'Not Your Lawyer or Priest'
Understanding your HR department's true nature.
I write Toxic Workplace Survival Guy because I want to help as many people as possible do as I did: survive long enough to emerge with my soul, dignity and career intact, on my own terms. A big thank-you to all those who’ve become paid subscribers.
Survival Tool #23: HR Is Not Your Friend
You know those moments when you read a post and it describes your experience so precisely that you throw back your head and laugh?
I had one of those the other day, when Genevieve sent me this Linkedin post about human resources departments by employment advocate Dan Goodman.
I recommend reading the post in full, but the first few paragraphs give the gist:
Seeing Past our Projections
Though Toxic Workplace Survival Guy takes a jaundiced view of those complicit in the brutality of the toxic workplace, this newsletter will never judge anyone — even those who work in HR. No doubt many HR staff recognise the toxicity in their environment, but haven’t yet figured out an escape. If you work in HR, then be assured that this newsletter is for you, too.1
That said, Dan Goodman’s post was so on point because so many of us naively assume that we can appeal to the HR department to protect us.
Faced with the bullying in our toxic workplace, a child part in us will naturally look to an authority of some kind to serve as our referee — and it’s easy to project that benevolent parent or teacher role onto HR.
This is a mistake.
As Goodman states, HR is not your “lawyer or priest.”
The HR department exists purely to protect the careers of the people at the top of the company who wield the most power. It doesn’t care about what happens to you. (Survival Tool#11: Read the Room).
That can be hard to swallow.
After all, aren’t we doing the company a favour by going to the considerable trouble of documenting the harms caused by particular managers or staff? (Survival Tool #2: Keep a Record).
Nope.
HR’s job is to propagate the company’s self-serving myths, and pathologise anybody who challenges these narratives.
Restoring the ‘Soul Void’
Sure, you might be offered a show of formal investigations, grievance procedures, or offers of mediation. But know that it’s very unlikely that management will consider your toxic situation egregious enough to do anything substantial to remedy it.
In 99 percent of cases, HR will happily sweep the problems you’ve raised under the rug — then collude with management in blaming you for causing them.
The bullying or other toxic behaviours you’ve named will continue unchecked, and more people will go through the same ordeal you did, leaving the top team to continue pretending that it’s all fine. (Survival Tool #7: Reframe Your Predicament).
By all means raise your concerns with HR, but only if you recognise that doing so is a Kamikazee strategy: You’re sacrificing yourself for a lost cause.
And if all this feels a little dispiriting, I recommend reading this inspiring post by Amy Elizabeth Fox, chief executive of Mobius Group Executive Leadership, on restoring the “soul void” in corporations (Survival Tool #17: Hold a Vision):
“One cannot overstate the degree to which our social agreements, shaped by generations of untreated trauma, keep all of us unnecessarily numb, defeated, and outrageously compromising what matters most to our hearts and spirit,” Fox writes. “If organizations are willing to risk and invest in true transformation of leaders then these same organizations can become a wild catalyst for a new world. One made whole by workplaces where everyone dares to be bold, aspires to be generous and connected, yearns to contribute, and welcomes the uniqueness of each employee.”
I’d love to hear about people’s experience of HR in the comments.
And if you work in HR, and want to support Toxic Workplace Survival Guy, then please do get in touch. This movement needs you.
Summary
“Don’t make the mistake of assuming the HR department is there to rescue you. Its employees have one job: To protect the reputations of the company’s more important power-brokers, whose interests will rarely align with yours.”
An Invitation this Summer: The Resonant Man Dialogues
Myself and Jacob Kishere are offering a series of four free online gatherings in June, July and August as part of our Resonant Man Initiative. The first three sessions are aimed at men, but the fourth session is open to men and women. Details here.
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I write Toxic Workplace Survival Guy during my spare time from working as an editor at nonprofit climate news service DeSmog (a model workplace). Subscribing, sharing, liking, commenting or buying me a coffee helps make this project sustainable. Thank you!
If you work in HR, and are willing to share your understanding of workplace toxicity from the inside, so that your knowledge may help others, please contact me.
Thanks for this Matthew...I really enjoy reading your publications and appreciate how they help me from the enormous amount of gaslighting I have endured. Particularly by HR... or rather 'People Care' in my previous company. I am not actually sure how people in HR manage the incongruence they must feel acting as these agents. Would be interesting to hear their take in an article one day...
Yup have very much experienced this. Even when I documented everything incredibly carefully. Absolutely nothing happened and senior leadership were able to get away with racist behaviour with a few trite words saying they won't do it again...