[Closed] HR people- do you always side with management?

They are on company side but if management are breaking employment law they will steer towards a resolution that doesn't involve them been liable

HR are there to protect the companies interests and make sure they comply with the Law. You could be in the right, but they wouldnt formally admit it.

Depends on how friendly your HR department is?

Do farm managers ever side with the cattle over the owner. HR's only remit is the companies interest , they will only coincidentally coincide with the employees interests where the company plans something that will land it in bother in which case they will seek a less risky way of achieving the company's goals.

Ah, ok. Nutshell:

-started a new role in March 2013
-was quickly told I'd have no manager for 6 months
-was told to find my own support
-they placed me in incredibly stressful situations I'd never been in before, with little avenue for help
-after 6 months, that manager who didn't manager was moved into a new role
-new temp manager was put in place
-I got a terrible 2013/14 review (first bad one in my life, I think) at the end of his tenure
-manager picked out all the negative things from feedback, no positives included
-there WERE positives, as I went around and asked the feedbackers to forward me their feedback (which they did)

Stressed to bits. But I've just found out that the co. rules say: when you have had more than one manager in the same year, they have to agree on your rating. And I dont think previous manager was consulted.

Stay and fight, or walk?

Walk, if they're that disorganised fighting will only make them see you as the problem. Find another role on your terms rather than theirs.

Who pays their wages? Tells you all you need to know!

The days of the 'personnel' department, that was usually stacked with wives and offspring of other staff on site and kept over exuberance of managers in check, have long gone IME 🙁

I've just found out that the co. rules say: when you have had more than one manager in the same year, they have to agree on your rating. And I dont think previous manager was consulted.

Beautiful!

If I was you I'd be doing every trick in the book to try and discreetly get that in writing before kicking off with the formal grievance procedure. you do everything by the book, them not playing by their own rules!

Have seen it a couple of times where launching a grievance procedure has resulted in recriminations, but in the end thats only strengthened the case when its gone the next step (ie. makes for a strong hand in exit settlement to avoid a tribunal)

It has crossed my mind that I'm absolutely cr*p and all of this is just me. But the place is a shambles, and the 'carry on without a manager in this new role, with these multi-million pound deals' epitomises things.

My mistake was to carry on and see if I could get by- the guy they took on at the same time as me walked in May last year, warning me they would land me in it.

Don't believe in HR as they are on the side of management.

Basically, their role is just a support role within a company especially to help the company to comply with the employment law. Comply with the law to exploit the employees.

Sort the employees because they are not there for the employees. Employees to HR are just a pain in the backside.

🙄

Yes, unfortunately the cynical-sounding answers above are correct. HR are there to protect the company from issues. Be they just disruption due to high turnover of staff, or a generally crap atmosphere, right up to tribunals and the like. No one ever got anywhere in HR as a result of championing employees for ethical reasons.

The law is what stops employers shitting on employees, not HR.

HR will always do managements bidding, but in such a way that they do not leave the company open to legal action. More often than not they will seek to due the bare minimum to keep within the law.

More progressive companies will have a culture where they actually value good employees and want to keep them 'happy', but always remember that this is still with the interests of the company front-centre.

In my experience you need to be sure of your ground with HR, quite often they will respect you more if you show that you are reasonable with them [u]and[/u] make it clear you expect them to be reasonable with you.

And never forget that NOTHING is off the record when it comes to HR. Don't trust them with anything that you wouldn't want to be in the wider domain.

Thanks all- very useful.

I had hoped that an HR person might have popped up to offer an opinion- knowing STW, there must be one or two, at least. The cynic in me says that the silence from the HR contingent is damning 🙂

Clue is in the name - Resources, just like iron ore or spare parts, there to be used. Fact that it is a resource with 2 legs and a head is just a minor complication that you don't have to consider once you've turned it all into a spreadsheet.

HR are there to make sure management don't do something stupid and leave thew company liable and open to employment law abuse/problems.

Having beeen "HR'd" out twice in my life generally HR will go with the manager everytime - as usualy the manager get them "involved" first. If it is as you say it is then getting hold of the Employee handbook your contract , induction paperwork and the associated paperwork is youyr starting point. If yo ahve those and it states that a review has to be agreed upon if you ahve ahd mnore than one manager then you cna sort this (it would help if you check throughly with HR before making nay over noises).

