HR & 'Rangoli’: A young HR manager's take on why HR is hated the most

Back in 2013, when I was preparing for my MBA entrances while pursuing engineering, choosing an MBA stream was something that was of lesser priority to most of us. Our primary focus was to first clear the written exams and as such not many have given much thought on what kind of MBA we wanted to do. I did some casual research, read briefly about the various domains and I found an instant liking for HR and marketing, two completely different fields. I read more about them by exploring the different subjects that are taught in various B schools and my dilemma continued.

Fast forward to next year, I joined a software company as a software engineer and interacted with HRs for the first time. I was able to fill in some gaps of my knowledge by the initial interaction I had with the department but then most of the new joiners were left to survive on their own and there I, like all other employees joined the bandwagon of abusing HR as an incompetent, ineffective and careless department who doesn’t care about employees at all. I continued with my MBA preparations, cleared XAT and luckily or unluckily the choice I had to make was between SP Jain Marketing vs XLRI HRM, 2 very reputed institutes offering me separate courses which I liked. I did lot of research, talked to many people and finally I joined XLRI for its PGDHRM course.

The most important question that began from my XLRI interview till my final placement interview then became ‘Why HR’, most of us had a well-rehearsed answer for that linking the field with our personal values and principals. Most of us indeed thought that once we will enter the corporate world again, we will really be able to make a difference in the life of employees, we will bring a new revolution, we will make people happy, we will make people achieve their full potential, we will create a conducive atmosphere for creativity and innovation. But how many of us were successful?

As soon as you enter the corporate world back, you realize that HR is indeed one of the most hated department in the organization. I remember my first day of job where my boss told me that the most important thing you have to remember is no matter what you do, HR is a thankless job, so don’t attach yourself too much with things around here else you will always be unhappy. When you are fresh and young in a new job, you are free of any prejudice, after all we had spent last 2 years solving numerous case studies where a company is in trouble, employees are disengaged, production is down and revenue is falling. The senior HR person sipping his black coffee looking outside his window carefully evaluating what went wrong and suddenly the universe gives him the insight and thus begin a major overhauling of the entire organization. From restructuring to culture change, from learning to engagement, we have solved 100s of case studies on how HR transforms and saves the organization and we believed we will also.

But the real life is different from the case study you read and solve. Real life is more about maintaining status quo to a large extent with only minute incremental changes. Real life is more about ‘managing expectations’ than ‘exceeding expectations’. In my small career as an HR manager, I worked in 2 manufacturing units. 1 was an old plant established in late 80s with average age around 48 and one a green field project with average age around 23. Both these plants were quite contrasting in all their feature but united by their mutual dislike for HR department in general.

Outside world also doesn’t look very different. Although, I have not worked in other domains but with my limited interaction with my colleagues and also the growing memes on HR, it becomes very clear that either HR is a laughing stock or a punching bag. You will find 1 HR and rangoli meme in every week either as a forwarded message or some troll FB page becomes creative with it. You will find majority of comments supporting the post and writing further insulting comments on the department. I remember a post where one HR person had tried to defend the department by highlighting what goes behind the curtains which people generally don’t know but she was garlanded with more insulting remarks in the comments.

As a young HR manager, it intrigues me that what we have done so incorrectly to attract such a bad image. For a function comprising of various subdomains like compensation, L&D, Talent Management, Engagement, Recruitment, Compliance, Payroll etc. it is funny that the best the world view us nowadays is with Rangoli. As I write this post, my facebook feed is full of anti HR confession posts on the confession page of my 1st company with all employees abusing and cursing HR department for its dormancy when they are suffering from heavy work pressure along with the stress of the pandemic and the extra burden of having to do all their daily chores by themselves.

Most of my Whatsapp groups are also filled with the talks of how their work hours have significantly increased as there are no longer any visible boundaries on their accountability and they are answerable to their management at any point of time. Weekends don’t feel like weekends anymore to people as they are working day in and day out. Is it another lost opportunity for HR department to showcase that they actually care or the problem lies in the fact that people have unrealistic and unfair expectation from HR department as their savior?

As soon as you enter a B school, the 1st thing they teach you is that HR is not a people person, all the beautiful decorated answer we gave were incorrect. HR is answerable to the management to fulfill business goals. The term HRBP or HR business partner in itself become very critical now, the employee perceive you as their savior who will care for them and who will ensure their happiness and comfort while you are just partnering with the business to achieve its goal and many a times the paths are different.

Then comes the pain point of what many young HR professional feels, that HR has been limited to just an event management function along with the bare minimum compliance part. The biggest deliverable of a CHRO becomes to organize the annual event excellently. The biggest deliverable of a functional HR becomes the goal celebration party. The biggest deliverable of an entry level HR officer becomes to organize the birthday celebrations well. We plan diligently for the food menu for the next festival and also choose the best vendor for office decoration. We brainstorm to structure the best possible picnic day to make employees happy. We put effort to ensure snacks of best quality reaches in the training break so that employees won’t complain. Have we diminished our own value and respect in eyes of other by prioritizing too much the trivial aspects we shouldn’t have bothered upon much? This question becomes very critical nowadays as the work many entry level HR managers and officer do often demotivates them, they feel they are foot soldier of some event management company or catering companies.

I have personally gone and checked the cleanliness of toilets in an entire building during a senior level training session, something which I never thought I will do after graduating from XLRI. With many organizations merging HR with admin, our role as an employee champion or custodian of culture is getting limited to arranging vehicles, deciding the snack menu on training or ensuring attendance in major events.

What is interesting is many of the work that you do as an HR manager is confidential in nature and thus it is not something you can share with all. So when you get remarks from other people that all you guys do is sip coffee in cafeteria, it's hard to justify what you were doing late night sitting on an excel. For many people, who do not have the visibility of how time consuming and complex transnational work can be, it is very hard to convince them about the criticality and nature of the work. It is same as developers think testers have it easy and vice verca is software industry, sales think marketing is easy and vice verca, production thinks packing is easy and vice verca ! On a large scale, many employees have very less visibility of the work other department is doing and hence the prejudice that we are working much more than what they are doing.

I was surprised to know that most of my colleagues also suffer from the % completion of goal setting in the system. PMS is one of the most critical work an HR person does in a year, and most of us struggle to get the 1st step done now in the system as there is a significant mistrust between the employees on the correlation of the goal setting they do and the final rating they receive. Many of them find it absolutely worthless, most companies do have a well-structured process comprising of goal discussion, goal setting, mid-review, end discussion, rating calibration and rating communication, but how seriously all these phases are implemented in their spirit on ground level is a big question mark now.

I will end this article on some pressing questions. Whether there should be sensitisation of employees on what they can expect from HR and what not to avoid mistreatment of HR employees is a question that needs to be answered now? How effective role merging of HR with admin, security and other function is for cost cutting and in long term does it dilute the effectiveness of HR function is another critical question? Have we limited our role to just a big event management function and ignored the other critical work areas living in a huge communication gap between employees and us? Do we need to develop more spine to oppose the line function for the sake of employees betterment and overall better work culture?

My work experience is relatively much smaller so some of my thoughts may be strictly personal experience or half baked, but I wrote them so that I can invite insights from the industry veterans, looking forward for views of all on this topic ! I firmly believe that as a function, our identity should be much more than organizing just Rangoli competitions !