Employees’ Grievances Against and Within HR – Part I – Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #1031

Employees’ Grievances Against and Within HR – Part I – Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #1031

Dear Colleagues! This is Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #1031 for Pharma Veterans. Pharma Veterans Blogs are published by Asrar Qureshi on its dedicated site https://pharmaveterans.com. Please email to aq.pharmaveterans@gmail.com for publishing our contributions here.

Credit: Andrea Piacquadio

Credit: Craig Adderley

Credit: Yan Krukau

This topic was triggered by an article in New York Times. Link at the end.

Preamble

In this two-part series, I shall talk about employees’ grievances about HR department/ Team/ Function. The employees in any corporate hold a load of complaints against HR, while HR employees themselves have complaints against other corporate employees and management. It appears that both parties are unhappy.

In this mini-series, I shall take up grievances that corporate employees carry against HR in part I, and the grievances of HR employees against corporate staff in Part II.

Birth of HR (then Personnel) Function

The function was born more than a century ago by the National Cash Register (NCR) Company founder, John Henry Patterson. He was an ultra-hard task master, but when customers returned $50,000 worth of faulty machines, he warmed up to his 5,400 employees. He concluded that his workers did not care about the quality of company products because they felt that he did not care about them. So, he shifted his own desk to factory floor overnight, and started benefits like daycare and lunchtime meals.

After World War II, when long-term/lifetime work became the norm, the personnel department was asked to ensure that workers stayed onboard. During 1980s, the function was rebranded as ‘human resources’ because it was considered that employees were a resource, an asset like other assets.

With time, human resource was further upgraded to human capital, however, human resources department stuck to the same name. Today, HR function is considered among the key functions of an organization and is given due importance. HR working is based on five cardinal areas: selection and recruitment, compensation and benefits, learning and development, performance management, and career planning/succession planning. Lately, HR has been actively involved in talent management, organization development, and culture building also.

Employees’ Grievances against HR

To keep the discussion orderly, I shall put the grievances under various heads.

Clarity about Scope of HR

No matter what is written in the book, generally, most employees do not know what HR function means for them. Run a survey in a large pharmaceutical company which has a sales team of 1,500 and production staff of 1,000, and you wilk know that 80-90% people, particularly the lower ranks do not know clearly what HR does and what it can do for them. In fact, they only know HR to the extent that they keep on hiring people and firing people on the instructions of management. Their own role in this exercise is unclear or at worst, dubious.

Admin & HR under One Head

The commonest model in Pakistan is that both HR and admin functions are put under the same head, though the functional staff is separate in larger organizations and same in smaller ones.   The usual perception is that admin and HR are mutually antagonistic. The admin takes a harsher view while HR is supposed to more empathetic. True or not, but my observation that such managers prefer to wear the admin hat more often than HR hat. The reason is simple; being admin feels powerful while HR is supposed to not use power explicitly. Based on years of observations, I believe the combined model is inherently flawed; HR and admin should be separated.

Whose Side is HR on?

This is the most asked question about HR, at times sarcastically and sometimes quizzically. 

Employees who understand HR function expect that HR shall come to their support when they are being coerced or persecuted or put under enormous and undue stress, however, if they do not see it coming, which is often the case, the question arises naturally. Whatever compulsions HR has, and we shall bring them on in Part II, the employees believe that HR is a party with the management. Due to this feeling of disillusionment, many employees do not even take their problems to HR; they just quit. 

Employee Welfare

Employee welfare is a vast term which may mean differently for different organizations. The situation of labor laws in Pakistan is apparently unclear, and their implementation is clearly not done. Every organization makes its own rules about employee benefits and welfare. It is not about the size of the organization; it is about the thinking of the owners/ executives. Almost every local organization cuts corners on employee welfare. Factory workers keep working as daily wagers for years and are not confirmed to save on social security payments, paid leaves etc. Working hours on paper are usually complied with though late sitting is considered a norm in most organizations. 

Employees complain that their jobs are wrongly designed, they are not offered any career track to work for, and additional benefits are not given for additional work.

Job security is a major concern. No one knows when he/she will be asked to leave without assigning any proper reason or giving any prior notice or warning. It is like that the employee is called by HR and told he/she is not required anymore. The best that an organization may do is to pay one month salary in lieu of one month period as per terms of appointment. 

Sickness, maternity, hospitalization are not covered, and employees are on their own. Rather their job is at stake if they fall sick.

Grievance Handling

Employee grievances are not given due attention. First impulse of HR is to ask employee to forget it, or compromise, or even accept the wrong happened to them. HR takes the side of the manager and pressurizes them to accept manager’s view if they wish to save their job.

If at all grievance is taken with the relate authorities, it is not followed properly, and the outcome is rarely in favor of the employee. Harassment cases mostly go unreported because the victims do not wish to expose themselves and know that the concerned person, mostly a senior, shall be exonerated.

Culture and Values

The case of building of culture and values by HR is even weaker. Employees complain that the HR staff itself does not follow corporate values, so, they cannot enforce the same values on others. Of course, senior managers also do not feel obliged to follow the values in all matters. For example, merit is written as a value but hirings and promotions are done as a favor, not on merit.

Sum Up

This list of employee grievances is not exhaustive. The purpose of this post is to give an idea of how employees feel about the HR function. The summary is that they do not consider to be on the side of the employees. They firmly believe that HR is a tool in the hands of management to control employees.

Concluded.

Disclaimers: Pictures in these blogs are taken from free resources at Pexels, Pixabay, Unsplash, and Google. Credit is given where available. If a copyright claim is lodged, we shall remove the picture with appropriate regrets.

For most blogs, I research from several sources which are open to public. Their links are mentioned under references. There is no intent to infringe upon anyone’s copyrights. If, however, it happens unintentionally, I offer my sincere regrets. 

Reference:

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/03/business/human-resources-professionals-workplace.html