Greg Ferro has some wrong opinions, but he’s correct about the misconceptions many people have about the human resources (HR) department at their company. Although the people in the HR department aren’t necessarily bad (in fact, HR often attracts very kind and caring folks), their organizational mission is service to the company and the law, not service to the employees. They’re usually happy to help employees if it helps (or doesn’t hurt) the company, but that’s about all they can do.

Perhaps Greg is emotionalizing a bit when he says “Human Resources exists to protect the company from its employees not to protect you from the company”, but he’s mostly correct. Management consultant, Dave Ulrich, has laid out the functions of HR “champions” as follows:

• Aligning HR and business strategy
• Re-engineering organization processes
• Listening and responding to employees
• Managing transformation and change

These sound like positive goals, but even this message doesn’t prioritize the needs of employees.

Read more at: Human Resources Is Not Your Friend