A professional? Wow. Fortunately there's no one who can suspend me. :chuckles: But if I were an HR professional at your big company
i'd suspend your ass for posting on RCF during work hours instead of doing your job.
Touche', although I was off work at that time (I like to get in before 7 and out just after 4). I'm just telling you what I've learned throughout college/work. Also, a dozen people sounds like my Aunt's business, which is more of a family atmosphere and having <50 employees give you a lot more latitude with your employment limits. Sometimes reality checks are necessary for people, we're just not the ones who should be giving it to them (it can come back to bite me in my org).
You have no clue what you are talking about.
On the contrary. I happen to know more than I would care to about employment law. It is my job, though. Like I said, though, an office with a dozen employees can be a lot more "casual" about their adherence to employment law. Perhaps, I could have asked if you had a bigger company
Dude, it was some friendly advice. She took the easy route - "Obama wants $100 more, I'll go ask Max for $100 more." Sorry, I'm very generous with her compensation and she knows it. When she says there's nowhere to cut, I know better, so I called her on it. If I wanted to be an asshole I could have asked her why her Accord was averaging 15mpg. :chuckles: I know she fills up her husband's car with her company gas card, but hey, times are tough...i get it.
I've never had an employee voluntarily leave my company...she loves working here and won't be the first to quit. I wish a mentor had given me some more advice when i was younger.
Mentors can be both a blessing and a pain at times. I'm glad you're able to balance the boss/peer see-saw. Not many people can, thus making my department necessary. Also, mentors are great, but they don't trump good-old experience. I can say that and I'm sure I've had less experience than you.
Actually...from my experience, HR departments PREVENT honest, open door policy conversations. HR departments are like a built in NAACP.
Not really true at all. Unions are like built in NAACP. HR stands in the middle of Unions, who are looking for the next slip, and management that often times doesn't have time to be consciously thinking about all of the little intricacies that they're held to by Unions (and consequently their Union employees/reps).
I'm not disagreeing either. I've known my fair share of HR assholes.
EDIT - So maybe the idea of a department needs to go away (political party). A forum needs to be in place (anonymous) that allows people to express what they need to, with certain restrictions in place.
I generally can't take a shot at you because you bring up shit that nobody has enough time to look into, but you're just ill-informed here, Mar. First off, I'm an HR professional and for as much shit as we take, we're the people that fix all of the problems ignorant folk create.
So, HR is only there for people to air their grievances? Do you know anything about employment law? Do you know what goes on in a day of HR? Do you know the reason that HR is in place? I didn't think so.
The reasons HR is needed is because:
- Most employers have enough employees (most kick in after 50 employees) that they're held to laws such as COBRA, ADA, FMLA, Affirmative Action, etc.
- When the NAACP comes knocking at the front door asking about how many minorities are present in the workplace and how people are promoted, "assholes" like me have to come back to them demonstrating how
HR went about getting to those "quotas". We can't be wrong.
- Do you know the cost of turnover? HR must do what they can to limit needless turnover because it is costly to search for, hire and train a new employee.
- Do you know the cost of training that goes into an employee? Enough to make a sizable difference in the bottom line of a company's profitability.
- Do you know the appropriate bonus levels that keep employees motivated and feeling like they have stake in the company? This is tricky. Based upon position and levels at which bonuses are handed out, a lot of feeling of hopelessness permeates a workforce if this is done improperly. Study CHEP Global Pooling's bonus system in 2007-2009, if the information isn't private. You'll find a workforce that experienced a ton of turnover and decreased productivity because of a botched bonus plan that left many employees without anything due to circumstances out of their control.
- Are you aware that most large public employers have to deal with 15 or more Unions? I know municipalities have like 30+ Unions to maintain relationships with.
- Have you heard of an employee filing with the NLRB because she felt she had too much work only to come back later and file again saying too much work was taken from her?
- Have you ever trained someone in a workplace or have had to be trained?
These are things that HR needs to come up with metrics to measure and, yes, we do show a $$ amount that affects the bottom line of an organization. So spare me with the idea of replacing HR with an "idea box".
What should have been is that Unions shouldn't be necessary. Management should be learning that a key to a good workforce is just being generally sympathetic and not completely greedy when it comes to the workforce, theoretically. Greed got in the way of treating people humane long ago, which is why employment laws are in place and Unions exist.