Did you guys see the ABC 20/20 expose’ “True Confessions”. HR was ousted again as cutthroat, law-breaking ninnies; corporate hell at its very best (or worse). HR is the Lindsay Lohan of the office, once again in trouble and really not very sorry for being in trouble. The Ebenezer Scrooge, the Mr. Grinch, the Bad Santa of cubeland.
Cindy Shapiro, former HR pro, wrote a new book “Corporate Confidential,” which tattles in a big way on the corporate HR bully. Such an intriguing topic that ABC has lumped HR with the likes of naughty waiters (can you say “special sauce”), snarky retail sales clerks and porn stars. Whistle-blower Cindy tells stories of HR’s dirty ways of finding loopholes in the law to lay-off top performers, equating taking too much vacation time with slacking (aka an excuse to fire), treating ugly people and beautiful people poorly, and weeding out pregnant candidates from job opportunities. One victim in the piece said simply, “The worst thing is that HR was not there to help me, but to help Citibank”.
Second verse same as the first…we’ve heard this all before. Cliché HR doing cliché things. But I was glued to the piece. The reasons clichés are clichés is because there are some patterns of evident truths. Frankly, the tactics described in the piece on pregnant job candidates made me wince. Why?
I don’t doubt some employers do these things. I am fortunate to work for a company culture where policies and practices are typically employee-centric. My current employer, Daxko, doesn’t even call employees “employees”. All here are called team members. No company I’ve worked for discriminated against pregnant women. Several were hired when they were pregnant, in another case a new job was actually held until a new mother had her baby, and personally in my time at Daxko, three of my team members have been pregnant a total of four times. We’re all totally down with it.
When I watched the piece, however, one big thing that came to mind was in many cases HR cleans up the mess of poor management. Do you really think HR said “hell yea, I think you should weed out pregnant ladies”, or “I think it is very smart to fire people for taking off too much vacation time”. HR pros I know are usually asked to practice naughty things because of a bad directive, an old-school executive team or a poor decision that has already been made by a poor manager. The piece did elude to this….but not enough. HR as corporate janitor. Cleaning up messes after it is too late to do anything about them. Where HR is failing is fighting harder or even having the courage to quit working for companies who practice these things. Difficult for sure, I know.
Here are a few other things that this piece did bring to my mind:
- Women are still getting the short end of the stick in corporate America. We’ve come a long way baby and sisters are doin’ it for themselves, but we’ve only completed 13.1; men have completed the 26.2.
- HR press is typically negative.
- Some HR pros are sick of doing the wrong thing and willing to say so in a very public way.
- I wonder if Cindy should be investigated for perhaps engaging in these naughty HR behaviors. Who knows? (Not trying to be a trouble maker but did think it).
I don’t know Cindy Shapiro. Maybe she is a nut, maybe she had a bone to pick, and maybe she made the whole thing up. But I’m surprised this book didn’t come out sooner frankly. I hate you wrote this book before me.
I saw it and couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Maybe it’s because I’m still early in my HR career (6 years) and/or because I’m in California, but I have never heard of anyone doing these things.
I saw the piece too and like you I was glued to the set. I got a phone call from a friend, asking was that stuff true. I told her that I bet its happened but I have worked for some places that hired women knowing full well they were expecting. Unfortunately, I worked for some bad places too that breaks rules and discriminate. I agree with you, I don’t know that lady but that’s her experience I suppose. We all have got some stories just be lucky you’ve got good ones too.
Yeah, that got me fired up. I think I first saw Laurie Ruettimann tweet it. At first I thought it was from The Onion, then a bit later I thought it was a paid infomercial for this woman’s book. (It may very well have been…)
Of course there is bad stuff in the workplace. People are fallible, conflict averse, insecure, and uncomfortable with that which is different. Its inevitable. However, I genuinely believe most organizations try to do the right thing (even if they get in their own way in the attempt). To paint such a broad picture over corporate america and HR is irresponsible and naive.
Ms. Shapiro is all that is wrong with HR. Instead of taking a stand for what is right she goes and tries to get her 15 minutes of fame and a payday. Do you think she stood up to her management? Do you think she blew the whistle? I doubt it. Hell, exposing them to the public would have alienated their customer base and probably enacted some change. And it would be easy to do.
Oh, and I feel bad for all the people who buy into this garbage and think that being a brown-noser is the way to not lose your job.
*deep breath*
Yea…. I agree. Most everyone I know in HR wants to do the right thing. Are they perfect?…no. But they are trying. I do have my thoughts about Ms. Shapiro, although I still wish I wrote the book first! My take certainly would have show the bad stuff, the fab stuff, and would highlight how good HR deals with the bad stuff .
I have always said any good HR person worth their salt needs to be ready to get fired or quit at any time. Otherwise you lose your ability to be a true governance function and will potentially get caught in an unethical situation. While I think some of the things Cindy said can be true at some organizations, the idea that it is like this everywhere is absurd. And you are so right – in the end, these are management decisions and stem from unethical leaders. One HR person quitting isn’t going to stop or change things. But, as I have moved around, really understanding the integrity of the leaders has become the number one thing I need to understand before joining a company. As usual, success of failure comes down to leadership and it starts at the top.
Amen…
Having been in HR for 14 years, I take my job very seriously and always TRY to do and advocate doing the right thing. Sometimes, the right thing isn’t that clear–situations get awfully convoluted, sometimes we are unable to influence the actual decision maker who disagrees with our professional opinion, many times we are cleaning up after poor decisions that others made without consulting us first and of course, sometimes we make mistakes–it happens and this stuff is not easy to deal with. No one is perfect, but speaking for myself I can honestly say that I stand up for what I think is the right thing to do and that I believe in fairness and empathy. And I will dig my heels in when I need to so I can do everything in my power to achieve what I feel is the right outcome. That aside, let me be really clear about 1 thing–HR’s role is as that of an agent of the company–HR represents the company and is there to ensure that the right things happen regarding employee issues, and that the company policies are fair and are applied consistently. Contrary to popular belief, HR is not there to ensure employees are happy at all times–I can assure you that even if that were the case, we would never achieve that. HR’s role is to help facilitate business decisions relating to the workforce and sometimes, the right business decision is to discipline or terminate an employee, sometimes the right business decision is to remove managers (whilst still employees, also considered as agents of the company) that continually execute poor practices and make poor decisions in how they treat their employees. Ms. Shapiro has shown her poor character by not standing up for what she believed was right in her past as an HR professional, and then turning around with a “tell all”, making the assumption that all HR people are as ethically deficient as she is and capitalizing on it. She is wrong and all she has done here is expose herself as the person that she is. I know she gets paid a lot of money to speak at events and I would ask anyone considering engaging her to think about the message that sends. It is shameful that she has tried to drag the rest of the profession down with her to justify her poor decisions and actions and even more shameful that a show like 20/20 was incredibly one-sided in the way this topic was presented.
EXCELLENT ARTICLE, DAWN!