It’s disheartening just how much of a bad rap human resource personnel get.
From my own experience in working as an HR personnel in various companies, the outright hatred that I experienced from some of the employees felt as if it was naturally bestowed upon me as a job perk. Even when you are just trying to carry out your tasks or are trying to be genuinely warm to other employees (which, I should explain, I was one as well), nothing was received nicely.
Unfortunately, somehow, there is a belief in most Bangladeshi companies where it is enshrined that HR has some kind of ulterior motive to make the lives of other employees hell on a day-to-day basis.
I find this attitude sad, but also kind of hilarious at the same time.
Contrary to popular belief, my fellow workhorses, being in the HR department doesn’t automatically transform you into some kind of snake. You don’t shed your human skin and become exposed as the company robot you are, whose only task is to sit by the desk, sort out the attendance variances, verify the overtime sheet, prepare the salary sheets, fire people, and issue warning letters for not wearing your belt right.
These procedures are but a tiny portion of the important work that HR does.
Ultimately, HR is about people. It is about managing people’s expectations out of the organization, in a way to adjust them to its realities. It’s true that sometimes we have to sugarcoat a few things in order for employees to digest their work a bit easier -- such as holding frivolous activities and events -- but is that really such a bad thing?
Pacing is an important element in life, just as it is in movies and books, and without a few doses of escapism and candy-flavoured delusion, life (vis-a-vis work) would be miserable, plain and simple.
One of the more common generalized complaints against HR is how it often “disrupts” day-to-day work. To that I ask: How does one go about doing a job without having some kind of overlap in someone else’s tasks? At the end of the day, HR’s job is to ensure compliance of policies and practices in a company, which might result in a few minor and major disruptions in day-to-day employee work.
Perhaps a wide survey on employee satisfaction with HR could prove beneficial.
Let’s not beat around the bush, I’m sure most people would find a way to complain about doing a survey as well, as it would take precious time away from them staring blankly on their computer monitors, scrolling past their social network newsfeeds as if they were back home being unproductive and not at work being unproductive.
Let me bust a few HR myths: We work hard, day in and day out, just like every other department in the company. Just like others, we have our downtime and busier times. We don’t go around poking our noses in other people’s business -- that’s not what the job is about.
It is our job to ensure everyone is happy in the organization. Talking to everyone in order to build a good relationship is what we have in mind when we are talking to you, as our main goal is employee satisfaction by strengthening employee morale.
Do you think it is fun hearing everyone complaining constantly about the most trivial things in the world at the workplace? Of course not. But we do it without any complains. Have you ever wondered who is there for us like we there are for you? We have to be our self-coaches, and that is not as easy as it sounds. Motivating yourself, knowing about the sticky situations, and still figuring out how to get employees to enjoy their time at the office is a pretty Herculean task.
For HR folk to work efficiently themselves, while also ensuring that other departments are doing the same on a macro level, is like being dealt a bad hand in poker -- or some other card game, for that matter.
And we do all of this to keep both the bosses and the employees happy -- even though that’s an impossible thing to do. Dealing with management, mediating any changes or messages with other employees, there is always the chance that some employees won’t take it well.
And then you have management who won’t budge, and the negative feedback from employees keep coming and coming. All of this mess can spur from something as minuscule as a slight change in the transportation policy, to something bigger like shutting down the canteen. People are always resistive to change, and while that itself is fine, dealing with the mediation process is absolute hell, if I’m being frank.
But it is also the responsibility of HR -- and team leaders and management -- to communicate the reasons behind any change to employees. Being open to feedback is important as it allows people to voice their concerns. It allows a forum for discussion. This is the golden rule of success for any relationship to work out, and it shouldn’t stop at just the workplace.
Emails and warning letters don’t make a company “digital” if they eradicate any chance of actual human interaction. HR’s purpose is to find out such gaps in communication, in all layers of the organization, and pave the way for efficient cross communication, where the message is communicated loud and clear.
This will enable team leaders to talk to their members individually, while also creating the opportunity for management to speak to the individual employee at least once a year.
Having experienced life as an HR personnel, I know just how important an organ it is in keeping any organization healthy and alive. And the next time you think about criticizing us for not doing anything other than get in the way of your own work, please fill out a form about exactly what your complaints are … in triplicate.
Mahenaz Chowdhury is Co-founder, Drink Entrepreneurs and CEO, Buckets Engineer.