HR is not your friend. Corporate Confidential by Cynthia Shapiro is a recommended read.
My advice; get a better offer elsewhere, then see if HR wants to pay you your worth.
My advice; get a better offer elsewhere, then see if HR wants to pay you your worth.
I can't get any traction with admin or HR, and we're both hemorrhaging people and can't bring in qualified new candidates.
It's very frustrating.
We have history if you couldn't tell.
Most people don't get this.
HR exists to protect the company from the employees, not protect the employees from the company.
Resources are exploited by companies.
QED.
The most profitable thing in all of human history has always been and will always be information disparity. Create systems to share information on your salary with other people in your field.
The book you referenced is from 2005, has the game evolved in the past 20 years? My friends who work in HR seem to think so.
Financials in our parent company dipped, and rather than address their issues they went to war with the acquisitions they had picked up over the last five years or so to try and squeeze blood from a stone.
Step 1 was to immediately replace local HR teams with a US based team who proceeded to weaponise the data that had been held by the local team.
So even if you think HR today is "pretty good", it could change from underneath you very quickly.
The change was actually wild, one of the first things they did was try to get us all to sign new employment contracts that calculated how benefits defined in law in my country apply in the hopes that nobody would notice. It was effectively a paycut they were trying to hide.
It would have reduced my salary by close to 20k had I signed it, some people did. They refused to acknowledge this sneaky change until a few employees took up legal representation and then magically we all had new contracts the very next day with the issue suddenly resolved. Prior to this they just spent weeks gaslighting people and threatening termination for anyone that didn't re-sign the new contracts.
it's easy to be good when things are going easy. it's hard to be good when times are hard.
I understand why no one likes human resources. They are there to protect the interests of the business and it is in the best interest of the employee to interact with them as little as possible. On the other hand, they are a useful resource for managers. HR frees them up from many of the administrative tasks for recruitment. They are a resource for management when they need to know something about compliance with labour regulations. Whether it is a compliance issue or the desire to retain an employee, they may just save your behind. That isn't to say that you should approach them directly. You need an advocate, otherwise they will probably view you as a liability. If you don't have that advocate (e.g. a manager or a union representative), then good luck!
Somebody has to be a comp & benefits analyst.
Somebody has to be a recruiter.
Somebody has to manage the PIPs.
Somebody has to have knowledge of the legal obligations of both sides of the employment agreement.