How HR Took Over the World (economist.com)
- Reference: 0180028554
- News link: https://slashdot.org/story/25/11/10/1859225/how-hr-took-over-the-world
- Source link: https://www.economist.com/business/2025/11/10/how-hr-took-over-the-world
Chief human-resources officers also gained ground financially. Their total compensation, which stood at 40% of the average director's salary in 1992, reached 70% by 2022, according to a Stanford University study. Mary Barra, who runs General Motors, previously held the carmaker's top HR position.
The expansion has followed several workplace disruptions, including the Me Too movement, the pandemic's shift to remote work, and the rise of diversity initiatives, Economist reports. Companies also faced more state regulations on employee relations and a jump in workplace complaints. The average number of discrimination or harassment allegations rose from six per 1000 employees in 2021 to 15 last year.
[1] https://www.economist.com/business/2025/11/10/how-hr-took-over-the-world
Liability (Score:5, Insightful)
Because it's cheaper to hire a team of a dozen HR professionals than be exposed to a single lawsuit from an employee.
Re:Liability (Score:5, Insightful)
That's the justification. The reality is it's cheaper to fuck over and exploit your employees than be fair and equitable to them. And HR allows you to do that WHILE protecting you from the resulting lawsuits...
Re:Liability (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah it sucks, you want to be mad at HR, but they didn't decide the policies. So you want to get mad at your boss, but they direct you back to HR. Its a classic, no one is responsible for unpopular things tactic.
Re:Liability (Score:5, Interesting)
IIRC in legal theory for liability, they call this the "empty chair" tactic. Where each defendant points to an "empty chair" aka, a party not involved in the dispute and lays culpability to this non-party. If everyone confront then points to the "empty chair" they can shirk responsibility.
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Nothing like giving people the runaround until they're exhausted...
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> IIRC in legal theory for liability, they call this the "empty chair" tactic. Where each defendant points to an "empty chair" aka, a party not involved in the dispute and lays culpability to this non-party. If everyone confront then points to the "empty chair" they can shirk responsibility.
Just to complete the description of the "empty chair" tactic, this is why lawsuits typically name anyone and everyone who might possibly be blamed, including many who clearly aren't culpable. It's not because the plaintiff or the plaintiff's attorney actually thinks all of those extra targets really might be liable, it's so that the culpable parties can't try to shift the blame to an empty chair, forcing the plaintiff to explain why the empty chair isn't culpable (i.e., defend them). Of course this means t
Re: (Score:1)
You're confusing two different things.
"DEI twats" should *never* be publicly named with any actual job title (except perhaps "DEI twat")
They don't do HR. They can't do HR because they don't know how or even what it is.
HR is meant to be a subset of legal. They specialize in employment law, not unlike a labor law lawyer would specialize, but without the typical powers of being a lawyer.
Just like decision makers should run any contract by the legal department for their legal advice, decision makers should ru
Re: Liability (Score:2)
I don't think that's the only thing. When your human capital has become more responsible for your organization's enterprise value, productivity, and opportunities for growth over time, why shouldn't it take more human resources to manage it?
Remember, HR is not your friend. (Score:2)
Even though they might appear to be.
In Soviet Russia, HR protects the company from YOU.
Re: (Score:3)
It is not really much different in the US. Their primary function is to prevent lawsuits and protect management.
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To protect the company (usually upper management) which could mean firing troublesome employees or troublesome management - depends which is cheaper
Re: (Score:2)
That's true, but if you understand their goal, you can, sometimes use it appropriately to achieve you're aims. You just have to understand their thought process and run books.
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Erm, going with the meme's intent, shouldn't it be In Soviet Russia, HR protects you from company?
Because what you said is exactly what HR is for in all of the western world.
Labor is your most important resource (Score:3)
Anyone that is willing to show up and be paid less than what they produce is a gold mine. Party of the grift requires businesses to treat everyone like shit, make everyone feel that their work is meaningless, that they are easily replaced, and that they won't survive without a job. HR departments have grown to fill that need of corporate propaganda and overall management of the greatest grift in history.
