Is HR a culture of secrecy?

 

A new article up at SmartMoney.com is called “10 Things Human Resources Won’t Say.” It’s interesting because it seems that more and more when people are talking about HR, they cast it in a sinister light. According to these articles, the human resources department is like some kind of secret society that is not about to let any mere employee know what’s going on. There’s a paranoid tinge to these stories—two of the items in this particular article are “You’re Not Paranoid, We Are Watching You” and “We Know More About You Than You Think”:

Many companies employ software that sifts through e-mail looking for curse words or sexually explicit language. IT monitors Web usage and can see every site an employee visits. In fact, anything you do via the company's server—most activity on an office computer, including personal e-mail -- is subject to review by your boss. Firings over these issues are on the rise, says Flynn. In 2009, 26 percent of companies reported terminating employees for violations of e-mail policy, up from 14 percent in 2001. "Employees should act as if the boss was looking over their shoulder," says California employment mediator Michelle Reinglass.

That idea that HR is somehow involved in a sordid conspiracy with the powers that be comes up a few times, as under the heading “We’re Not Always Your Advocate,” which cites the example of Ronica Tabor, who alleges she was discriminated against by manufacturer Hilti North America because of her gender, and that HR did nothing to correct it.

Employees should realize that HR answers to the company, says Lewis Maltby, director of the National Workrights Institute, an employee-rights organization. "HR is a spear carrier for the boss," he says.

Wait, doesn’t everyone in a company work for the boss? And yet in many discussions of human resources, there seems to be an undercurrent of anger, as if by being answerable to their employer’s policies, HR staff have in some way betrayed other employees.

Another recent “Human Resources secrets” article has dire predictions for anyone who fumbles their experience with a company’s HR staff:

Job hunters who have committed either of these errors can expect human resources to keep their resumes or applications—for all the wrong reasons. Job seekers who later apply for another job within that organization will often find that this previous misstep will color the outcome of the new job application. If this is the case, don't expect an organization's hiring manager to make the same mistake twice.

Yikes! Human resources employees sure do sound scary! This has been going on for quite some time, as the book from a few years ago, “Corporate Confidential: 50 Secrets Your Company Doesn’t Want You To Know,” proves. In those pages, HR is a tangle of blacklists, double-crosses and endless spin.

Holy cow. There are plenty of horror stories out there, yes, but can we have a reality check for a minute? This article highlighting seven reasons HR is misunderstood is a must-read. All of the reasons are worth highlighting, but I think the conclusion is important both as a bottom line—HR was never some kind of employee wish factory—and its suggestion for how to improve HR relations:

An unresponsive, unhelpful HR office that avoids helping employees with their problems is not always the case. (Though I know from my readers that such organizations do exist, let's hope they're rare.) There are legitimate reasons why HR cannot fulfill every employee's wishes. If the HR staff listens, communicates actively, and informs the employee why a decision is made or an action not taken, employees are much less likely to write asking how to solve their HR horror stories.