Email Jim at jim.thompson@ipulpmedia.com

The Human Resources Department serves in a defensive role in most companies. Its purpose is to keep the company from being sued and to tamp down disturbances amongst the employees. At least that is the way I see it. But read on, there is a bit more.

When I was young, I thought HR actually helped develop careers. Nope...your managers help develop careers, if they are so inclined, not human resources.

In my nearly fifty-five-year career, HR departments have become more militant and more powerful.

The first place I worked, a very profitable small business ($42 million in sales in 2024 dollars) with an outsized market share in a specific industry, didn't even hire a single individual into the HR function until I had been there three years. Prior to that, each department handled their own HR needs, and the president dealt with the shop union.

The growth in the importance of HR mirrors the changes in society as a whole.

My second employer, that little old consumer products company in Cincinnati ($84 billion in sales in 2024 dollars) had both a robust HR department and a robust employee development department. All employees interacted with the employee development department regularly. As early as 1974, we were being coached in concepts that today would be recognized as at least part of the function of DEI (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion). For instance, at that time, we internally adopted "s/he" to replace "he" in all correspondence--gender neutral. I could write a book about what we did with the employee development department as early as 1974. There is nothing new under the sun.

Repeating what I said earlier, the growth in the importance of HR mirrors the changes in society as a whole. In my adult lifetime, secularity has grown significantly. Both inside and outside employers, people have turned to secular solutions to their grievances against the company and against each other.

If your HR department has a more developed goal than what I opened with, it is unspoken and is this: optimize the productivity required by the company at the lowest possible costs while protecting the company from lawsuits and bad public relations.

If you have thought about it, these are probably not the goals you would have assigned to the HR department.

You can get there, though, if you realize, at some corporate level, employees are only a necessary evil. The corporation's real goal is my long-adopted and famous goal, "spin the invoice printer" which can be interpreted as producing the highest possible revenue at the least possible costs, including the cost of employees. Thus, turning the goals of the HR department upside down, it serves to protect the employees from heartless employers and keep all, employees and employers, within the framework of modern employment laws.

We'll develop this further as the month goes on.

Be safe and we will talk next week.

If you would like to dig a little deeper [click here].

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