – times dates etc.

mrmonkfinger – Member

peteimpreza – member
Don’t trust them as far as you can throw the oxygen thieving skin wasting bitches

My OH’s in HR.

And BTW, you’re a **** mate.
Woah there! I dont “think” he was specifically referring to your OH there…. 😉

I was managed out of a ‘blue-chip’ company a few years ago. I was lied to from interview through to leaving by an incompetent manager… a real eye–opener and one of the reasons why I’m now contracting and planning on staying that way – I have no less risk of leaving tomorrow but get paid a lot more and have no illusions about any level of support from HR or management.

Unfortunately for them one of my best friends is an HR director and he said just get out and go, they’re clearly incompetent… he said what happens a lot of the time is HR and the manager cook up a scheme to get rid of an employee who, for whatever reason, has fallen out of favour, present it to the Lawyers before they bring the hapless employee in – the lawyers go mental because they’re leaving themselves wide open to a case of constructive dismissal…

3 really good things came out of my experience:
1. I have no more naive expectations of ethical behaviour from my employer – which funnily enough makes it easier to survive – I’m much more careful who I trust
2. I’m now contracting with a much better work/life balance and income
3. I realised how valuable good friends are – if it hadn’t been from good advice from my mate I’d have wasted my energy on fighting back

+ the incompetent boss and his political boss both lost their jobs shortly after when it became clear where the problem actually lay

There’s a known ‘problem’ boss in my current place who’s most of the way to being a psychopath – 100% staff turnover, totally incompetent, been in front of HR several times with staff grievances… and she’s just been given a massive promotion. Go figure what substances HR are taking 😯

I like threads like this. It gets me fired up for this afternoons disciplinary (35 days off sick so far this year) I’m sure that bloke will also say we are a bunch of shysters who should leave him alone!

I’ve sat through a lot of performance management type issues, and in nearly every one there is someone who’s saying what I can and can’t do in an effort to weasel out of the reason they are there in the first place. Even taking all the above posts as completely factual, surely there’s a level of agreement that people can, through their own fault, underperform?

Also, the other thing to add in matters such as the crazy contract change / not the correct job situation, I’d put money on HR being the messenger and quite possibly getting shafted as well. Someone’s got to agree to these things, look at your MD (or the person sitting next to the HR person in that disciplinary) for the decision maker, not the HR dept.

Our HR Manager is the MD’s wife. She works 3 days a week at her leisure except when it’s a bank holiday and then she works two. And we all get an email each week telling us which days she is having off working from home.

I think I know who you work for. That description of the bell curve….rings a bell with me.

Most large companies have this so I doubt you can pin it down.

Done well it is a tool for managing performance and the curve will fit a large organisation. Done badly as it results in the distribution being forced in too small a population and people being artificially performance managed or prevented from receiving recognition for excelent performance.

The HR view is that even if you are doing your job very well if everyone else doing it even better then you need to improve. This is OK as a concept, perfectly sensible infact, but when the rating is then linked to pay and rewards then it’s wrong. These should be linked to an obsolute measure, not a comparative one.

I’ve had some terrible HR experiences (physically chased one out of my old bank branch after he reduced a mate to tears, bullying him in a “return to work” interview after a long spell of depression- doesn’t get any lower than that imo). But some good ones too and when it was bad, it mostly felt like incompetence or personal unpleasantness rather than policy. In the bank there was a lot of “whatever your manager says goes”, it was seen as the job of the employee and the union to keep the company under control so just about any HR issue had the union rep in. Just a ridiculous way to run an organisation, totally counterproductive.

Had a weird one when returning to work at my current employers, now our HR people here are sound in general and couldn’t be further from the bank, but she felt really in my corner. Only afterwards I discovered I was coincidentally helping their efforts to manage out my shitehawk boss!

I like threads like this. It gets me fired up for this afternoons disciplinary (35 days off sick so far this year) I’m sure that bloke will also say we are a bunch of shysters who should leave him alone!

Just a thought, perhaps this chap is genuinely ill?

With your fired up comment and preconceived notion of a malingerer I doubt this will be much more than a kangaroo court

It may well seem to be a kangaroo court and obviously I won’t go into any specifics on here, however, the question I keep coming back to whether the rest of the organisation should support someone who on average, has 3 months sick per year (over 3 years). At what point does someone become ineffective, and why is an individual owed a living? It always, unfortunately come down to cost. If you are cost effective and earn money for a company, you’ll mostly be OK (utter twatsticks apart), however as soon as you start to cost, then there is no reason for a company to keep you on.
That may seem unfair, and downright callous, however the next time you look around for the cheapest possible way of buying something (service or object) then just think what your asking the provider to do.

3 months sick a year is either taking the proverbial and I’d want to know how it happened for two years let alone three, or it’s a disability issue and the ice gets thinner…..

Getting everything down in writing or recorded and with a friend present in all meetings and doing clever things with email is all vital. And really, really time-consuming. Quite difficult to do if you are working a proper full day. It shouldn’t be like this. But then it all boils down to the thing that people shouldn’t behave like bastards. But they do. The really irritating thing is when whole departments rubber-stamp decisions made by people who are incompetent themselves, have an axe to grind, or both.

