i do not see anyone here that thinks that employee in this situation, should report behavior of this manager to HR.
I believe this is one of the purposes of they existence. they should talk more people there this manager works with and then discuss that with both sides.
I'm also surprised that before firing, HR didn't try to discuss with employee about issues that manager was having.
Reporting it to HR was the right thing to do. This behavior can become a liability for the company, HR should protect the company from employees like this, so it was in the best interest of the company to report this.
One of the things I've learned is never report things like that to HR. Report them to the police.
The job of HR is not to help you, the employee. It is to protect the company. The more credible your complaints to HR look, especially if there was some negligence in your management chain, the more they will try to damage your story or credibility. That's their job.
HR has their own obligations to the people they report to. If they can't justify the manager's suggestion without sticking their necks out to a degree they're comfortable with they probably won't.
They'll mostly side with the manager (because selection bias, not a lot of managers are bringing them cases of people they want fired where that outcome is not compatible with the processes) but may very well tell a manager to just deal with it if that's what's "doing their jobs" looks like.
Things like this are never as black and white as people looking for cheap upvotes make them out to be.
I should add for clarification that even if they spoke to the persons manager, they would be obligated to go to HR regardless. Both routes lead to HR. Also I am not a lawyer. Review the laws in your state or let HR sort it out. Bring witnesses.
I find it bizarre that HR would be involved in this at all. I'm glad I've only been a manager at places where HR pretty much functioned as a consultant available to management.
Gonna disagree. Do not go to HR. HR is there for the company, not for you. They will seek whatever is the fastest, easiest way to resolve things for the company — which probably is not firing a manager.
In case it's not clear, I have not had helpful experiences with HR.
Welcome to life in practically any large US corporation. Most employees will never complain to HR, they may need some routine services that HR provides and that’s the extent of their interaction. But there are a few who do complain. If these are peer-related complaints, HR will work with the employees managers to resolve the issue. But let’s say someone has a problem with their manager. Maybe no one else has complained about him before, or if so the complaints appear to be isolated incidents. Let’s say he has a lot of positive feedback from his peers, manager, and other subordinates.
Now you, the complainant, are the problem. And oh boy you have some special life circumstances - yikes, you are like a loaded bomb dropped in the lap of HR. They are not in any position of power, they can’t set the policy for your department (rightfully - they are not in the know), so your boss holds all the cards. HR won’t dig to the bottom of anything, and a manager is more important that a developer. At best it’s he-said-she-said and ignored, at worst you are shown the door after some minimal make nice by the company to avoid future liability.
I think it takes a strong top-down initiative to avoid cultural issues like this at an organization. At some place as large as Amazon there are bound to be isolated incidents but to all indications this behavior is, if not encouraged (in some cases it appears to be), not actively discouraged and is hence tacitly approved of at Amazon. I’ve seen what it takes to get a bad manager moved or fired by their subordinates - it requires an outright coup. Rarely does such a thing happen and it’s not guaranteed to succeed. Whereas, a conscientious and capable manager can walk in and straighten something like this out in fairly short order, with minimal drama.
Side-stepping management and complaining to the HR department. The HR department's job is to protect and side with the company. Often enough they will call or email the manager asking "what's going on with employee XY" and sometimes even forward the full complaint email to management. Unless there's serious misconduct (e.g. sexual harassment, fraud) expect little privacy.
I used to agree with this position but after the last 3 companies I've worked for I've learned the hard way to handle it differently.
You sound like a manager who actually cares and empathizes with your employee. I had a manager like you. It was amazing. But you aren't the norm.
Going to HR will generally only draw negative attention. There is no situation I've seen where someone needed HR and HR actually did anything meaningful to support them.
I prefer to deal with each manager differently. Getting it in your HR file means you lose control over who knows what, and how it was explained to them.
I know someone who had a problem because they didn't disclose it and the other person ended up harassing them so it would've been waaayyy easier if they had talked to HR about it before.
"My director/manager started making inappropriate comments about a member of my team, including that the Googler was likely pregnant again and was overly emotional and hard to work with when pregnant."
So she reported her female manager to HR for gossiping, which the manager can easily deny since words are different than actions. HR exists to protect the company. It's best to only go to HR when there is illegal conduct.
Say this three times in the mirror before you report anything: "HR exists to protect the company". Yes it's shitty and unfortunate, but I wouldn't expect much from them.
Edit: Hit enter too soon, but does anyone have a better solution that going to HR? I've seen it several times that this is the outcome, manager protected, employee shunned or moved. In one case the employee was given 12 months of severance if she agreed not to sue, nothing was done to the manager.
That's why HR departments exist? Jeeze. And here I was thinking it was to create a line of obfuscatory defence between employees and management :P
/in all seriousness though, approaching HR with a complaint against a workmate is just as likely to get YOU in trouble and make work for you as it is to actually work in your favour. If you're going to approach HR, please please please do it with a bit of knowledge about how it works in your company, and not just because you believed the spiel they delivered during orientation about being there to serve you. (hint: Unless you're their boss, you are not the one that HR serves).
I'm not sure I've ever heard a story where a manager attempts to fire someone, but HR decides to replace the manager instead. Is that something you've seen? I only hear stories about managers being protected as hard as possible by HR.
True, there are some very dysfunctional cases. In general though, if a manager disagrees strongly enough, they can protect their reports. Yes, it might impact their personal career, but it's weird to criticize HR for just following orders and not apply the same criticisms to the manager (something I'm seeing a lot of in these discussions). The manager is much more familiar with the laid-off employee, their work, and the criteria used to judge them. Ultimately, the manager has much more final say than HR people who are essentially just messengers to shield management.
I wouldn't expect HR to do anything, nor would I expect them to send out a mail if someone quit or were fired.
I do think the right thing is for the manager to acknowledge the situation and maybe hold some kind of gathering in remembrance. Possibly even pull together something to send to the family of the deceased. But I don't think this means anything coming from HR, it's gotta come from people who knew the person.
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