So your HR department makes you unhappy?

Raise your hand: Who has enough human resources?

Maybe you’re annoyed by the endless stream of notes and forms, many of which need to be filled out ASAP. Maybe you’re annoyed by the new initiatives that keep popping up in HR, which never seems to have enough new initiatives, not all of which are necessary or particularly smart in your opinion. Or maybe you have some management problem and don’t trust the HR reps to actually help. They’re friendly, to be sure, but they’re paid by the suits. In a crisis, it’s pretty clear which side they’re on.

HR is a point of contention for many employees and managers, and it seems to have more critics than at any point since the pandemic began. That’s when HR began administering remote work and pay transparency policies, programs to improve diversity, equity, and inclusion, and everything else that has shaken up and changed the workplace over the past four years.

Sign up for the New York Times Morning Newsletter

But if HR is bugging you, here’s a fact that might be paradoxically comforting: you’re not as irritated and depressed as the people who work in HR.

That was evident at Unleash, an annual three-day conference and expo held this year at Caesars Forum, a massive convention hall near the Las Vegas Strip. The May event brought together some 4,000 HR professionals from across the country. It was billed as a place where “global HR leaders come to do business and discover inspiring stories.”

Rather, it was a place where HR employees came to complain.

“It all seems like a hopeless task,” said Kyle Lagunas, a former HR executive at General Motors who now works at Aptitude Research, an HR consultancy based in Boston. He had just finished a highly animated presentation on HR technology to an audience of about 50 people. He sat in a designated media room and grumbled a bit about the vexing challenges of managing HR during and after the pandemic’s disruption.

“We spent years putting out fires with cans of gasoline,” he said. “And now here we are, literally giving it our all, and it’s like, ‘Oh, thanks for everything, but’” — and here’s the G-rated version — get lost. “‘Don’t give me too much work. I’m not dotting the i’s and the t’s. I’m the business, and you’re HR.’”

More notes coming soon

Part of the frustration stems from the fact that office behavior has become noticeably less civil in the wake of COVID-19, which means HR is being called in to resolve disputes more often. Everyone at Unleash has a story about explaining basic etiquette to uncouth colleagues. No, you can’t microwave fish for lunch. Stop clipping your toenails at your desk.

Don’t bring weapons to the office.

“This happened at a company I used to work for,” said Vanessa Castillo, a longtime Florida-based human resources executive who spoke above the din of the speakeasy-style bar at The Cosmopolitan. She said a woman “who had broken up with someone in the office” brought a gun. Castillo sent the employee home, then called the police, fearing she might return in a deadly rage. The employee was fired, and officers were stationed in the parking lot for a week.

HR knows that employees and managers are irritated by his memos, his processes, almost anything that interrupts life as it used to be. When an email goes out urging everyone to take a 45-minute online course on, say, data security, HR can almost hear the eye-rolling.

That said, don’t expect an apology. The consensus at Unleash was that most of these new ideas, like more diversity or standardized workplace reviews, are designed to make for a more equitable workplace.

So get used to taking notes.

Also, while you’re at it, get used to human capital management software. A recent Business Insider article titled “Everyone Hates Workday” asked why half of Fortune 500 companies use this particular software—which handles benefits and recruiting and facilitates pay equity analysis—despite the fact that it creates “mountains of unnecessary work for everyone.”

It’s not the software’s fault, HR veterans say. It’s your company’s fault for not setting it up wisely or training you properly. Workday is here to stay, and one Unleash attendee had this advice for its many haters: “Buckle up, honey.”

Mostly, though, the tone of Unleash was depressing and exhausted. Attendees commiserated and bonded over lectures, lunches, and evening cocktail parties. They bought branded merchandise, like stuffed ferrets from a social media screening company called Ferretly. They ate chocolate-dipped waffles billed as vegetarian. They watched a “Shark Tank”-style competition between five HR-related tech startups competing for a whopping $50,000 check.

In quieter places, attendees complained about low pay, turnover, and increasing workloads. One spoke of a mental breakdown brought on by work. There were many concerns about artificial intelligence, which seems poised to take over their company’s recruiting department.

Many HR executives have left the industry in recent years or are looking for better opportunities. In 2022, LinkedIn found that HR has the highest turnover rate of all the positions it tracks. “Everybody hates us,” said Hebba Youssef, chief people officer at Workweek, who runs a podcast and newsletter for HR professionals called “I Hate It Here.” Posts include “Why Does Working in HR Feel So Lonely?” and “Everybody Hates Their Jobs Right?”