In many cases just dropping the phrase ‘constructive dismissal’ into a conversation can cause a visibly amusing intake of breath.

If you are a good employee and want to stay, then these things can really get you down.

HR at my place are good. Just went through a restructuring due to funding cuts and they handled it well.

I work for a charity though, seems different from a lot of the private sector stuff mentioned. Some very jaded people on here.

I’m not HR but my girlfriend is (and so is one of the best people in the tech company I work for).

In my experience HR are to work for the employee as well and in my current role the HR guy is always fighting my corner.

And in my girlfriend’s company she argues with the partners to try and make sure they stick to the rules etc , not to comply with law but to ensure fairness.

Try chatting to HR people and treating them as humans. By and large they’re actually quite nice people!

But then it all boils down to the thing that people shouldn’t behave like bastards. But they do.

Exactly right, never understood why anyone would want to make another persons life intolerable.
Some of the injustices I witnessed at my last company were disgusting, people who had worked in a reliable fashion for over thirty plus years just forced out of work.
Not skivers or those with horrendous sick records, just ordinary people who did a thorough job rather than cut corners to make the stats look better.
Some of these megalomaniac tossers need to have a hard think about the consequences of their actions and the untold misery the victims of their petty actions suffer

It may well seem to be a kangaroo court and obviously I won’t go into any specifics on here, however, the question I keep coming back to whether the rest of the organisation should support someone who on average, has 3 months sick per year (over 3 years).

So if someone who had provided good service becomes ill they would just be discarded like a piece of refuse. Doesn’t a company have some duty to support such an individual, perhaps the disabled should never be employed either if they are less productive.

What a poor state of affairs we have left for the younger generation

Ultimately HR are a layer of management(and a largely unnecessary layer for the most part.).

Ultimately HR, like any company and manager there are good and bad ones.

You know when you have a manager/HR meeting to discuss the “does not make everyone a cup of tea when he makes himself a cup of tea” ! issue your probably dealing with the latter. Yes that did happen to me, I knew I was being managed out so i spent the next 3 months offering loudly if anyone waated tea and asking the other 2 teams on my floor if they wanted tea.

And throughout all of my dealings the quality of my work was never an issue and my previuos 3 managers within the same company and doing essentially the sma job had no issue whatsoever with me or my work and that others left before and after i had my finall dealings with them. Though i will say HR when i left were really
nice in that they messed up my sallary massivly (in my favour! :D)

So if someone who had provided good service becomes ill they would just be discarded like a piece of refuse. Doesn’t a company have some duty to support such an individual, perhaps the disabled should never be employed either if they are less productive.
What a poor state of affairs we have left for the younger generation

I think it’s sort of always been like that. Ultimately, if you don’t work you don’t get paid. You don’t work enough, you’ll be replaced. How’s that different to any other time, or any other society that you can think of?

Pay peanuts, get monkeys applies to all staff – there are some great HR professionals out there, and then there are people given ‘HR’ jobs that are nothing more than glorified admin and have no knowledge of employment law etc. My brother’s other half is one of the latter (she is the ‘HR Manager’ if you ask her), she didn’t know what a trade union was, I shit you not.

It may well seem to be a kangaroo court and obviously I won’t go into any specifics on here, however, the question I keep coming back to whether the rest of the organisation should support someone who on average, has 3 months sick per year (over 3 years).

Maybe the question you should be asking is if the sickness is due to the actions of your organisation.

Not skivers or those with horrendous sick records, just ordinary people who did a thorough job rather than cut corners to make the stats look better.

I feel a bit of a love-in coming on with you.

That’s another nail hit squarely on the head. So long as the (I feel sick just typing this acronym) KPIs are hit, then management can just rest easy and have a quiet life. Not that things are necessarily going well, of course. As you said corners can always be cut to achieve stats, but management can hide behind these stats and adopt a ‘see no evil hear no evil approach’.

Inevitably the whole things comes crashing down eventually when it is realised that the image of the company has taken a battering and lost long-standing repeat custom as a result, but this is usually a long way down the line. Some senior personalities will have moved off Teflon-like into early retirement etc.

Other will move around the exec merry-go-round above the glass ceiling.

Woah there! I dont “think” he was specifically referring to your OH there….

Ya, I know, I know, I’m not going to lose any sleep and neither will she.

ibnchris said what I wanted to, but I couldn’t be arsed, frankly.

Maybe the question you should be asking is if the sickness is due to the actions of your organisation.

That’s an absolute given. Keep up at the back, that’s what HR are there for!

That’s an absolute given. Keep up at the back, that’s what HR are there for!

Really? It wasn’t at all obvious from your earlier statement:

I like threads like this. It gets me fired up for this afternoons disciplinary (35 days off sick so far this year)

Sounds very much like your mind is already made up.

The function of the modern “HR” department is to protect the company against it’s own employees.

The function of the modern “HR” department is to protect the company against it’s own employees.

