There seems to be a common pattern of HR being disliked in firms and workplaces across different industries no matter where you’re focused on.
To be honest during my apprenticeship/internship HR weren’t too bad and would have a laugh with you, hell one of them loved the dark humor from one of our technicians.
Is there something I’m missing that HR are soul less and will protect the interests of a firm before yourself? I’m not sure as I think not all HR people are terrible, just comes with the territory so to speak
What are your thoughts on the matter?
What do YOU think of them as a department from your current and past experiences?
It depends. I worked at one company without a dedicated HR department (a payroll company) and it ran fine without it. Managers of each department worked with upper management and finance to decide staffing, we went to management and if needed (I never did) upper management or the lady who did our payroll (they handled both our payroll and client payrolls) or the benefits department (same deal) for most of the sort of things HR does at my company.
I think it’s bloated at my current company, there are some people with not a whole job, but it’s not like they do nothing or don’t provide value, they do. But like, one guy’s job is apparently employee development and all he does is choose some general “learning software” that we then have access to. Gives some useless and painfully boring presentations on the aforementioned software that provide nothing of value. Then I have no idea what he does with the rest of the year. Why is that one whole job, when the rest of us basically juggle multiple jobs?