Last month, I joined the sold-out audience at San Francisco’s Nourse Theatre for an evening of conversation between two storied women: Anita Hill and Ellen Pao. The idea was to have two women of different eras, with similar narratives, compare notes on the humiliation and loss they experienced because of gender discrimination at work. Pao’s infamy stems from a very public gender discrimination suit she waged against the venerable venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins. (She lost.) So it wasn’t surprising that Pao fielded a question about how employees should work with their human resources department, if they experience bad behavior.
Her answer was refreshingly frank: “There are very few companies where I would advise people take their issues to HR,” Pao told the room.
Across the audience, there were knowing murmurs and nods. It’s hardly news that behavioral and ethical issues can cause problems at work. But stakes seem higher today. The incidents are frequent, egregious, and leave people wondering: What was HR thinking? Could they not have stopped the dramas unfolding at Thinx, Uber, Zenefits, and GitHub?
If HR is designed to be the preferred interface between companies and employees — to protect them and help them manage their careers in what can be complex ecosystems — it seems to be falling short. The stories that have emerged show HR departments that ignore or penalize employees when they complain about harassment.
If HR is broken, employees are left without a recourse. So is HR broken?
When HR people are perceptive and observant, they can—and do—head off problems. I’ve worked with ones who are great readers of human nature, who really get how behavior can shape company culture and reputation— for good or bad. They can be passionate about offering useful programs to motivate workers and help them grow. Lots of them are wonderfully sensitive to employee mood shifts, and can get executives to pay attention when a workforce is unhappy.
But too many people in HR roles are, to be blunt, not suited to the work. I’ve watched straight-up bureaucrats endlessly citing rule number #459; I’ve seen others cozy up to execs for their own advancement; still others have seemed to only want to parrot happy corp-speak by willfully ignoring problems and the people who raise them. Some are blind to cultural signals and ignore employee concerns — the sort of thing I gather Pao experienced.
Don’t get me wrong: These are not easy jobs. An HR team is tasked with a Jared Kushner-sized portfolio that carries daunting responsibilities. They have to find new employees at all levels who perfectly fit into a company culture; develop meaningful programs for professional development; create fair evaluations and training; and keep an eye on employee moods, needs, motivations and turn-offs—all while handling the ethical issues and behavioral problems that inevitably emerge when humans spend so much time together. This includes the kinds of things management would rather bypass, like walking people out the door and trying to avoid lawsuits.
It constitutes a very tall order, and, as with Kushner, why would we expect anyone to excel at all of it? At startups, a HR department is often established later than product or engineering, so that a company’s culture, habits, and rituals may form before anyone has paid much attention to things like diversity in hiring and promotions, a level playing field for job ladders, or inclusion among leadership. And often, the first effort of a new HR role in a young business is to ramp up energetic recruiting and the on-boarding of new hires.
Whether we call it HR or use more contemporary terms like “people operations,” “employee engagement,” or “talent team,” this arena is very much a corporate function. That means the people working in HR have the ultimate goal of keeping the trains running with as little drama as possible. HR works for the man, so to speak. Its job is to maintain order and process, even if the HR folks make use of soft skills. They are still adhering to organizational regulations and quarterly goals.
HR is a corporate function, and that’s perfectly reasonable. But this fact adds to the HR burden, because while the department represents management, in bigger outfits it also represents teams. So when your HRBP (“human resources business partner” — an ungodly acronym that’s caught on) seeks your honest opinion or asks you to be candid about a coworker or executive, your reluctance to be forthcoming is understandable.
Even the best HR intentions can go south when a company’s priorities are out of balance—say, too much rockstar hiring and not enough attention to diversity and inclusion, as at Uber; tone-deaf upper management, as we’ve seen at Fox News; or too many pivots and switchbacks around the product vision, which leads to people feeling disengaged — something I observed at Twitter.
For this reason, I wasn’t surprised by Pao’s conclusion—and neither was the audience. We’ve all had disappointing encounters with HR people who don’t seem to grasp a wrongheaded management policy or the damage a problem employee can do. And if they do understand, they often can’t express it to non-HR people. They are supposed to appear equanimous and neutral at all times. From what colleagues in HR tell me, they too can be frustrated, but they can’t show it. Their job is to shore up the corporate party line.
This leaves the rest of us shortchanged, and so all too often we want to avoid bringing HR into a brewing situation. Or, in cases like Pao’s, head to court.
It seems to me it’s time to recast HR’s purpose and value — with a few core changes to both the work of HR and its role in companies. Here are a few suggestions to get going.
Create an ombuds-HR position
This person might have a term-limited role and report directly to to the top of the chain (a C-level executive or the board) in order to inquire, investigate, and recommend fixes related to HR and executive shortcomings. If you’re wondering if this role exists in business, it does—but it’s rare enough that I had to Google it. There’s a professional group called The International Ombudsman Association, and some companies (and many universities and major news organizations) do have ombuds-people. From what I see, such roles are largely driven by either labor management or customer service needs, not internal cross-checks on cultural issues and ethical imbroglios.
But I haven’t found any instances of tech startups (or most name-brand companies) with an ombud role that’s designedto be an intermediary advocate. Instead, we’re often reliant on HR people who are stuck on the “official rules” and get (very) literal. That can be a mistake when we factor in employee disgruntlement and skepticism.
Here’s a story: I worked for a company that let an influential person go at the 11-month mark — four weeks shy of a stock option vesting date. This person, a public figure, unsurprisingly spent the next few years publicly badmouthing the company. It would have been trivial to grant him the extra month of vesting, and if he’d left with his options intact, the company’s reputation wouldn’t have taken repeated public hits. Instead, management went by The Rules, ignoring real-world repercussions. Perhaps an ombudsperson could untangle the administrivia that makes troubled departures worse than necessary. An ombudsperson could also hold execs accountable on diversity and inclusion goals. (These are often tasked to HR, which can’t realize them alone.)
Support more human-focused HR training
When hiring for HR roles, the training should include work in ethics, organizational behavior, collaborative problem-solving, and listening skills — and it should include these at least as much as it currently values skills with HRIS, the complex software that processes employee data. Having a team with smart and creative tactics for resolving issues can count for a lot.
Invest in emotional intelligence trainingacross the company
If you do, all employees get the message that their culture rewards empathy and social skills—instead of “by-the-book” rules that apply to many while indiscriminate rule-breaking is acceptable for the few. The training must be supplemented by leaders who consistently stand by the importance and value of EI day in and day out.
Include EI values in performance evaluations and promotions
People who are empathetic, inclusive, and employ people skills to good effect should be recognized for progress and victories when they occur, and this recognition should matter for promotions and new assignments.
Do not reward bad behavior
Rockstar employees (yes, this can include executives) who demonstrate asshole tendencies should be graded more harshly in reviews. Rockstars might be great in one sphere, but companies should also reward fair-mindedness, collaboration, and applied ethics more than they often do.
Make it easier to talk confidentially about abuses, oversights, and missteps
Most HR teams aren’t designed to be good at listening to all employees, and their investigative approach can be hierarchical. Either an ombudsperson or designated “safe listeners” can help employees to raise a concern or report behavior without it turning into a secretive bureaucratic procedure. You might be troubled by something you saw or heard and just not know what to do about it. These conversations need to happen with a well-trained person who knows how to safely explore and escalate the matter. Right now, that’s not always your HR rep.
The field of HR has a damaged reputation, and acknowledging as much is one of the ways to help it improve. So would making sure company executives walk the talk about the value of intelligent, inclusive policies and fair treatment for everyone from the get-go.