My second outing in the HR two step was with a particulaly dilbert esqu manager who when ther anual employee review came around sat us all down and went through the procedure to formalize her score and so forth as the previous year sh had had soem less than 100% scores (ratyher than address any management issues or excessive workloads or so forth!) needless to say her scores from me were corespondingly honest and low (i rember her looking shocked when i asked if i could work form home 1 day a week to help look after my disabled daughter to which i got "i can't let you work from home.. the others in the team will wnat to do that then..." err your problem not mine and... Incorect answer!)

I had a head of HR threaten me with the sack unless I agreed to sign a fabricated story about our Head of Sales as they wanted an excuse to sack him (as the CEO wanted him out). I refused and luckily kept my job. Tells you all you know about HR, just there to do (or clean up) the company's dirty work.

Yes they do?

They also have performance targets. E.G. Making sure a certain percentage of employees are marked as under performing so they can be denied bonuses and pay rises.

Don't trust them as far as you can throw the oxygen thieving skin wasting bitches.

I had a head of HR threaten me with the sack unless I agreed to sign a fabricated story about our Head of Sales as they wanted an excuse to sack him (as the CEO wanted him out). I refused and luckily kept my job. Tells you all you know about HR, just there to do (or clean up) the company's dirty work.

Just goes to show how careful you need to be with HR. That wouldn't have happened if the employee had taken a third person into the 'meeting', but who always insists on that, especially if it is a "oh, have you got a minute?" kind of approach.

I had an HR professional break a confidence. I said something in response to a direct question about my boss in a supposedly confidential chat. I found out later that the reason my boss had been frosty with me for several months was that said HR woman had immediately told my boss what I said.

The funniest thing about the whole situation was that I was trying to be honest about the fact that my then boss had taken on far too much work in a bid to try to secure a better paid position. I thought it was detrimental to her and our team, but only said so when asked directly about it. Turns out the silly bitch (manager) had mortagaged herself to the hilt and her and hubby were desperately trying to cling to some kind of local 'Hello magazine' lifestyle and so were desperate for her to have a pay increase!

Strange how people change when money and status are at stake.

who pays for HR the boss, who makes the rules, the boss, who has ultimate say on who gets sacked, the boss.

Hr is just a dept made to keep the boss happy or they will be sacked.

Easy.

Their purpose is simply to reduce the companies exposure to financial risk when dealing with employees. That's it.

DrJ - Member

Clue is in the name - Resources, just like iron ore or spare parts, there to be used. Fact that it is a resource with 2 legs and a head is just a minor complication that you don't have to consider once you've turned it all into a spreadsheet.

This + 1000

As others have said years ago it was 'personnel' but that was too caring.
We have also noticed how the department has now become entirely run by hard nosed career bitches!
Our previous personnel department was run by a good mixture of experienced people who operated in a quiet calm manner & as a result our staff turnover was below 1% & people had a sense of loyalty.
Since then the corporate drones have taken over & as a result staff turnover has increased tenfold & most of us have a cynical view of the company and its direction!

I am a bloke - been in HR over 20 years with big companies - I have done my stint of hire a fire - however in my experience that never made a company successful. Growing employee skills does make companies more successful eg helping apprentices become great engineers...

Companies pay all employees wages not just HR's.

All female profession now though - that cant be good for any profession.

Again it depends a lot on the company and its culture. Many large employers in non-London areas can afford to not give a toss about staff turnover as there's always someone else wanting to work for them. Others do value their employees more.

My point is that you should always remember who they work for, and it ain't you!

an awful lot of very jaded views on here.

HR is needed due to the unbelievable claims society we have become. People pulling constant sickies, not doing work and achieving piss poor standards with the constant wine of 'you're bullying me' if anything is said and claiming unfair dismissal on the grounds of race, sex, disability, unfair treatment, time of the month etc. It's developed in a 'protection' service out of requirement..

By the time you're in a meeting room with HR and your manager, believe me they will have talked it through at great length, and already decided that you probably deserve to be in there, irrespective of any feelings that you have to the contrary. As such, you'll often only see HR siding with the company. For each time you get into one of these scrapes, there will be 3 discussions where HR sided with you and you didn't even know.

However, the real role of HR in a good company (I'll define good here as say, a times top 100 company) is to involve, help motivate, encourage engagement, talent spot, train, facilitate appraisals and help guide most companies best assets (its staff) to give their best.

Of course, those who don't see that side of HR are often those who end up in the meeting room. Of course, it's never the persons fault, it's the company that's being unreasonable.

