Straight Truth: HR is not there to help you

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Jun 08, 2023

Human Resources (HR) has many jobs other than protecting you as an employee.

They may actually help you, but only if it does not conflict with other goals.

Important note: there are many good HR departments and individuals in HR. This Straight Truth is about the reality of your inability to blindly trust this function overall, because of conflicting priorities. In no way am I criticizing all professionals in this space, but unfortunately I am warning all individual readers not to count on help from your Human Resources department.

The reader “question” I am responding to is an outrageous story of a woman being told that she could not be promoted until her male colleague caught up with her so that they could be promoted together. She went to HR and they provided no relief.

The Straight Truth is that HR has a main duty of managing costs and legal risks for the company.

The second Straight Truth is that when trying to sort out a workplace conflict, they face a blizzard of both intentional liars and people with sincerely held differing perceptions of events. It can be difficult to sort out the truth, and when everyone lies to you it can make you suspicious of all complaints.

As a personal story, I once got a strange request to go talk to someone from HR. When I got there, an investigator started asking me questions about a dinner I had with a colleague. I was not told I was being investigated for something. Only as the meeting went on did I realize I was accused of something. When I asked about it, I was told it was a purposeful ambush. Specifically, “we do not tell people what the meeting is about so that you do not have time to prepare your story,” that is, to get my lies straight.

Luckily for me, I happened to have written proof that the accusation was inaccurate.

But what if I had not had clear proof?

In that case, I certainly did not feel like HR was there to help me.

This brings me to some advice:

There are very good people in HR. By all means, as a last resort go to them for help. Just don’t count on it. Be prepared for them to side against you.
If you have a risk or problem, document it thoroughly and then go to HR first. It is human nature that the first story tends to sound like truth making the second story seem like a denial.
If at all possible, solve or avoid your problems without needing to engage HR. Get good at managing up, being considered a top performer, or having witnesses and allies to speak for you. The best interaction with HR is none. The second best interaction with HR is being first with documents, witnesses, and allies behind you.
Get legal advice. Do not go into career-defining situations blind.

I do not want to be a cynic, only a realist that HR is not always focused on helping. Sometimes their job is to get you out the door without you suing.

I welcome HR pros to comment on how to navigate working well with you.

Audience Insights

As will be the case with all posts in this series, I first post my answer, above, on LinkedIn, and then my audience comments. I have consolidated additional ideas worth considering, including:

In regards to the reader’s “question”, I recommend at least having your resume up to date and to consider your plan B in the event going to HR does not work out for you.
Note that, due to fear of lawsuits, HR will never say anything negative about you if you are dismissed or leave. Even when I have seen people let go for doing really bad things, the official company line was always silence. That is because there is a difference between knowing someone did something bad and having "proven" it in a court in response to a slander charge.
Companies are not in the justice business.
Companies are in the “move on and get back to making money business.” As a result, everyone involved signs documents that say no one is admitting to anything and no one will defame anyone. Then both sides go in opposite directions. From the company’s viewpoint, the problem is solved.
A route to consider is escalating directly to the CEO and HR simultaneously. This assumes the CEO is driven to fix the root cause and not sweep issues under the carpet.
For companies who want to change this experience, consider implementing an “HR Andon Cord” — an internal mechanism for employees to notify senior leadership of HR related concerns.
What is an Andon Cord? Pioneered by Toyota as part of the Toyota Production System; Andon Cords give every employee the ability to stop all or part of the production process when they noticed a quality or process issue on the line.
Numerous readers shared that this problem increases in company cultures that mandate frequent HR engagement (e.g. weekly 1:1 with HRBPs) because too much reliance is placed on HR and discussions turn into hearsay over data.
Instead of viewing HR as a support function, think of HR as a core department such as Product, Engineering, Sales. This makes it clear that HR has their own goals, accountability, and that their main duty is not to protect you as an individual employee.