Dec
29
Human Resources Protects The Employer
December 29, 2009 | Comments Off
“We are From Human Resources, And We Are Here to Help”
For a company to work well, everyone should be willing to help each other. That is for granted. And most of the time Human Resources can help you: they can help you change your health plan from a PPO to an HMO to save some money (and lose some life), they can also help you increase your 401k Contributions.
One thing where they may help you, but not as their highest priority, is on management style, behavioral, discrimination and/or harassment issues. This is the moment where the Human Resources person first and foremost responsibility is to protect the employer (company). The company feeds their family, not you. The most obvious way they want to protect the employer is avoiding any costly lawsuits. The second, also obvious way, they want to help the company is avoid losing human resources – that is, the valuable employees.
If you need to bring one of these issues to Human Resources attention, it is most important to have a clear idea of what is the outcome you want to see. It is just like any negotiation process: a clear idea of desired outcome is important. Just complaining may result in a quick resolution that may or may not be something you wanted.
Avoiding Lawsuits:
What you bring up to the table may very well be lawsuit fodder. The company doesn’t want to be the defendant on any lawsuit — even if they are not at fault, it costs them money to defend themselves. They will want to resolve the situation as early and as efficiently as possible.
Problems are normally best resolved early, before things escalate too far. Especially when things can be resolved by just a quick talk to the offending party. Most of the times these small issues can be resolved by talking to the offending party directly rather than escalating to Human Resources. But sometimes some harm may have been done already by the offending party. You may complaint about salary discrepancies, or bad behavior from other people. In those cases the company already knows you are a risky person: you may want to sue them, even if they help. Even helping may be accepting wrong-doing. They can’t fire you (there are whistle blowing laws, harassment laws, and discrimination laws that would prevent them from firing you). But think about how many tools they do have at their disposal, and try to be specific in your conversations about how you want the issue to be addressed:
• Reprimanding the offending party (Is this what you want? Do you think it will solve the issue? If so, then it is all you need).
• Offering you a package to leave the company (which could be less costly than a lawsuit). I have seen this done very often.
• Changing you to a different department. (Could be better, or worse – could be a dead end one).
• Adjusting your salary in the case of discrimination. (But, have you made sure that you will not fall behind again, after a couple more years? Have they really changed behavior? Did they just adjusted everyone’s else’s salary down over time just to make you believe it is a fair environment?)
• Firing the offending party.
• Do a quick resolution now… and wait a few months while they find some reason why you might be an inefficient or unnecessary employee, and fire you. After all, they may see you as a problem maker and not as an asset anymore. I have seen this happen too often as well.
Avoiding Human Resources Loss:
Are you sure you are the most valuable resource for a company? If you are, a quick talk to your manager (or your manager’s manager) may solve the situation. (He/she may quickly fire or reprimand the offending party just to avoid losing you). But what if the offending party is the more valuable than you? At least in the way other people perceive it?
Company Culture
Look at your CEO and his/her immediate management team. How do they behave? Are they hostile? Do they harass? Do they discriminate? If they do, you are out of luck (unless you are like them and enjoy it). Remember that Human Resources are their employees. They do have an interest in modifying top-level management behavior’s to avoid them a lawsuit. But they will not fire top-level management. If the culture management has imposed on the company is not to your liking you probably have to options: switch to a better employer, or try to become the victim of the most horrendous crime you can so that you can win big money against them on a huge lawsuit. I advise the former, not the latter. Just staying in the company and trying to change their culture by complaining to Human Resources will do little to fix the issue.
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