#THeHR. The kind of way they want you to be.

By; Yunus Mwarab

The HR?—?not the one that my good friend Kelvin Mwita advocates.

The unsung hero, mentor, coacher, weekend warrior, the scorekeepers, business visionary masters, fast and furious, voice of the voiceless, business partner, neutral custodian, a famous staff with many nicknames — you can mention the other names you used to call them in your workplace.

The staff who are neither trusted by staff nor by management have none — they have themselves and God. Imagine being a referee in the Kariakoo Derby, and neither team trusts you or your judgment; everyone wants you out, forgetting that NO REFEREE, NO GAME. That’s the real situation in many of the places where many of us are working.

The guys we call them HRs are as important as the referee in any game that requires fairness and entertainment for the fans. Let’s forget about football games; the workplace is more than a football pitch or game.

It’s a real game.

It’s a serious place where the services are being provided, running production and where profit and loss are being made, a place where all sort of resources; financial, machines and human resources are being assembled for production.

It has been always hard to manage human resources than managing machines or finance. The so-called HR professionals are conferred with the impossible task of managing fellow humans. Everyone has impossible expectations from HR; management uses its managerial prerogative power to manipulate HRs so that they can decide anything in the name of “management decisions,” while employees look at HR as neutral custodians who are supposed to defend their interests, and right, till I am writing this, it has been a daydream if not a nightmare.

In the middle of this chaos and confusion, HRs are being risen and taught to be after years of such experiences: making poor decisions, victimization, firing without fair reasons, not following procedures, working like robots, and being more than a rubber stamp. Our workplaces are raising HRs to be brutal, heartless, animal, unhuman, who can make fun of and think it’s funny to act unethically, and professionals who just follow orders from above. You can imagine how hard it is for them to go and be excellent experts after this pure micromanagement.

Many of these guys are raised to think best HRs do unethical decisions with clean hands. We have witnessed many of our mentors and reporting authorities set wrong standards and KPIs to measure the performance of HR personnel. A scenario: Supervisor X, who is closely and trusted by a boss or owner, doesn’t like employee Y. HR is being called to terminate employee Y without a fair reason for termination. Here, HR will be judged competent if they can successfully set a trap for employee Y to constructively terminate without causing any harm to the company. This happens now and then, and when things go contrary, HR is ruled incompetent to perform their duties and, surprisingly, sometimes may be subjected to termination.

The HRs you see are raised to execute decisions without questioning, reasoning, or giving their professional advice. Maybe it’s not happening in your workplace, but trust me, it is happening right now, right away, somewhere, where HRs are being dragged to execute some hard and unethical decisions that can put the company and their career in danger. I had a friend who had a shocking experience.

The work now has been a suicide mission; the bosses want to retrench 30 employees without notice, letter, or agreement — just a word of mouth. You know what? We will do it; that’s our HR job, and if anything happens, none of them will come into the picture”.

The HRs you hired are raised to be weak and, YES SIR kind of HRs.

You can hear a boss ordering HR to follow unethical orders from unethical managers simply because the so-called manager is superior to HR.

He is your boss; just listen to him and do what he is instructing you to do. Build a good relationship with him”.?Once, one of my bosses insisted on this.

Completely bullshit. You can’t be a strong HR by being YES SIR kind of HR, HR who cannot say NO will not make it to levels, HR who always say YES become unfamiliar with business and its people and eventually can’t make it far. No one grows in their comfort zone, where everything is YES, where they can’t challenge anything.

The HRs we see are raised to believe they are big fellas with little salaries and other benefits. There are common sayings like:

You are HR; you are not supposed to board on staff buses; staff will get used to you….”

Don’t be friends with staff.”

Stay cool with your boss; you will make it.”

The HRs we have are raised to believe on tomorrow and not today. Many of us watched a famous animation called?RANGO.?Yes animation!!

When Sherif Rango was called for introduction by Mayor John of Dirt. The mayor was breafing Rango on how people of Dirt were socialized.

You see them, Mister Rango? All my friends and neighbors? It’s a hard life here, very hard. You know how they make it through each and every day? They believe. They believe it’s going to be better… People have to believe in something, and now, they believe in you.”

You and the Sheriff are more alike than you think. Ain’t nothing but legends. Pretty soon, no one will believe you even existed”.

HRs are brainwashed to be big guys with little benefits, may be given the false hope that they are the ones who are running the show, but in fact they are not, and they are only in danger of having many enemies and being terminated at any time they do a mistake.

In many cases, the environments that are upbringing our HRs are not building them to be better professionals in their careers. The HRs we have, if they need to be better under such conditions, need to learn from better bosses, mentors and they should also learn from fellow non-HR staff.

Being the best doesn’t just happen, it takes courage to face odd, challenges, commitment to do it every single day and mostly to be ready to learn.

It is not late to learn, learn, unlearn, and re-learn!