HR: Myth vs Reality

Over the course of the last 1.5 years, I have written about popular myths about HR from time to time. When you get past the exaggerated kind of HR posts or the HR jokes and mockery, the world of HR is much more complicated than that.

We don't sip coffee in cafeteria planning the next rangoli competition, neither do we love to harass candidates by saying 'we will get back to you'. I am summing up all the HR myths posts here in this article to spread more awareness about the function as a whole and also to educate the aspirants on what should they expect.

HR - Myth vs Reality 1: HR is a useless function

I am pretty sure if I do a poll right now on whether you think HR is a useless function, more than 50% of people will reply affirmatively. This has more to do with the wrong expectations set in employees. For time eternity, people have been told that HR is there to make people happy.

But the reality is, HR works for the company as every other employee does. Most organizations measure engagement or productivity, they are not the same as happiness. Also, most of the HR work is highly transactional in nature. It includes creating and maintaining various records, ensuring compliances with the legal laws, ensuring timely payroll, handling company policies matter, etc.

Thus, most people have interaction with only the 'rangoli' making part of HR, which I personally feel is the most harmful thing HR fraternity brought on themselves. In the quest for engagement, we reduced ourselves to a glorified event management function and that is the only identity we have now and we are mocked everywhere.

For rest function, that involves human interaction, people are bound to get hurt be it recruitment where timely results can never be given due to valid/invalid constraints, PMS which is always considered unfair as everyone thinks they deserve the promotion, L&D which has been reduced to random online modules now.

With the speed at which workplaces are becoming complex and people are switching jobs, HRs only usefulness will remain restricted to the legal compliances they do unless we reinvent ourselves to deliver the engagement, L&D, and OD function more effectively.

Should we fight to empower ourselves to have a say in leadership and balance the custodian of culture designation equally is a complicated question to ask. As long as HR is saving employers from legal repercussions, it will remain useful to organizations.

HR - Myth vs Reality Part 2: HR is an easy job

Most employees consider HR as someone who shares offer letter, negotiate salary insensitively, do some random games and talks during onboarding, and then makes rangoli and conduct secret Santa throughout the year. The remaining time the visualization goes as HR either sleeping in the office ignoring mails or sipping coffee in the pantry leaving half-hour early daily.

This imagination is so soothing that many employees became HR aspirants assuming HR is the only easy, stress-free job in the corporate world and they can slack off easily and even get paid decently for it.

The problem with this assumption is most employees forget that like them HR also reports to the line function and gets paid only to get certain things done, else the beauty of cost-cutting would have made the function obsolete long back. To a very extent, it already has, most companies these days have a very agile HR model i.e. 1 HR person responsible for hundreds of employees for everything be it recruitment, grievance redressal, policy clarifications and execution, talent management, learning, etc.

Many of HR work is also hidden and highly bureaucratic in nature, there is a lot of compliance work to be done, a lot of paperwork to maintain records, lot of transactional work for payroll. Sector-wise also the stress level fluctuates, if you are in a manufacturing setup with a violent labour union or dissatisfied local crowd, chances are high you have imagined getting beaten up or even being lynched by a mob, many HRs have gone through it.

While in sophisticated jobs like IT, banking, consulting you don't need to fear getting beaten but definitely, you will be receiving 4-5 calls from troubled employees being shouted at daily, candidates following up with you, line functions expecting something and the only problem is in most cases you are answerable to people but you don't have any power to change anything.

Many of my friends were telling me how they have to do contact tracing and health management for all their staff during the covid working the whole day and even late nights. In HR, there is always some event running and you have to handle it. Even the glorified picnics and parties will involve great bureaucracy at the end from negotiation, to management, to fire fighting to clear bills. HR is always at a war with finance for that.

There are some chill HR jobs, but then there are some chill marketing, chill product management, chill IT jobs also, given the prominence of HR doesn't work memes, this stereotype looks impossible to break.

