“HR is not your friend.” You’ve seen this phrase go around on social media, right? But why do we say that? It’s hard to notice a toxic relationship between employer and employee because of the way the narrative is framed. When you get hired, HR presents you with an offer letter. “Congratulations! You’ve been selected as the top candidate! Here is your salary offer!” On your first day, HR greets you in orientation to inform you about your employee perks and benefits. Finally, they let you know that they are the go-to people if you ever have an issue at work. They seem friendly so far, right?

Remember this: Everything that belongs to the company will be managed in the interest of profit, including you. You belong to the company; you are there so you can produce value. You are a “human resource.” The HR department is there to manage the company’s human resources. (You’d think that, because of the department name, that it is a resource for humans, but it is the other way around.)

To understand the true function of HR, we need to review it in a historical context. In the 1970s and 80s, the Human Resources Management movement took off. Activists at the time wanted better working conditions. Following the spurt of activism during the 1960s and 70s, workplaces saw massive changes in the 1980s. More and more companies began creating Human Resources departments as a direct response. If their development was a result of worker concerns, they must be on our side, right? Not really. Let’s explore further.

Work at the start of the 20th century was all about the factory. Workers produced results with their hands. As time went on, new technologies were introduced to the world: Xerox machines, computers with software, and telecommunication options people never would have imagined. With new tech came new jobs. No longer was everyone destined to work in the factory. People were placed in cubicles, required to talk to customers on the phone, and assigned to projects with their teammates. Hands were no longer the sole requirement for producing value. Employees were now expected to use their hands, their minds, and their hearts on the job: to communicate, to persuade, and to think.

In a way, this type of work seems more attractive to us: It gives us the opportunity to use our creative and strategic minds in our daily lives. Factory work, on the other hand, appears to dehumanize us, making us feel like one-dimensional creatures. According to Kathi Weeks in her book The Problem with Work, the workplace revamp was fueled by “the publication in 1973 of a government study that found widespread dissatisfaction and disaffection among US workers: ‘Dull, repetitive, seemingly meaningless tasks are causing discontent among workers at all occupational levels’” (106). Office work, as opposed to factory labor, has a curious way of making us feel human again as our multifaceted nature actually gets put to use. Although we are resources for the company, we are at least being acknowledged as human ones, “‘empowered’ to develop [our] capacities and maximize value at the same time” (107).

As workplaces became more complex, Human Resources departments became an essential part of business strategy. If companies were now expected to satisfy a person’s human needs holistically—their growth, their fulfillment, their belonging—they needed a way to manage all of this. If they failed to nurture their employees and keep them engaged, everyone would leave their jobs and profits would become nonexistent. In every Human Resources management course I’ve taken, this was the frame the conversations took place in: profit. Keeping people happy at work isn’t a mission of bettering humanity. Keeping workers happy means greater success for the business and higher profits for the company stakeholders.

Now, let’s fast-forward to the modern era of Human Resources. I used to work in HR for over 5 years at the number one public university in the world: UC Berkeley. When I first started, the department name was “Central HR.” Eventually, a new CHRO came in and renamed us to “People & Culture.” He wanted to step away from the old-school vision of HR as a scary department that solely managed its workers as resources. The new name was softer in what it conveyed: As employees, we were people who contributed to a greater workplace culture. The new name made our department seem more approachable, but processes were business as usual: As HR staff, we were still in service to the organization, not to people’s actual wants and needs which were generally less work and more pay.

If you do a YouTube search of “HR is not your friend,” you’ll get many results from employment lawyers exposing the true nature of Human Resources departments and their unwillingness to help their employees. If you have a complaint, HR will try their best to hide it. They’ll listen to you and do their best to seem engaged and empathetic while, at the same time, making no effort to leave a proper paper trail. To sum up most of these YouTube videos, the main goal of HR is to ensure that you don’t sue the company and cost them millions.

I have a friend, Alejandro, who went through a tough time in his position when we were working at Berkeley. His supervisor didn’t respect him. She micromanaged him because she thought her way of doing work was the only way. She was passive aggressive with him and there were racist undertones to everything she did. Have you ever had a boss like that?

Another coworker of mine, Shirley, previously had the same boss as my friend Alejandro and they both shared the same experiences. No one liked this supervisor at the office, but, somehow, the organization did nothing to stop her. Alejandro went through a full-fledged “investigation” with HR: Meetings were held and cases were opened, but the only result he got was a reassignment to another supervisor. In this case, HR did its job successfully because Alejandro didn’t sue. I had lunch with him about a week ago and we reflected on the situation. He told me that it wasn’t all that bad; he said he felt heard by his HR representative. Was that their goal? All it takes to calm down an employee is to make them feel heard, as if HR is our workplace therapist?

Stories like my friend Alejandro’s are the stories we don’t hear when it comes to Human Resources departments. When we think of HR, we think of employee benefits, diversity initiatives, and culture creation. In a post-pandemic work world where we are expected to integrate our hands, our minds, our hearts, and, now, our own homes, the HR function is needed in business now more than ever. I can only imagine how work and, as a result, HR will evolve with new AI technologies being introduced to us. Like we have seen in history before, as technology evolves, so does work. With each evolution, we hope that technology will free us from labor, but, in actuality, work continues to monopolize more and more of our lives.

Why do we accept this control over our short lifespans? Is it because we think we have friends that are on our side? HR tries to be our friends so we stay happy at work. They provide so much more than health benefits to us nowadays. Workplaces will pay for your professional development—an opportunity to further your education so you can provide more value to the organization. Wellness days make you feel like you have a work-life balance. Diversity initiatives remind us that we, too, as minorities belong in the institution. And we are now encouraged to bring our “authentic self” to the workplace. Just don’t be your authentic self if a coworker or customer disrespects you and pisses you off. “Be professional.”

Objectively, the benefits that HR offers to us are great. We should always seek out jobs with the best working conditions, not just the best salaries. However, I bring these points up to highlight the bigger picture as to why HR is not really our friend. As opposed to other videos that argue that the main HR function is to prevent lawsuits, my thesis is about the bigger historical and strategic development of Human Resources Management in business. Maintaining an effective HR department is a necessary business strategy for all corporations to increase their profits, prevent legal disasters, and—the most scary part—maintain control over our lives. As Weeks states, “Whether or not the watchwords of such programs—empowerment, participation, responsibility, flexibility, and enrichment—involve empty rhetoric or meaningful improvements in the experience of work for employees, they do give employers opportunities to induce new modes and degrees of effort, and in some cases of identification. Thus, worker empowerment can boost efficiency, flexibility can serve as a way to cut costs, and participation can produce commitment to the organization […]. In short, often programs presented under the rubric of work enrichment are also methods of work intensification. In a kind of bad dialectic, quality becomes quantity as the call for better work is translated into a requirement for more work.” This quotation blew my mind when I read it. When I was working in HR, I was surrounded by all of these managerial discourses in their attempt to create a successful workplace culture. What does “workplace culture” even mean? I’d love to hear your experiences with your “workplace cultures” in the comments because, to me, it always seemed like a vague idea full of empty promises.

After realizing the sad reality of HR, I decided to leave and pursue my own path in life outside of a big organization. Having a typical office job is the right fit for some people, but not for me. Now, I am a “Quit Your Job” career and life coach. I help people who are unhappy in the typical 9 to 5 path mentally prepare for the scary task of quitting a job and seeking out their own creative endeavors. If that sounds like you, I’d love to work with you to bring your creative dream to life. Email me at therichbinch@gmail.com if you would like to set up a free consultation. I’ll see you in the next one, friend.