Human resources: Difference between revisions

{{A|people|}}{{g}}If a name change is the best way to “reboot the franchise,” odds are the basics of the business are suspect. For better or worse, [[sales]] will forever be [[sales]]; [[trading]] resolutely [[trading]], and even dear old [[legal]] will always be [[legal]] <ref>Office of the [[General Counsel]] notwithstanding.</ref> —even [[marketing]], of all people, tend to stick with “[[marketing]]” — but the good people of [[personnel]] can't help re-branding themselves.  

In the heady days before [[investment banking]] become an embarrassing career choice they were “[[human capital management]]”; as the {{t|dogma}} of automation began to bite they became “[[human resources]]”; as that fad, ''inshall'ah'', blew itself out, they reinvented themselves once more as some kind “directorate of [[talent acquisition]]”. Have no doubt, the most fantastical [[LinkedIn]] [[job descriptions]] will be claimed by lifers from [[personnel]].  

 

In any case, a good portion of the [[Bullshit Jobs: A Theory - Book Review|bullshittery]] and pretty much all of the tedious [[virtue-signalling]] that is now such a feature of modern corporate life can be laid at the security controlled access to the HR department. For the same people who modishly spend hundreds of thousands on back-to-work schemes for those who took career breaks to have kids — many of whom were from the [[HR]] department, naturally — are the same ones who spent the intervening period systematically [[Redundancy|laying off]] swathes of those who decided to stay on and hold the fort.

As a policy stance, [[HR]] will publicly deny but privately insist upon [[forced ranking]]. It will demand the hardest of disciplinary lines for those poor souls shunted into the bottom bucket — all of this in the interests of fairness and transparency and to minimise claims for [[constructive dismissal]], you understand — but will then decline to permit the consequences (ie firing the poor sod) because of the risk of procedural unfairness in doing so.