Youssef particularly lamented the lack of trust employees have in HR. That’s depressing, she said, because most people go into the industry to be helpful. “People in HR tend to be very compassionate, very empathetic,” she said. “But a lot of employees see us as inherently bad.”

Let’s humanize the company

The HR department was born more than a century ago, and it had an unlikely father. John Henry Patterson was the founder of the National Cash Register Co. in Dayton, Ohio, which pioneered the mass production of a novel money-counting machine. Patterson had a Monopoly Man mustache and a ruthless nature. He was so keen on predatory pricing that in 1912 he was convicted of violating the Sherman Antitrust Act and sentenced to a year in prison. (His conviction was overturned on appeal.)

He warmed to his 5,400 employees. Finally. After customers in England returned $50,000 worth of faulty machines to the Dayton plant, he had an epiphany. Patterson concluded that his employees didn’t care about the quality of the company’s products because they assumed he didn’t care.

He changed tactics overnight, according to his 1922 obituary in The New York Times. He moved his desk to the factory floor and took other measures to “humanize” the company, as the Times put it. National Cash Register offered benefits like day care and lunchtime entertainment in the company cafeteria.

“It was originally called ‘social work,’ because employers were interested in the well-being of their employees,” said Gary Hoover, executive director of the American Business History Center in Tyler, Texas. After World War II, when lifetime employment became the norm, the job was about making sure employees stayed.

“That starts to wane in the recession of 1980-81,” said Peter Cappelli, a professor of management at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. “Companies were facing an existential threat from Japan, which was making better cars, better steel. Executives started laying people off, and in downsizing mode, they didn’t care much about employee satisfaction.”

At that time, the “personnel department” was renamed “human resources.”

“It was about stopping thinking about employees as people to take care of,” Cappelli said. “People became resources, assets like any other, like machines. The priority wasn’t helping people. It was helping the company.”

The question of HR’s priorities and purpose has been growing ever since. When the #MeToo reckoning began, many wondered why HR hadn’t prevented many of the worst transgressions with timely, decisive interventions. Critics say the department’s primary mission has long been to keep the company running quietly and smoothly, and before the sexual harassment epidemic became a national scandal, that often meant stifling conflict.

HR has recently been dealing with the fallout from a monumental event. When offices closed due to the pandemic, HR implemented remote work policies that evolved as return-to-work dates were pushed into the future. Tens of millions of U.S. workers have quit their jobs since 2021 in the Great Resignation. HR has found replacements. When mandatory DEI programs were introduced after the murder of George Floyd, leading to renewed efforts to address racial issues, HR had another mission.

Some of those missions have changed, yet again. Tiffany Lee worked in recruiting at Zoom, the teleconferencing company she joined in October 2020, just as remote work was taking off and the software was gaining popularity. Zoom was one of many companies to launch a DEI initiative after a summer of racial justice protests, and Lee was part of the HR team that introduced it to potential employees.

But by late last year, the DEI backlash was in full swing. Zoom and other companies—including Meta and Alphabet—were scaling back their programs. For Zoom, that meant cutting much of its internal team. Lee and others were laid off.

“My work just wasn’t appreciated,” she said.

(A Zoom spokesperson said in a statement that the company remains committed to those ideals: “We continue to work with leading external experts to help us develop DEI programs and ensure best practices are in place.”)

Other HR portfolio positions haven’t changed as much as they’ve multiplied. There are so many workplace complaints these days that companies are calling in outside counsel to investigate more and more internal complaints, providing a solid source of billable hours for law firms.

One such firm is Ogletree Deakins, which has offices in 32 states. After the pandemic hit, so many corporate clients hired the firm to conduct internal investigations that a dedicated practice group was formed in 2021. The group has since doubled its staff to 50 attorneys.

Many investigate complaints from lower-level HR employees against higher-level employees. Yes, HR wants help investigating itself.

“Let’s say you have employees who are complaining that there are systemic inequalities, that there’s unconscious bias, that harassment is rampant,” said Monique Gougisha Doucette, a partner in Ogletree’s investigations practice. “You typically go to HR, but if your HR is tainted from the top, there’s nothing you can do about it. Because you think the HR function is ultimately a sham.”

No one at Unleash described HR in those terms, but many struggle with the divided loyalties that are built into the department’s design. They also bristle at the invisibility of their best work. When HR fires people, word gets out. When HR prevents layoffs, no one knows.

“It’s a thankless job,” said Aptitude’s Lagunas. “That’s why we come to these conferences.”

c.2024 The New York Times Company