The only thing I can tell aspirants is don't take HR just because you see a lot of HR memes and jokes.

HR - Myth vs Reality Part 3: HR just makes 'rangoli'

With due thanks to memes and jokes, Rangoli has become a synonym for HR, most people think this is the only work HRs do. I have often written how the worst thing HR fraternity ever did to itself was to get reduced into a glorified event management function. From a function with its roots in psychology, legal framework, and human behavior we just became hosts for picnics and secret Santas.

When I told one senior line manager that we need some concrete interventions as the workforce is highly unsatisfied, he told me that it is inherent in their nature to complain, just plan a party and pour some liquor, that is the only way to keep the workforce engaged.

Many HR aspirants that approach me are very blunt in their motivation, they say HR is a chill job, I am a people person, I can make people happy. When they say it, they imagine themselves hosting a cool party or event. That is the only part visible to the outside world but in reality that will be one of the many tasks you will be doing if you become an HR.

If you are a generalist, you have to do all the tasks associated with HR at the same time. You have to ensure there is no gap in manning and the recruitment runs smoothly, you have to ensure training manhours are hitting targets and feedback is good, you have to ensure payroll runs on time without any error, you also need to take care of other government compliances, if you are handling admin function, the sensitive areas of transport and canteen are also under you. You will be supplying various reports and data to n number of stakeholders.

If you are in a manufacturing unit, there is a fair possibility most of your time will be spent on pacifying angry unions or local crowds, meeting politicians and government bureaucrats, fire fighting any undue event that happened inside the plant. You might be handling the CSR activities also which have a great transactional world.

If you are a CoE or specialist HR, then you might not be juggling too many things but most of your time will be spent on following up with other HRs who are juggling many things and not giving time to your work. You will be collating many data and creating multiple excels and PPTs and making dashboards to keep leadership happy.

Then comes the 'grievance handling' part, where you are answerable but not empowered. You may receive angry calls late at night or early in the morning because you weren't able to get some necessary approvals as an exception to the policies which are already there but you are putting effort into an employee presenting it as an exceptional case.

I don't intend to whitewash HRs, there are many bad HRs, insensitive and incompetent, I have worked with them, still most HRs I know work much more than creating rangolis and that is what an aspirant should know before opting for this profession.

No organization is going to pay you to organize events and then sip coffee in the cafeteria.

HR -Myth vs Reality Part 4: HRs are rude and insensitive

I am pretty sure if I had put this as a poll, more than 90% would have voted as yet. Throughout our corporate journey, we interact with multiple HRs, beginning with the recruiter, then those who do onboarding formalities, the HRBP, the one who does exit formalities.

Since most people come with the inherent assumption that HRs are there to make people happy, they also assume that they will get the same treatment as air hostesses on a flight or by hotel staff in a 5-star hotel. Unfortunately, HRs are never trained nor told to be extra courteous to anyone, thus most HRs appear to be quite rude.

HRs will always work for the employer and try to attain their KPIs, if tomorrow some organization decides that HRs should be rated on their behavior also and it becomes part of their KPI, they may start behaving well but till then the focus will remain to do the task, behavior becomes a personal quality, good people will behave good and bad will behave badly.

The insensitive part is also there partly due to the fact that most HRs are answerable but not empowered to take decisions. Most organizations have well-established policies in place and an employee approach HRs mostly for exception cases. The best an HR can do in that scenario is create a proposal for exception approval and hope it will be cleared which doesn't happen much. The employee may feel that it is the HR not working for them while the HRs are running poles to pillars with different senior leaders to get that approval.

Over time, most HRs get tired of the inherent bureaucracy of the system. They know no matter how much they fight, they won't be getting exception approvals, also they know despite putting in their best efforts they would only get curses and abuses from the employee. As an HR, you get used to being shouted at and insulted by candidates and employees, and with time you tend to become less empathetic as you know how thankless the job is.

