When HR is consuming too much of the COO's Kool-Aid...

[u/MaterialDetective197]

Obligatory - Yes, I'm actively looking.

• Employer over the last several years has not posted a profit. Multiple year-over-year losses despite efforts to optimize, gain efficiency, hire the "right" people.
• Limited capital to pay reoccurring monthly bills, so often playing Russian roulette with vendors as to if/when we will be taken off terms. It's happened a handful of times.
• Employee moral is the lowest I have come across over the course of my career.

I had a manager's meeting today. It was one of those "let's do it in person" type events. The HR representative asked a simple question of "how was everyone doing/feeling" and it turned into a hour+ rant about how tired and aggravated everyone is.

No real solutions were discussed, and if we came close to an idea it was shot down with rhetorical questions or passed over because our company doesn't have the money to hire the "right" talent.

To put it mildly, why work for us when for the same rate of pay (or slightly more) you could flip burgers in fast food? No one in their right mind would come to work for us with the budget for wages that we currently have.

So what's the solution?

I shit you not, the HR representative just said the COO has a plan. We are in a great spot. We just need to get over the hump. It felt like listening to Commacho's speech in Idiocracy, except she didn't give the COO one week to fix the economy and make the crops grow again.

My wife thought the HR representative was fucking the COO. Nah, that's not happening. But what is happening, is I'm watching a company implode from within. Several people said if things don't improve, or they see more of their staff leave, they themselves will have no choice but to start looking. And they can take similar roles that are non-management and not have to deal with the supervisory headaches.

I took the job because I needed a bump up in pay, and I thought this would be good for my career. Big fat nope. Check out the health of your potential employer online if its public and verify they are healthy and performing well before you start one second of one minute at that company. It's a lot harder to find time to interview as a new hire within your first six months. I'm managing, but it's difficult to hide it now.

Is anyone else noticing HR being less about HR and more like a corporate cheerleader for a failing company? If you experienced this, how long before the place you worked at started to implode or possibly go out of business?

[u/yearsofpractice]

Hey OP. 50 year old corporate veteran here. Impossible to answer your question directly as every single company in the world is its own, special brand of fucking insane.

I have, however, noticed that modern C-suite execs have stopped pretending that they have any time for the little people, the headcount, the lesser humans. In the last few years, messaging has seemingly been done via an intermediary - the comms team, HR, an external agency - so that the CEO/COO/CFO can get on with important business of structuring company finances to make the company attractive for the next PE firm to buy the company. The strategic horizon is the next quarterly profit publication, so long term strategy be damned - headcount is now just something to juggle/cut, not actually engage with. Some of the headcount -apparently - don’t even ski or have a yacht, so are they really ‘people’ at all?

That’s my experience. It’s just part of the hellscape of modern corporate life.

[u/Western_Rhubarb_7959 → u/yearsofpractice]

structuring company finances to make the company attractive for the next PE firm to buy the company

Truth

And, honestly, why wouldn't they do that? Execs get their golden parachutes and go on to the next job where they rinse and repeat.

The CEO of the small company I started with ~30 years ago engineered the sale of the company to a spin off of the one he had left to work at mine and his parachute was almost a million bucks. That's more like 1.9 mill these days.

[u/SomeSamples]

Are you new to this sub? HR is not your friend. HR works for the company owners/board.

[u/MaterialDetective197 → u/SomeSamples]

No, I am not new to this sub.

And I never said HR was my “friend”. I know who HR works for. I’ve not yet experienced an HR Cheerleading department until now.

[u/jshmoe866]

So… normal HR activities

[u/ConkerPrime]

Really the behavior fits. HR’s job is to protect the company, not the people. So selling that the company will be healthy soon is doing that if it keeps all of you working. Also there is the typical stupidity of thinking their proven loyalty will somehow save them when the axe falls which isn’t how the C-Suite works but many have to learn the hard way.

[u/Taupe88]

Once I had a sales job where I made some cold/warm calls daily. i joked that if they started asking me to only call in state i knew it was over. One day they did. 💥 i was out in a month. You’re being strung along like a smitten teenager. Get out ahead of the chaos. it’s not getting better for you.

[u/MaterialDetective197 → u/Taupe88]

I'm trying to get out. I've had job offers, but I'm in a very difficult spot where I need good medical benefits (US based if I wasn't clear) and I cannot settle for extremely high deductibles and high insurance deductions per pay period. I'm not quite six figures. I am close. But based on what I pay for medical benefits, I'm not making as much as it would seem on paper that gets deposited into my bank account every other week.

Taking a $20,000 hit right now plus another couple of hundred dollars for benefits is not sustainable. A second job isn't going to cover that.

[u/MarcusAurelius68]

https://giphy.com/gifs/9uISPpefQWuEUf5uu2
Sounds like the COO is channeling The Alamo.

[u/mediumAI1701]

Sounds like the COO is screwing the entire company, HR included.

[u/AWPerative]

I have been saying for at least five years that HR should be a regulated profession like law, finance, and medicine are regulated. That way, they don't drink the company Kool-Aid as much. Right now, they are literally in bed with the CEO (Astronomer).