Hate HR – 5 Reasons Why Employees Don’t Like HR?
Many employees in Malaysia hate HR. Hate maybe a strong word but I think that is what it is. The general employee population don’t have a good opinion about their HR department. Why is so when HR is actually the most important and the trickiest department to manage in an organization?
After experiencing different HR departments for the last 24 years, I think there are several reasons that lead to this kind of perception. Some of it are valid while other are from wrong expectations.
(A) 5 common accusations on HR.
(1) HR does not fight for the well-being of their employees.
The most common reason why employees hate HR is becauseHR is seen as a spy for the Company. All this engagement with employees is just an act. HR does not really care about employees. They don’t want to increase employee benefits. All they want is to please the bosses and carry out their instructions.
(2) HR creates toxic workplace.
There are employees who believe that HR takes sides and they themselves create gossips that divides the workplace. Due to the nature of HR as a middleman between the Company and employees, they often change sides on a whim creating in-fighting and un-stability in the organization.
(3) HR don’t know what they are doing.
Most employees feel that HR can’t solve their problems because they themselves do not know how to provide the solution. HR people are competent and all they do is paperwork.
(4) HR is not approachable.
Employees are reluctant to meet with HR because it is difficult to get time to meet them. Even if employees do meet with HR, their problems are not listened. There is no positive outcome from meeting HR. Nothing changes.
(5) HR has too much power.
Many employees think that just because HR is involved in the process of hiring and firing, they have a lot of power in determining the fate of an employee. People get very angry when they feel that HR is not using that power for the benefit of employees. This notion that HR has too much power causes people to hate HR due to anti-authority sentiment.
(B) Why do HR sometimes fail to deliver its promise to employees.
(1) Competency of HR personnel.
There are many people who join HR who are not competent in human resources. In the olden days there was a requirement to join HR. You have to either be someone who studied human resources or someone who studied general management.
Nowadays HR has become a field where anyone can actually join. Anyone and everyone feel that they can do HR job. So, if they fail in other fields, they move to HR as HR executives or HR managers. Hence, these people are not very competent in running the department or providing solutions to their employees.
Furthermore, HR department is probably the least trained department in any organization. HR provide trainings for all departments except themselves. Nobody looks after the training and development of human resource personnels. Therefore, the knowledge, the skill in HR development is lacking within the department itself.
(2) Limitations in HR Budget for employee welfare and other benefits.
HR does not always get a big budget relative to the size of the employees in an organization. Employees believe that HR must have a big budget because they run payroll. Contrary to the belief the budget for HR is usually controlled. Plus, HR don’t get the money to pay salary from Finance.
While things like salary cannot be avoided by the organization because it’s based on the number of headcounts that they have, other type of expenses such as budget for employee engagement, training and development and employee monetary benefits are limited.
Therefore, HR don’t really have a big budget to work on every year. This creates limitations on what they can actually do. Furthermore, the unwillingness of HR to fight for a bigger budge as well as the inability to influence the top management to give them a bigger budget is also an important factor that contributes to this issue.
(3) Wasteful work
HR normally do themselves a disservice by engaging in too many, too many paperwork related tasks. This is because HR likes to run the department with many different types of processes and procedures. They think it makes their work more efficient. However. It works the opposite way. All these processes and procedures create tons of paperwork that needs to be completed.
For example, just take a recruitment process alone. To complete a recruitment process, the number of documents that needs to be filled this staggering. You need to fill out a job requisition form and then fill an interview job application form and then an interview assessment form, then probably an interview checklist.
Once the candidate is offered you need to provide the candidate a pre offer letter, medical checkup, background check-up forms followed by employee information forms, offer letters and so many more paperwork that needs to be completed just to hire one candidate. Imagine how much paperwork it takes for HR to do other types of work such as compensation, benefits, employee relations, employee engagement, and sometimes even taking care of company facilities like the canteen, bus services, and so on.
Because of this, HR personnel can’t focus on value-added work because they spend all their time at work completing their paperwork and this cycle with never be completed. This is why a lot of employees feel that HR always looks busy, but they don’t add much value to the employees.
(4) Limitation of Decision-Making Authority
Another reason why employees appear to hate HR is that HR appears to act slowly in certain decision-making situations that involve the welfare of employees. Employees feel that this department does not care for the well-being of employees. One of the main reasons why HR is slow in making decisions is because of the limitations of authority that is given to HR.
HR department, like every other department, has to report to a leader. So it really depends on how pro employee or pro HR the leader is.
If their leader is somebody who prioritizes the welfare of employees, then he would give more authority to HR to act. If the leader is somebody who only cares about business, about the bottom line, and does not really pay much attention to the well-being of the employees, then the power of HR to make decisions in favor of the employee will be limited.
Conclusion
While the reasons why most employees hate HR or have a negative perception about this department is understandable, not every accusation is absolutely true. Employees don’t understand the challenges faced by the HR department in trying to balance between being an employee advocate and a business partner to the organization. HR on the other hand must realize that their role goes beyond just paperwork and being a ‘yes man’ to the organization’s leadership.