The anti-people department

As proud practitioner  I am the first to boast that many in our dear profession do a lot of good for people and for business. I went on a bit of tear on the matter in a previous post exclaiming that Employees are Wonderful.  Some friends observed that my idealistic fervor so expressed was out of character.  I’m usually an HR-critic, after all.  But it is my very love for our profession and the good souls who we serve that drives my passion– in favor of the things we can do well; and against the things that waste our HR-time and have no value.  I again for the record proudly boast without apology that helping people succeed in business and in life is as worthy a profession as any other on the planet.  However, we can’t carry the banner of kind service to our fellows if it is not what we actually do.

The Dark Side

There is, no doubt, a dark side to practicing human resource management.  So in the name of full disclosure, this post shines light on the unkind things that traditional HR types actually do to affront the precious workforce whom we boast to love.  Not so incidentally, this betrayal of word and deed is the reason why so many  people hate our HR-guts.

Despite the obvious good, the profession at large has perpetually suffered from a huge credibility gap between what HR says and what HR does. Many boast to be employee advocate, job enrichment expert and workplace champion of fairness, professional development and personal growth. Yet consider the true role that human resource professionals usually play in most organizations.   Here goes:

Getting Most from People for Least

HR is generally charged with getting the most sweat-equity from people for the least possible amount of money.  I’m not talking about improved worker productivity either.  True productivity gains almost always make the human effort less strenuous, not more.  That’s good stuff and HR usually has nothing to do with it.  Instead, HR’s traditional focus on people is in the take-away category:

• Keeping salary and raises at the lowest possible rate that the market can bear. It’s a discipline in itself called “Compensation” and it’s most effective weapon are “salary market studies” also known as collusion.
• Cutting back on medical and dental benefits, limiting employee services and putting conditions on perks. HR calls it “optimizing.”
• Forcing return from injury and maternity leave as soon as possible . “Family friendly” is the HR buzz word there.
• Budgeting back overtime and reducing hours. That’s called “group time management” or “efficiency management” in HR jargon. Everyone else calls it what it is: expecting people to work faster and harder with fewer breaks; pushing for the same or greater ouput in less time;  and paying people less money.
• Replacing commission formulas on great sales people just as they really start raking in the money under the old scheme. HR types call this takeaway “variable pay analysis and redesign.” The best sales people call it getting screwed and time to look for another job.

Firing People

We have all kinds of words for this one. The most understandable are “employment termination” and “getting rid of people” although these phrases are technically more akin to murder, not ending employment.  The words “layoffs” and “downsizing” are used most by business types while HR debates and revises the definition of these to suit their policy manual. In any case, it is HR’s traditional role to play grim reaper and hatchet person. And while I have heard stories where people report being happy to be fired, most describe it as a not-so-great experience.

The most insulting anti-people word used to explain this effort is “Rightsizing.”  So next time you get canned, don’t worry; HR says you have merely been “rightsized.”  Or is it the company that has been rightsized?  And why does a job termination have to sound right anyway? Either way it doesn’t feel right to the unemployed.  People who lose their jobs naturally feel screwed and we shouldn’t use a stupid word to describe it.

Punishing People at Work

Guess who is in charge of this well established company function?  Yep, good old HR!  Punishing people at work has been institutionalized by the human resources  profession.   This workplace legacy is, in my view, the biggest black eye to our vocation. I will blog on it more in future posts.  For now, suffice it to say that traditional HR misdirects roughly 80% of its people management programs targeted at five  percent of employees who do the wrong things.  This shameful folly–which is nothing more than spinning formal and legal methods to punish people at work–is known in HR speak as “progressive discipline.”

There is nothing progressive about it.  It typically restricts people with a lot of childish rules. “HR Guidelines” is the name.  The HR Police attempt to enforce administrative compliance to the kiddy rules with bureaucratic forms, legalese procedures  and disingenuous performance appraisal write-ups. This is called “helping people succeed” in HR school, but I’m not sure why.  Inherent in all this, off course, is documenting people out the door and calling it “coaching”. The most shameful subset, of which, is writing carefully crafted memos to the personnel file to protect the company and indict employees and then having  audacity to call the CYA-language “objective.”

A spin-off to progressive discipline is a less blatant, but even more damaging offense to mankind, whereby HR insists to treat greats and duds the same in the name of consistency. Thus creeps in terrible habits such as keeping all employee raises within one or two percentage points, regardless of far and wide variations in people’s actual job performance. Pay equity you know.   Of course, there is nothing fair and square about it if you are a top best job performer.  In fact, it’s punishing. See my recent post on pay-for-performance to learn more.

Advocate Not

So, in summary  that’s quite a list:

• Getting the most from people for the least and taking good things away
• Firing people and calling it by every other name
• Leading the long held tradition for punishing people at work

All the while claiming to be employee advocate!

It is no wonder why so many people hate HR.  But happily, any company can make the Switch to a far better way. In other posts I share our Human Resource Planning methodology that details how to build talent, share knowledge and drive out mediocrity with transparency and integrity.  Switching HR also requires a serious and true Golden Rule initiative that  demands positive treatment, service excellence and safe care of co-workers as a universal job requirement. That’s a future post too.  In the meantime, be careful out there my HR-friends.  You may have more enemies than you think!