> HR is an agent between you and the company. It’s there to run the negotiations between what the company wants and what you want. If you don’t understand that, you won’t be able to use HR to your benefit.
-I like to think of HR as an abstraction layer between management and employees, whose basic function is to shield management from having to interact with the employees.
Also, HR receives its pay from the company, not their coworkers - so HR is very much an agent of the company, not you. (Which is fair - after all, their loyalty is with whoever pays them, which is not unreasonable)
That being said, there is good HR and bad HR out there - just don't think that HR is there for you; they're not.
"-I like to think of HR as an abstraction layer between management and employees, whose basic function is to shield management from having to interact with the employees."
This sounds cynical, but it's not nefarious at all:
1) As a manager (at various points in my career), I have better things to focus my time on than sick policies, vacations, sick leave, or similar. I'd rather focus on mentorship, growth, strategy, and technology. Outsourcing the menial stuff to someone else means I can manage people better. Plus, they're more likely to do it right. If I have a 16 year old intern who is a resident of Ohio working remotely whose parents are on an H1B visa who wants to do an unpaid work-sponsored training program beyond their 40 hour work week...
2) As a manager, I have no background in how to resolve legal issues. If an employee engaged in improper behavior (harassment, theft, etc.), the last thing you want are amateurs handling this. It's a relief to offload that onto professionals, both for the manager (who doesn't want the stress or liability) and the company (who doesn't want the liability).
... and so on.
HR is the company's agent. It's not your friend. It's job isn't fairness, anonymity, or justice, but to protect the company. It's still a necessary function and having it there is not evil, so long as employees don't go in with the expectation HR is some impartial judge. It's not. A lot of kids come in and treat it that way, and get into a lot of trouble.
-I like to think of HR as an abstraction layer between management and employees, whose basic function is to shield management from having to interact with the employees.
Also, HR receives its pay from the company, not their coworkers - so HR is very much an agent of the company, not you. (Which is fair - after all, their loyalty is with whoever pays them, which is not unreasonable)
That being said, there is good HR and bad HR out there - just don't think that HR is there for you; they're not.