Comment by devchix | Hacker News Reader

Comment by devchix | Hacker News Reader

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This aphorism that HR is there to protect the company -- I hear it all the time and it's terribly cynical, while also probably true. Why must it be this way; asked another way, why do we accept that it must be this way, that every time we engage HR it must be with the understanding that they are the adversary. Why go to HR at all, why even have HR, why not fold it all in the legal counsel's office? Why can't HR be what they purportedly say they are, with all the videos and the role-playing and the seminars that everyone hate-attends yearly?

Back to the article - I'm always sad and surprised that there are women doing the work of defending bad actors by attacking the whistle-blowing women. From the article:

> "One woman called Fowler, claiming to be a PI working on a case against Uber; when Fowler got off the phone, she discovered the firm the woman worked for pretty much exclusively helped companies discredit people who’d been sexually harassed or assaulted."

cf. Lisa Bloom in the Harvey Weinstein case, it's damning as Bloom vociferous claims to be on the side that believes and defends the women accusers.

"Why must it be this way[?]"

Follow the money.

I don't mean that as snark; I'm serious. I think people in general don't follow the money enough. Even some people who occasionally advocate for it are very selective about it and frequently just treat it as a slur to deploy sometimes. But it's more important than that. It should always be part of the analysis of a business. If you aren't paying for it, you aren't the beneficiary of it.

In the case of HR, if you are a productive, profit-center worker for the company, you may in fact at least be partially paying for it, and may get treated accordingly, though I wouldn't count on that for much. But if you are not clearly in that category....

Large companies can combat this by aligning its incentives to include worker well-being and retention as part of their equation.

Unhappy workers and revolving-door hiring costs real money. Quantifying these values in terms of dollars can be helpful for creating a work place that encourages personal growth and increases positive feedback for workers in terms of money/bonuses for all levels.

You have to put worker relations in terms of money to get the needle to move, but when you do, you will be shocked how much good you can do for the workers if you can quantify their unhappiness and morale.

Doing the right thing is often just a matter of paying attention to the right metrics. Not every company is short-sited on labor. Companies are in a position to create win-win scenarios for its workers and the bottom line if the incentives are aligned.

It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it. - Upton Sinclair

It's a matter of legal accountability. If companies get away with defending the harassers, then that's what the cynical ones will do. Only if they get punished when they handle sexual harassment cases badly, will they start handling them better. Companies should be liable for extra damages in sexual harassment cases when it turns out they have a history of protecting the harassers. And maybe punish the individuals involved in protecting the harassers.

Exactly: it's all about money, and also individual consequences to HR staff themselves. If the company stood to lose lots of money to bad behavior, then they would police it much better. But they don't, so they don't. Instead, it would be hazardous to their own careers if they disciplined or canned people that the upper management favored (due to cronyism), so they protect those people as long as it doesn't cost the company too much.

People really need to get past this idea that HR is there to protect employees. They are NOT your friends.

> Why can't HR be what they purportedly say they are, with all the videos and the role-playing and the seminars that everyone hate-attends yearly?

IMO, most of HR's work isn't handling major complaints. It's doing the administration to track reviews, carrying out training, making sure benefits work correctly, ensuring expenses get paid out, organizing those training sessions, and so on.

Perhaps the reason HR doesn't get folded into Legal is because most of what HR does is not stuff Legal would do particularly well.

I think many people believe on some level that men are on one team helping each other, and women are on a different team helping each other, as though middle school never ended. But in my experience it really isn't like that. Women are often more willing to go out of their way to help men, and men are often more willing to go out of their way to help women. (In general but not true for all individuals. And especially not for abusers, of course!)

> why must it be this way

Companies used to have Ombudsman; literally a board member who did nothing but listen to employee complaints and help them e heard. This tended to lead to unions, which reduced company profitability, and was replaced with the current HR model, which is now giving way to out-sourced HR models.

>Companies used to have Ombudsman; literally a board member who did nothing but listen to employee complaints and help them e heard. This tended to lead to unions, which reduced company profitability,

It sounds like the ombudsmen didn't work out too well or else they wouldn't have resorted to unionizing.

> why not fold it all in the legal counsel's office?

That would not help because an in-house lawyer represents the company and a lawyer can’t represent both sides in a dispute. In other words, company lawyers can’t represent a complainant in a dispute against their corporate clients.

By contrast, HR are not lawyers so HR can pretend to be on the complainant’s side.

As far as I can tell, 'HR departments' that advocate for the interests of workers rather than the company exist, and are called 'unions.'

In many cases they do roll up to legal. HR folks who think they are there for the junior employees get burned out when they get overruled by the senior ones. Perhaps it shouldn’t be, but that’s why it is this way and whistleblowers are so rare. Perhaps also a competitive advantage for an employer that does protect the individuals.

> Why can't HR be what they purportedly say they are

Because the owners pay them, not the employees

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