For the record, I'm not HR, on the bastard sat next to them giving you the shoeing. I am however, in between writing this, helping write an HR strategy for my wife who just so happens to head an HR department of a company that has just got Times top 100 status. OP, she thinks that's completely unreasonable and if you're in a decent company, the HR department should take a real interest in your situation.

Join a Union. They'll work for you, HR works for the Organisation. If you don't join a Union, then you've swallowed the newspapers' lies and will get crushed.

For the record I've also been totally stitched up by an HR department when I was the manager with a 'difficult' employee.

There was an incident with inappropriate emails with this young lad, who was essentially ok, but just a bit cocky and easily led. He was well within his probationary period (two months in at most). In one of the emails he had been quite personal about me. I wasn't massively worried about it from a personal point of view, so I thought the best approach would be to get him and my assistant manager in a room and make him squirm a bit before asking him outright if he actually wanted to be there. A sort of slap on the wrist with no further action. Hopefully something he might learn from.

Anyhow, i thought it was all dealt with (I had been allowed laissez faire in dealing with it - or so I thought). My manager then took me aside and basically told me to get rid of him and to involve HR in doing it. I said as far as I was concerned it was dealt with. Anyhow HR banged the drum, said lots of stuff like "he's still on probation period, so it won't be onerous" and "we will do the difficult stuff" etc. So, at this point I am basically being told to get rid of someone who I actually thought wasn't too bad. Oh well, at least HR will take care of most of it.

But, of course, no. A couple of days later I was told that I would basically have to performance manage him out, increasing my workload, and reducing my ability to be a 'normal' manager as I was pretty much managing him hour to hour.

I said to HR that I never actually wanted to get rid of him, and that as it was their idea and he was still on probation, then surely they could just say "we don't like you, you are gone" and have done with it. But no, the big talk evaporated and I was left to deal with a situation that never should have happened. Luckily the lad saw that the writing was on the wall and left anyway. In his exit interview I just felt embarrassed, and so did he.

HR were worse than useless, again.

Just thought, though, they achieved a headcount reduction by proxy in that situation. So, of course, it was a 'win' for them.

Surely that shows an individual who's shit at their job, not a profession?

I'm sure we've all got our stories with a particular job type, how about we go for estate agent, lawyer, doctor or policeman?

I'd have thought as a good manager that you would have stood up to the HR department and your knowledge of employment law, as opposed saying yes sir, no ma'am?

I think Flap_jack really underlines the need for HR.... Unions have been around a LOT longer than HR departments!

You've been offered no support in the last year, if your performance was bad the should address it before you PR If they haven't it can't be taken into account.

Thanks all. Some interesting opinions and experiences here.

Tinybits- this is one of the UK's biggest companies, and it has a strange (and new) attitude to performance rating. PIGEX? Apparently, if you're in a team of, say, 10 people, the rules say that there must be a 'bell curve' of attainment applied across that whole group of people. So, even if they were all exceptional talent, the least-exceptional gets the lowest rating. Its just come in across the board and is, I understand, causing mayhem and widespread dissatisfaction.

I wouldn't mind too much, generally, and I take your point about HR helping to weed out the dross where possible (although many here seem to have had a rough old shoeing from them, unfairly) but I'm one of these 'take no sick days, help a brother out' kind of workers, and its unfortunately done me no favours. But I think your missus is right- in the situation (no manager, no training, no oversight) I was destined to fail. I'm just worried that if I kick up a stink, they'll find more aggressive ways to get rid of me.

the clue is in the name

human resources- you are a resource for the company

ime they can be good on a one to one level, helping to diffuse difficult situations, however if the shit hits the fan they will side with the people that pay their wages

old donald - Member

I am a bloke - been in HR over 20 years with big companies - I have done my stint of hire a fire - however in my experience that never made a company successful. Growing employee skills does make companies more successful eg helping apprentices become great engineers...

Companies pay all employees wages not just HR's.

[u]All female profession now though - that cant be good for any profession.[/u]

You sound like one of the good guys.

tinybits
I'm sure that might be true of some firms but we had a short term absence rate of less than 0.1% in a workforce of over 10,000 & sickness was almost unheard of. Since the HR Harpies hove into view its shot up as people don't just feel they are a number they know it. I'm i175911

They also have performance targets. E.G. Making sure a certain percentage of employees are marked as under performing so they can be denied bonuses and pay rises.

