We’ve all heard the saying, “HR is not your friend”. But what exactly does that entail?
They look nice, so surely they are not evil creatures who would sweep abuse under the rug or manipulate employees into compromising positions right?
Well, think again.
We spent hours and hours researching academic papers that discuss HR coverups and abuse in the workplace so that you don’t have to.
Here is just some of the shocking research.
Every day, one in five people will get abused by a boss
Fred Ebeid – Professor and Chancellor at UW Parkside
What does that look like? Well, think about sexual harassment, that’s a classic workplace abuse that bosses often get away with. Some even go so far as to force remote employees into the office just to harass them.
Because workplace abuse is seldom dealt with, Bosses are empowered to abuse employees for longer periods of time without consequences.
This often results in an argumentative relationship between employees and management, where it becomes an HR problem.
That leads us to the first manipulative HR tactic.
Selective Documentation
Let’s say your boss has been emotionally abusing you for the past 6 months, and despite that, you continue to perform in your role.
But one day you decide to stick up for yourself, and you defend your work to your boss. Let’s just say, he didn’t take kindly to that.
So he works with HR to craft a narrative of poor performance to get you fired. How can he do this if you are performing well? It’s actually quite simple.
Step 1: Your boss or HR will record a pre-planned conversation where they bring up any metrics that paint you in a bad light. It does not matter if they are meaningless metrics or not.
Because your boss knows that the conversation is being recorded, they will lead you into saying things that paint you in a bad light. And they will avoid saying things that paint them in a bad light.
Step 2: Your boss will continue to emotionally abuse you to ensure that you can’t perform at your best.
Step 3: That’s really all it takes. After that, HR will have enough to walk you to the door.
Silencing You In a Severance Agreement
After termination, employers typically use that time when you are discombobulated to have you sign a severance agreement.
A typical severance agreement has you sign away all your rights to sue your employer for any possible reason including the most absurd things like ‘forced imprisonment’.
They know you are likely to sign because you need the money and you need them to provide a positive reference in the future.
However, if you ever find yourself in this situation, you should not sign right away if you can afford it. Instead, catalog the leverage you might have based on your state employment laws and draft up some redlines.
We recommend adding a mutual nondisparagement agreement and a clause where the employer agrees to provide a positive reference.
Depending on the severity of your employer’s actions, you may be best suited to retain counsel.
Coverups!
According to Brightwork Research, HR departments have not been able to stop sexual harassment when the harassment comes from high-status individuals within the organization.
So instead of stopping sexual harassment, HR usually needs to cover it up.
We could list the many public companies that have engaged in scandals in the last few years, but you can google those yourself.
Instead, let’s go over how HR manipulates you and your colleagues to cover up indecent work environments.
The first thing HR does to cover up an incident is pressure the employee to sign an NDA. Similar to a severance agreement, an NDA takes away the majority of that employee’s rights to sue or speak out about the company and its actions.
They can pressure employees to sign through an NDA multitude of tactics. The easiest is to threaten their livelihood. From there, they could offer cash incentives or they could get nasty and discuss how shameful the employee would feel if people found out about their ‘immodest behavior’.
After all, pressuring employees to do what management wants has never been easier. The reason for this is that CEOs have never had more power over their employees. Take a look at this chart of CEO pay.
Crafting A Narrative
One of the key functions of an HR department is to protect a business against lawsuits.
Often times this involves laying the groundwork for a legal defense. The way they do this is by deciding what narrative would look most beneficial in the court of law and shifting reality to fit that narrative.
After all, they control the documents and records within the organization, so it’s pretty easy to make any employee look like a bad actor if they need to.
This is one of the more sinister manipulation tactics HR uses, but they use it often.
In the case of a sexual harassment incident, HR might dig up dirt on the accusor (Especially if the alleged perpetrator is an executive). They might go to her boss and ask loaded questions that reliably paint a picture of a poor performer that is disgruntled.
All in a good day’s work.
Snubbing You on Compensation
Groceries are up 30%, airfare prices are up nearly 70%… it only makes sense that you get a raise. If not for that, then maybe for your exceptional performance?
Well, HR is there to make sure that you don’t get it.
One key component of HR manipulation is to stack rank all employees and put them in compensation buckets. This means that, regardless of how well everyone performs, they have to be doing worse than one of their peers.
So you could be performing at a world-class level, but as long as your performance review places you below average, then HR will tell you that you don’t deserve a raise.
Another tactic HR uses to avoid raising your salary is the False Promise. You were promised a raise if you did x, so now x has come and they then say: That was okay, but if you really want a raise I actually need you to do y. Then the cycle continues…
The third and last manipulative trick that HR uses on you is the ‘Delay’, They will delay performance reviews, bonuses, commission…. anything they can to prevent paying you more. If you work there for more than one year, then the months add up, and eventually, they may have successfully snubbed you out of years of additional compensation.