Having said that, there are many HRs that are horrible human beings, seasonal liars, and very insensitive by nature. But it has nothing to do with HR as a field, you have horrible bankers, software developers, consultants, and similarly horrible HRs. I have been on the receiving end of horrible HRs many time despite being an HR, most HRs do know the reality of their own teammates.

For HR aspirants and young HRs, all I can say is, don't change your nature due to the thanklessness of your job or the lack of appreciation from others. Don't stop being a good human being just because the system doesn't support it. Try every case as a critical one and try to do your best to help an employee no matter how convincing it takes to the senior ones. At the same time, if the situation demand, fight for yourself, don't let anyone damage your self-esteem.

At the end of the day, the only thing you will have is appreciating yourself in the mirror that no matter what, you were true to your job.

HR -Myth vs. Reality Part 5: HR’s main job is to make employees happy

I guess this is perhaps the biggest myth that is out there about HR. Most students use this term in their HR interview that I am a people person and I want to make employees happy. Even I had used a similar version during my XLRI HRM interview.

This myth is also one of the main reasons HR faces heat from employees, as most employees always feel HR is working against them, or not helping them. The truth is HR is and will remain a function of the employer.

In a compliance heavy company like India, most of the time HR ensures that all the basic compliances are met. There are multiple records that are shared with the government that HR needs to maintain. Apart from that, there is a lot of data and records that are used internally which the HR manages.

Even, that HR who are in an employee-facing role. Their KPI is employee engagement. Most organizations have multiple dimensions to measure the engagement and very few use happiness as a construct to find out engagement. This has led to proxy KPIs like organizing picnics or fun events as measuring engagement which has further diluted HR function.

As an HR, you will always get random requests because of this expectation. People will ask you to book transport for you, bring dominos shop into the cafeteria, buy a ping pong table, change dress code and many other suggestions.

You are always surrounded by people everywhere you go who bring suggestions that make them think you should do to make them happy. Parallelly, they also tell you that HR is a useless function, you are lazy and corrupt and don’t do anything that is expected from you.

I wish, during onboarding, most organizations clarify to new employees what they can expect from an HR. HRs have very limited power to bring a big change. They can log in your grievance related to the organization and find a remedy as per the guidelines or rules. But, it is tough to make people everyone happy.

Democracy fails a lot here. I remember my time as an HR, where no matter what we do, people were always unhappy on the canteen menu or bus timings. You add aloo paratha which makes South Indians unhappy if you remove it North Indians were unhappy, if you ask management to add bread jam as a 3rd option, the finance department will say we don’t have the budget.

Even God can’t make everyone happy, HRs are far too less powerful. Nonetheless, it doesn’t give HRs an excuse to be rude or insensitive to employees seeking help. It is a 2-way lane, the best an HR can do is to be really honest about what he/she can do and what can’t be done.

HR -Myth vs. Reality Part 6: HR can but doesn’t want to help people

Terms like insensitive, lack of empathy, and insincerity have become synonyms these days for HR. Most people feel that HR as a function is a huge letdown that was created to help people yet it never does. Most HRs just listen to the complaints and then sit on it not doing anything.

I won’t completely deny this as despite being an HR myself, I have also been on the receiving end of ill behavior by other HRs. No doubt, there are some really thick-skinned HRs who just don’t want to help anyone.

But that is more to do with the fact that there are bad people in every function. There are bad people in finance, bad people in marketing and in HR also, few people are by their nature not very helping.

Most HRs I know are normal and sensitive people, who want to help people. Many people in fact joined HR as a function because they felt they can help employees. Many HR aspirants also don’t know how system-dependent, employer centric and bureaucratic function HR is.

Your employer pays you, hence they expect you to work for them. Most HRs thus become answerable to employees. All organizations have fixed guidelines on what can be done and what can’t be and a little grey area called exception approval.

In most cases, HRs are the messenger of bad news, or answerable for something they can’t change. Be it a policy change, be it vague PMS criteria, be it not allowing transfer or not able to shorten the notice period. Most of these policies are set at the leadership level.

