I’ve been a Human Resources person since Cyndi Lauper ruled the airwaves, when HR was just another department. Back then, HR people complained about being assigned to menial things like toting the watermelons to the company picnic. HR folks were the Party People. HR types would get together and groan about all the party planning we had to do. That was about the worst thing we had to worry about in those days.
We didn’t realize that we’d be looking back, twenty-five years later, and calling the early 1980s the Good Old Days for HR.
Now HR people are besieged. They are embattled. Employees hate them, management hates them, and jobseekers hate them most of all. It’s no fun being an HR person with many, many employers today. HR people are the bad guys. They make the rules and enforce them, they’re forced to take away perks and benefits and they lay people off on a regular basis. HR people still talk about Engaging Employees with the Mission, creating cultural Pixie Dust, and making their organizations Employers of Choice, but they don’t say it with as much force as they used to. If they did, their co-workers would laugh out loud or suck their teeth in disgust.
So what went wrong with HR?
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- Clearview Collection, HR, Liz Ryan
