Ideally, the human resources function or department represents the employee to management and management to the employee. Sadly, in our experience, most human resources people are inclined to support the individuals who sign their paycheck and the employees are left swinging in the breeze. It is no wonder that employees will gravitate towards collective bargaining when they are presented with infantilization of their behavior by corporate regimes.

We realize that the human resources position is difficult, but we have never seen a situation where the human resources function was not a strategic function. In most cases, companies really are their people and in those companies driven by technology, we would expect substantial resilience even after the brick and mortar burns down.

We have seen companies permit a variety of abuses because they thought they could get away with it in a “right to work” state:

• Female left to walk alone in a passport situation
• Reductions in force (mass firings) to apply fiduciary correction after a management blooper
• Failure to train people how to perform their jobs
• Screaming, yelling, and other degrading behaviors

In all of these events, human resources people are situated precisely in the middle. That is their job and it is not an easy one.