Sacrificial HR

Recently I had a chance to watch a company completely destroy an entire HR department. While my career has unfortunately allowed me to see HR professionals be destroyed, an entire department snuffed out was new…and painful.

My initial response to the leveling of the department was anger, resentment, hostility. As I sat in those emotions they graduated into grief. Grief has this odd way of clearing space in a way most other emotions can’t.

In the space my grief about the destroyed HR department gave me, I began to piece together the shreds of my HR experiences; I remembered moments in conference rooms where men spoke over me, or women dismissed me, or HR wasn’t even invited.

It took the space grief gave me to realize that HR has always, and will always, Sacrifice.

Sacrifice

Sacrifice is defined by the Miriam Webster Dictionary as this: “to suffer loss of, give up, renounce, injure, or destroy especially for an ideal, belief, or end.”

There isn’t one good HR professional that hasn’t suffered loss, given up, been renounced or had to renounce, been injured or delivered injury, or be destroyed like that HR department I mentioned because of the business’ ideal and/or belief.

While I recognize that other corporate departments make sacrifices, I am wholly convinced those sacrifices are for money, customers, and the product.

HR sacrifices for people. We wake up each day and pick a profession in the corporate world that entirely revolves around the pain of loving people. I think that’s because we inherently understand that people over profit actually increases revenue.

After sitting with my grief about that HR department, and allowing painful memories from my career bubble to the surface, I decided that Sacrificial HR is caused by a few problematic truths.

Weaponized Incompetence

Whether it is the department head that expects HR to create the calendar invite, the CEO that “can’t remember our DEI statement,” or the employees that simply do not read emails pertaining to their benefits, HR is sacrificing because the corporate world has weaponized its incompetence.

Perhaps it's because HR is regularly, and incorrectly, thought of as the Administrative Department; or perhaps it is because HR isn’t even thought of at all. What is clear is that HR is not equally respected compared to their counterparts and for every fucking calendar invite we create our dignity and expertise is sacrificed just a little more

Tyrannical Leadership

There is remarkable pattern in the corporate world where businesses are built by men, and when those businesses become successful, those men become tyrants. While I could write about how power does not change someone’s character, it simply magnifies it, I think it better to focus on the structure that has enabled tyrants to thrive.

America is possessed by money. Corporations will offer up any sacrifice to the demon-god that is money and never lose sleep. HR has been, and continues to be, the first sacrifice.

When our salaries do not match the Marketing teams’ salaries, when CEOs make HR give the hard messages at Town Halls instead of doing it themselves, when HR leadership abandons their moral obligations to their team in order to gain more trust and access to the C Suite, HR pros are sacrificed and sacrificing.

There is a strict, cult-like structure around “successful” businesses that maintains this: Sales, Engineering (or product makers), and the C Suite are the driving force of the company; HR is the cleaning service picking up after that force bulldozes through a building.

The Deafening Insecurity of the Patriarchy

As a woman, this is my favorite. Before you decide that I’m a wild, bra burning liberal who hates men, you cannot deny that the corporate world (especially Corporate America) was built by men.

Men who were taught by their fathers and grandfathers and great-grandfathers that they are unsurpassed in intelligence and capability. Those men grew up to build companies we now work for; and those men now lead organizations filled with HR minds that are smarter than them.

And they know it.

HR pros (men, women, trans, non-binary) go about their day to day life in this eerily silent space of the patriarchy’s insecurity. It’s this space of the unspoken rules: make him think it’s his idea, pitch it in the way he needs, make sure you say “I’m just here to recommend, you know best,” don’t sound too confident.

Insecure leaders are dangerous leaders. They’ll throw anyone at the feet of the altar in order to save themselves. HR is, and will continue to be, the first sacrifice given when the patriarchy leads in any organization

Not Alone

I wish I had the answers to how we stop being the sacrificial lamb, and/or how we stop sacrificing so much of ourselves. I don’t.

What I do have is this resilient belief that community changes everything. Whether you’re being crushed under weaponized incompetence, bullied by tyrannical leadership, or suffocated by the patriarchy’s insecurity, you must know…you must know you are not alone.