In the thin area called exception approval, you can play around. This generally means there has to be approval from multiple stakeholders. Ex. An employee is supposed to get transferred to another location, the policy says he has to stay here for 90 days, though he wants to go in 30 days. Now there has to be approval taken from the HR head, his boss, and his department head.

HR can very well create a case and drop beautiful mail. But he has to convince 3 stakeholders here all having different priorities. It requires a lot of effort, negotiation skills and trade-off. It is also a lengthy process.

While HR is trying to convince 3 stakeholders, the employee gets impatient, he feels HR is useless and not doing anything. He will call HR, shout at him, ridicule him for not helping him, and even if HR is able to get the transfer done in say 60 days, make fun of him always that HR didn’t help him. Of course, in most cases, HR won’t be able to reduce the transfer duration.

With time, I have seen many HR become indifferent, their zeal to help employees reduces, as neither the system helps them in the process nor the employee appreciates them. If you are able to get something done despite the trouble that was your duty as an HR. If not, you are not helpful.

Lack of appreciation and acknowledgment over the years make all HRs feel like crap over the years. That’s why most HRs are told that it is a thankless job, prepare a thick skin, and don’t lose your morale early.

For all the budding HRs and aspirants, don’t lose your hope early, and don’t let the system make you faithless. If you really joined the function to help people, then you have to motivate yourself to stay on the right path.

HR -Myth vs. Reality Part 7: HR offering low/high salaries than candidate’s expectation

Last year I saw 2 trending posts, both in all probability were either exception, plain lies, or highly exaggerated versions of some event.

1)????Candidate asking for 29k per month salary, extremely kind and benevolent HR by her own conscience hiked the salary to 37k as it was the right thing to do.

2)????HR negotiates the salary very hard, give low CTC to a candidate and the candidate leaves the job within a few months

Both the post advises HR to be fair, benevolent, and kind. The only problem is, if as an HR you want to survive in your job, the only thing your employer expects you to be is a professional.

We can very well create a world where organizations can just remove the CTC negotiation process and fix it. But, I doubt it will be acceptable to most employees as they will make same salaries of people coming from different skills, backgrounds and experiences.

Most people do not understand the underlying concept of a pay band. An HR can’t offer a salary above or below a particular pay band. These pay bands are generally decided by taking inputs from various surveys and research done by 3rd party agencies.

So for a particular role, the bands are decided incorporating the market, skill, experience, role expectation etc. HR has to play within this band. The negotiation process then becomes an art for both the HR and the candidate.

The candidate can try to extend his CTC as much he/she can by quoting the skills, expectations, past circumstances. There can be a play around in fixed vs variable or even one time vs recurring components.

The HR will try to save the budget as much as they can. No candidate is ever dropped because they asked for too much CTC, at max the HR can communicate their upper limit. The focus is to have a low TAT for joining within the budget. TAT is much more important than money for an HR anyway.

Having said that, some HRs are indeed shrewd, if the candidate is ignorant, they can close the deal by not offering the best offer for the candidate. Thus every candidate should research thoroughly before coming to the negotiation table for the CTC.

It is just part of the professional politics, no benevolent HR is going to offer you a higher CTC, no crooked HR can offer you a CTC beyond the pay band the organization’s leadership has approved.

Also, most of the influencer’s stories of making a fool of HR and taking 200% hike are equally incorrect and foolish. Barring the few newbies, most recruiters are seasoned professionals who have taken hundreds of interviews and can’t be made an example of that easily.

But since the hatred for HR is so much, people love any story that has an underlying message of insulting HR. It is also a pro tip for your next viral story, just cook a story where you ridiculed an HR in an interview, it will get great likes/comments.

Similarly for HRs, the pro tip for their viral story is fighting the leadership and system to offer a high package to the candidate. People love stories of justice.

Next time you come across all such viral posts, take them with a pinch of salt.