Re: (Score:1)
Why would someone pay you based on what they "produce"? That's just dumb. We get paid according to the market value of our work, the highest that someone is willing to pay us because if we didn't take the job they could get someone else for $1 more. If we get paid based on the money our work generates, that would be stupid .. no society would function like taht. It means, if I take a cab to my job, the cab driver should get paid a percentage of my salary .. because their ride enabled me to make $100k or wha
Re:Labor is your most important resource (Score:4, Insightful)
Some people speculate that it might be better to pay people based on the value they create in the world instead of whatever the market decides. A lot of people would argue that the market is actually a good way to decide how much value someone creates, so it all works out.
Other people say that a lawyer who files frivolous lawsuits to make money or a quack naturopathic doctor who proscribes pumpkin seeds to cure cancer actually create negative value, yet they get paid quite a lot sometimes, so therefor the market is an ineffeciant way of deciding how much to pay people. Also some people do quite a bit of important work but get paid very little, such as people who work in a factory making motherboards, or people who clean public bathrooms.
Then there's the matter of people who make a ton of money by owning things but do no work at all, such as heirs to large fortunes. Some ask "If the market is good at deciding how to pay people based on the value they can produce why are these non-producers making a very large chunk of all the money out there?"
Most americans at this point will piss themselves and run away from dangerous thoughts like these.
Coddling (Score:2, Offtopic)
Gen Z and Millenial whiners need constant coddling, thatâ(TM)s why. Bunch of snowflakes. Back in my day your boss would throw a chair at you and you just took it.
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I have several chairs in my garage I kept as trophys.
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Ah, ah ah! Careful there or one of us snowflakes might need to charge a phone and unplug your respirator!
What does HR actually do? (Score:2)
I'm in Ontario, Canada, if that matters. Honestly, what does HR actually do? I'm not really sure if I know, but they usually get in my way a lot, and they really do not like being assigned work.
I work for a great company, have for 8 years now, I was employee three, I joined when we didn't have HR. To be honest, the HR lady is great, she's friendly, answers questions, helps find solutions, and the opposite of every other HR person I've had to deal with in a professional capacity. When the company star
Re: (Score:2)
> 4. They wouldn't approve my disability parking permit, to spite having paper work from my doctors.
They can't just give you a disabled parking permits based on doctor notes. You have to be legally a disabled person.
> 16. Coming in on a weekend, to use the bathroom...
Why would you wanna do that? There're countless ways to go to the bathroom, why you have to come to work?
Medical Plans (Score:1)
Im not saying who's fault it is, but HR must be busy changing my medical plan every year, because it keeps changing! Surely it was less work for HR, when they didn't have to change it every year.
So you need to know some history (Score:3)
Back in the days of Unionization companies created management to keep an eye on employees and make sure the company came out ahead all the time.
Over the years unions got busted and broken starting with Ronald reagan. Widespread factory automation meant that you no longer had tens of thousands of individual workers at a single site who could readily organize. Also the corporations moved in and replaced small local churches that could be used for local organization with big mega charges that they controlled with their mega church buddies like Jerry Falwell.
Without the unions they didn't need management the same way to bust unions and keep workers in liworkershey started using management as regular line workers. If you're paying attention your boss has been taking on more regular work year after year and less management work.
But the company still needs somebody to make sure that the company's interests are put before yours. That's HR.
HR is the next evolution and making your life worse and making billionaires lives... Well I'm not going to say better because they're already as good as they can possibly get but just plain letting them have more money in power at your expense.
Of course all of this triggers the fuck out of a ton of libertarian types because they don't like the think about all the systems in the world. Folks want to believe that they can be tremendously successful just with their own two hands and maybe a little bit of brain work and that they don't need anybody else. It's something you pick up when you're a teenager and most people never grow out of it.
Pointing that out also triggers people.