This is utter garbage. The STW position seems entrenched but no, HR are not just there to do "the management's" bidding. For example the big focus of my role right now is teaching our managers how to manage, and ensuring that our staff are treated fairly and consistently. We do have targets, like reducing sick days for example, because fewer people off with stress generally means a happier, more productive workplace.

I work for the local council, who have just put us through an organisational review. As part of the review, I was nominated by my colleagues as a representative in the consultation process.
On four separate occasions, the HR manager for our department got her facts completely wrong regarding simple points of employment legislation and contractual details. This would have been funny if management hadn't followed her down the rabbit hole.
I am now in a situation where, after the end of the consultation, the implementation of the business case was, according to my line manager, due to roll out in July. As part of my existing contract, I received an incremental pay rise in April and carried out my duties as before.
Then, on the day before payday in May, all staff received a letter via email (dated 22nd May) informing us that we had been assimilated into our new roles on 1st April, thus wiping out and deducting from May's pay my incremental pay rise from April onwards.
So, for the last two months I have been working to a job description and contract that no longer exists, taking on far more responsibilities than my new, post review job description requires of me, all without my knowledge or consent.

HR is like an axe, bloody useful, but bloody terrifying when wielded by maniacs...

Ah! Codybrennan, I think I know who you work for. That description of the bell curve….rings a bell with me. I am saying no more as you never know who's monitoring the Interweb. You have my sympathy.

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I guess you can characterise my view as 'jaded', but this only as a result of [u]experience[/u].

FWIW at my current place the HR department are pretty good. They have managed some major changes quite well IMO and seem to direct their energies at genuinely poor performance etc where it occurs.

For the record I am pretty certain that I average less than 0.5 days sick per year, work longer hours than most of my colleagues and have a conscientious attitude to my work. I appreciate that some employees take the piss, and that the law is weighted too much towards employees who work to rule and only work under direct supervision. The type of person who has plenty of energy left over to fight their corner at every opportunity and have HR shitting themselves about trying to get rid of them.

My experiences of HR departments in large companies are largely negative and I have never been on the 'wrong end' of an HR interview as a result of my own performance or behaviour. That is just how it has been in my experience, so I am jaded, yes, but I distinctly remember starting my working life as a wide eyed little twerp with no preconceptions and a quite idealistic outlook. Experience has turned me into a far more guarded and cynical person in work. Sad but true, and my experiences of HR at previous employers have been a big factor in my 'growing up' or 'becoming a cynic' - whichever you prefer.

Thoroughly enjoyed my run ins with managers and HR people over the years.

Most were so busy that they made fundamental mistakes in procedure and when the evidence was presented had to concede defeat.

Such incompetence that I did seriously consider offering my services as an independent paid advisor to anyone embroiled in these disputes.

Document everything using email, make sure the read receipt function is enabled and always take a friend to interviews. Can be worth recording them too, such a shock when you can produce evidence of what was actually said.

Use their own rules and incompetence against them, for example write a really long email and slip something to your advantage in the middle. Most times they are never read properly and surprising what you can get agreement on with this method

@cody - I'm 50+, been around a bit, seen a lot of stuff. I mention this as it's best to just breath a little and try and see tis objectively.

Take your emotion out of it right now, did you like the job before this episode, where your ratings good ? I am guessing the answer to these is yes and yes.

See this as a bump in the road, the temporary manager probably had a tough time too and is taking it out on you. They are clearly not much of a manager if all they have focused on is negative stuff.

Raise the concerns with HR, not been managed, very stressful, no support, no guidance, you've done your best in the circumstances. I would see what they say and I would also try and seek out either some managers are a similar level to yours or someone more senior and have a conversation with them (but do not make it a ranting list of complaints, just out line your frustrations and they you've done the best you can and want to move forwards with the company)

As others have posted HR would rarely side with employee against management in a dispute, they may agree with you however and may put your case forward but they are not going to fight for you. It's not their job.

Finally as for ratings, yes I agree totally there should be a distribution. I don't buy the argument that everyone in a team is excellent, there has to be differentiation even if you think of it as excellent+, excellent and excellent-

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.

I had a run in with management when I worked at SAP UK, I ended up loving the meeting with my manager (tool) and HR (waste of space)
having read up on employment law on google, I could run rings round them. was good fun, all issues with me got dropped lol.

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.

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 [s]having off[/s] 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 ****sticks 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 [i]never[/i] 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.