The function of the modern HR department is to facilitate the wishes of company management whilst protecting it from losing a tribunal.

Your modern HR department would sack most of us for spending work hours on STW instead of doing what we;re paid to do…

Rather than asking why STW is more interesting and fulfilling than that work!

I’m currently working for a highly organised, psychopath/high functioning autistic (actually she’s disorganised in a way as she takes on far to much work and then dumps it on others) who’s line manager is actually an HR girl and thus has no idea about what we do. Because of this there’s no oversight to my immediate bosses power. The HR girl is also the one who gives me my month performance reviews.

The job was an entry level job, but the training hasn’t really been given (they lied) and I was thrown into the deep end. I hit all my targets this month, but the immediate boss blurted out a long list of little things that I had done wrong. Most of which were utterly silly, downright false or things that she’d managed to manipulate me into doing wrong. For example, putting genetically modified waste in a bin with a bin lid that said “GM waste only”, but she takes that bin lid and puts it on another so that she doesn’t accidentally throw things into it in the lab. ❓ 👿 Apparently I was meant to know it went in the red bin even though it had been a month since I’d worked at that bench (which I’d only done twice)….and clearly she couldn’t trust me to carry out an experiment if I cant put things in the right bin.

Today, I got a dressing down because I had to pick up my keys from security. Not because I lost them but because she told me lost and found was at security at the eastern end of the site, so I ask around, find the only security office….it’s at the western end….lost and found is actually at reception at the eastern end. Apparently I am a timewaster now as well.

So much for people in managerial roles showing any form of leadership.

This thread makes me depressed and I’ve worked with angry, violent sweary chefs for 5 years of my life. It was easier being an angry know it all in a kitchen, now I have to bottle it all up…to the point that I’ve taken up boxing.

psychopath/high functioning autistic

There’s no commonality between these aspects of human behaviour at all. One lacks humanity and tends to do evil things to other people, the other is just wired in such a way that they don’t understand normal social behaviours.

If your boss is the former – run a very long way away very fast. If the latter – some compassion and understanding would probably make things better for her, you and everyone else…

Mr Woppit – Member

The function of the modern “HR” department is to protect the company against it’s own employees.

Some truth in that, as long as you remember that all the line managers are employees.

There’s no commonality between these aspects of human behaviour at all. One lacks humanity and tends to do evil things to other people, the other is just wired in such a way that they don’t understand normal social behaviours.

Yes I know, I’m unsure which yet and I’m not a psychiatrist, I’m not crazy enough to be one.

I’ll try and be understanding as I know it’s hard for people with these disorders, but I have a feeling that there’s something else going on other than poor social skills. If she is autistic it needs to be referred to occy health as she shouldn’t be in a management/training position, or at the very least she needs some awareness of how it could affect those around her.

Basically my gut is screaming at me to run – but it’s my first graduate job and I’ve been doing it for 5 months now. Maybe I should have jumped the boat earlier so I didn’t have a massive gap in my cv, also I need to be earning for my wife to stay in the country.

I might add, you’re incorrect when saying that there is no commonality at all. There are actually some overlaps between the two disorders, such that a careful differential diagnosis has to be made by quacks.

There’s some similarity in the behaviours I agree. Just that one is nasty and the other one innocent.

In one team we have 2 senior managers – one of whom is on the autistic spectrum, the other is showing more than a few signs of being a psychopath… it’s a whole barrel of fun I can tell you!

Going back to the OP – the psycho in this instance has several grievances against her – HR are well aware she’s a problem child – and she’s just been given a big promotion – go figure what HR are trying to achieve with that one.

I had a friend who was trying to exit a psychopath from his organisation and one of the biggest barriers he had was trying to get HR to support him. They were basically so run down by this individual’s manipulations that they didn’t have the strength/confidence to show them the door… my mate ended up leaving HR out of the process and doing it himself…

HR are well aware she’s a problem child – and she’s just been given a big promotion – go figure what HR are trying to achieve with that one.

Are you sure it was HR alone who gave the promotion? I’ve never seen an HR department promote someone alone

I had a friend who was trying to exit a psychopath from his organisation and one of the biggest barriers he had was trying to get HR to support him. They were basically so run down by this individual’s manipulations that they didn’t have the strength/confidence to show them the door… my mate ended up leaving HR out of the process and doing it himself…

HR staff are not immune to psychopaths either….

This all comes over very defensive of HR, however my point is that HR is completely misunderstood in it’s full role, and very often in small specific instances.

The reality is that at the end of the day HR have to side with employment law which may or may not have been followed in the line managers behaviour.

As has been said before, read up on the law, take scrupulous notes, keep hard copies of all emails, get signed meeting minutes. If you have a grievance procedure in the company handbook, you must follow this to the end.

Employers know there are lots of no win no fee lawyers out there and are scared rigid of a well-evidenced case.

We had a Greek girl at our place who resigned, then claimed racism, only because she hadn’t been given a birthday cake and won a few quid off the company rather than go to court….I think employees (in some cases) underestimate their power.