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keep workers in liworkershey
Tovarisch, I haven't a clue what word you were trying to use there but your STT seems to be busted. You neglected to mention that the unions like all collections of people became subject to corruption and scope creep and lost their way and utility such that people were not sad when they were busted. Sort of like how one goes from symbiosis to a parasite, and then the host rejects you. Btw if the workforce is getting smaller, but HR keeps getting bigger, perhaps there is more t
Replacement Managers (Score:3)
HR departments have expanded because they are able to do the mundane tasks that managers are supposed to be doing (hiring, firing, evaluations, settling employee disputes, etc), leaving the managers more time for higher level tasks like three martini lunches and golf junkets.
You had to put your losers somewhere... (Score:3)
One of my relatives was around at the dawn of HR at a major multi-national corporation. She was head of their Salary Payroll division. She always told us that the company put their hard-to-fire f^ckups in HR, because it was an area that had little impact on the actual operation of stuff that mattered. Department heads could always hire who they wanted, and tell HR to approve it or else. Over the years, of course, that has changed...with predictable results.
Because a lot of people cry fouls nowadays (Score:2)
A significant increase in false claims made in general, not just particularly at work.
At the workplace: - Walking by and happen to look at somebody can be considered staring
- One word of unintentional meaning can "cause emotional distress"
- Sometimes harmless words can still cause emotional distress, all it requires is that someone reports
- Hosting a meeting too long is considered excuses to "taking advantage" of people
In general: - People question why cars change lane even though their accident is
Feminization is the issue (Score:2)
Most HR personnel are women, and some might assert this is the problem, they are the vanguard of the overwhelming feminization of workplaces.
[1]https://www.compactmag.com/art... [compactmag.com]
"...Everything you think of as âoewokenessâ is simply an epiphenomenon of demographic feminization.
The explanatory power of this simple thesis was incredible. It really did unlock the secrets of the era we are living in. Wokeness is not a new ideology, an outgrowth of Marxism, or a result of post-Obama disillusionment. It is s
[1] https://www.compactmag.com/article/the-great-feminization/
Re: (Score:2)
I dated a girl in college who started out as an Aerospace Engineering major.
I don't remember when she ended up graduating with, but it was something like English.
She ended up going into HR when she graduated.
From Aerospace Engineering to HR. Talk about a hard fall.
I have a rule... (Score:2)
...never work for a company big enough to have an HR department. Who wants to be views as a 'human resource' by your own employer? I've been self employed for 10 years, and blessed to have some great customers. Nowadays when I watch Office Space, instead of painful recognition, I can actually laugh at it as something that's a part of the distant past.
Fixed that for ya (Score:4, Interesting)
"How Companies Finally Realized They Need to Invest in Reasonable HR Staffing Levels"
Re:Fixed that for ya (Score:5, Interesting)
How long before they replace them all with an AI chatbot? The intelligence level would probably be about the same, and the compensability would probably be improved.
Re: (Score:3)
You know they won't spring for the good chatbots. I just did a couple chat bot sessions for support, and they were awful. Can't disclose what I said without doxing myself. But they literally have one job, but they don't know how to do that. Instead they want to direct you to sales. which makes as much sense as trying to boil the ocean to bake a potato.
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Seems about on par with my experience with HR.
Having to deal with those people can turn a body misogynistic right quick.
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HR often has an Orwellian aspect to their communication. They say things in a way that sounds like they are there to help you, but they are really there to gatekeep. Not everyone can have the salary, promotion, office, etc that they want, and HR is there to control those things, and minimize the company's legal problems in doing so. The double-speak and gatekeeping make them incredibly frustrating to deal with.
On top of that they also know a lot of private info, from salary to disciplinary actions to disp
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Pointless link to a paywalled article.
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Some businesses use HR as the administration's private army. The best HR departments I've ever worked with were ones that we're overloaded with work. It sounds horrible (and I assume it was), but they didn't have extra time to create new "initiatives" that end up punishing employees or creating "victims" where none existed before.
Re: (Score:2)
Or:
"Every HRIS software solution is a rats nest of shit and garbage, cemented together with used chewing gum and toxic industrial sealant that gives you headaches just for looking at it, running on top of archaic and deeply outdated vendor lock-in 'enterprise solutions.' Thus you need more humans to get done what needs doing. See: Oracle HMS, Workday, ADP, BambooHR, etc."