In the old days, there was personnel: payroll, hiring, and—should things go terribly awry—pink slips. It was an office where the clatter of a typewriter signaled that volumes of paperwork were being shifted from inbox to outbox, and where employees could be just as bloodlessly reshuffled from “in” to “out.” It was women’s work, and in the popular imagination it was the terrain of the spinster: humorless, a stickler.
Human resources performs all of these old functions, along with a host of new ones. Employees often imagine that the “resources” on offer are the benefits that flow to them from that department, but in the term’s 19th-century origins, it is the workers themselves who are the resources, one more asset—along with equipment, factories, and capital—at the company’s disposal. Most HR reps today would never dream of speaking about employees as a type of commodity (at least not to their face), although it can be hard to understand what, exactly, these reps are talking about, because the field is rich with jargon: onboarding, balanced scorecards, cultural integration, the 80/20 rule.
Human resources performs all of these old functions, along with a host of new ones. Employees often imagine that the “resources” on offer are the benefits that flow to them from that department, but in the term’s 19th-century origins, it is the workers themselves who are the resources, one more asset—along with equipment, factories, and capital—at the company’s disposal. Most HR reps today would never dream of speaking about employees as a type of commodity (at least not to their face), although it can be hard to understand what, exactly, these reps are talking about, because the field is rich with jargon: onboarding, balanced scorecards, cultural integration, the 80/20 rule.
On The Office, Michael Scott once said of Toby, the Dunder Mifflin HR rep: “If I had a gun with two bullets, and I was in a room with Hitler, bin Laden, and Toby, I would shoot Toby twice.” Over the past year, every time a friend asked what I was working on and I mentioned the letters HR, there was a remarkably consistent response: a quiet groan and a brief, skyward look—not a two-bullet look, but not a one-bullet look, either.
Fairly or not, HR is seen as the division of the company that slows things down, generates endless memos, meddles in employees’ personal business, holds compulsory “trainings,” and ruins any fun and spirit-lifting thing employees come up with. A notorious Fast Company cover story, published in 2005, is called “Why We Hate HR.” Its author, Keith H. Hammonds, laid out a string of damning questions that have resonated with businesspeople ever since:
Jane’s not a bad person—she’s just carrying out orders from far up the ladder. And when it comes to sexual harassment, women understand that Jane reports to upper management, not some neutral body that stands in allegiance with right moral action. If employers judged HR departments by their ability to prevent sexual harassment, most would have gotten a failing grade long ago. What HR is actually responsible for—one of the central ways the department “adds value” to a company—is serving as the first line of defense against a sexual-harassment lawsuit. These two goals are clearly aligned, but if the past year has taught us anything, it’s that you can achieve the latter without doing much of anything at all about the former.
In october 2014, Ellen DeGeneres did something on her talk show that we can hardly imagine in today’s environment: She made an extended joke about sexual harassment. “Last week we had our mandatory sexual-harassment training seminar,” she told the audience. “We have it every year for all of the employees, and it combines frank discussions about the workplace behavior and … mind-numbing boredom.” The people in the audience laughed appreciatively—they knew exactly what she meant. Then she introduced a game: “Sexual-Harassment Training or Late-Night Movie?” And, with the eager participation of the audience, she read lines of dialogue and asked the crowd to guess their source.
Ellen’s joke depended on our common understanding that in the decades since Anita Hill’s testimony, HR has created a huge body of instructional films, computer training modules, seminar scripts, and written policies on sexual harassment. That a subject as urgent and—in its own, lurid way—bound with eros, fear, and guilt created an oeuvre known primarily for its stupefying dullness should have been a clue that the serious issue of harassment was being funneled through a bureaucracy whose aim was not (at least not purely) protecting women workers.
Hill’s testimony riveted the nation. It occurred years before the forensically prurient Starr Report became part of breakfast-table discourse; before hard-core pornography became a subject of open conversation; before sex workers were interviewed, respectfully, on staid national news programs. It was unprecedented: a dignified and extremely well-educated woman testifying before a group of male senators about pubic hair on a Coke can, all while the camera whirred before her and the entire country looked on. It was, in other words, exactly the kind of sui generis event that should not have resonated on a deeply personal level with any woman, save perhaps some of Clarence Thomas’s law clerks. Yet it did resonate with women—millions of them. Their response was nonpartisan, unifying, nationwide, and—for many men—eye-opening. The concept, if not the linguistic formation, of “Me too” was born almost overnight. Hill’s composure in the face of withering and often humiliating male commentary (including, let us not forget, that of Joe Biden) was stirring. “I am not given to fantasy,” she said simply. “This is not something I would have come forward with if I were not absolutely sure.”
Hill’s testimony gave American women a way of understanding something that the Supreme Court had decided four and a half years earlier, in the famous Meritor Savings Bank v. Vinson case, which established that sexual harassment is a form of discrimination as defined by Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. A potent combination of factors was born: Women could sue for sexual harassment, and their employer could be on the line for big damages. That last fact caught the attention of American employers and is the true father of the system that Ellen and so many other Americans have mocked.
At solving the problem, HR is not great. At creating protocols of “compliance” to defend a company against lawsuits? By that criterion, it has been a smashing success. How do we know? Partly because employers are so devoted to it; the first thing many an executive will do when a company is under scrutiny for sexual harassment is heap praise on its crackerjack HR team, and describe the accused men as outliers.
Pam Teren, an employment lawyer in Los Angeles, graduated from law school and began working at a firm in 1990. “I thought I’d probably never have a sexual-harassment case,” she told me. The next year, Anita Hill testified, and these cases poured in. She told herself, “This is a five-year window. Because how simple is this? Don’t grab women. Don’t stare at their chests.” We both laughed—it really was pretty obvious. She figured that men would catch on quickly and the window would close. But she was wrong. Like thousands of lawyers across the country, she has been taking sexual-harassment cases ever since. Her entire career has been devoted to this work.
Fairly or not, HR is seen as the division of the company that slows things down, generates endless memos, meddles in employees’ personal business, holds compulsory “trainings,” and ruins any fun and spirit-lifting thing employees come up with. A notorious Fast Company cover story, published in 2005, is called “Why We Hate HR.” Its author, Keith H. Hammonds, laid out a string of damning questions that have resonated with businesspeople ever since:
Why are annual performance appraisals so time-consuming—and so routinely useless? Why is HR so often a henchman for the chief financial officer, finding ever-more ingenious ways to cut benefits and hack at payroll? Why do its communications—when we can understand them at all—so often flout reality? Why are so many people processes duplicative and wasteful, creating a forest of paperwork for every minor transaction? And why does HR insist on sameness as a proxy for equity?But the real reason many workers don’t love human resources is that while the department often presents itself as functioning like a union—the open door for worker complaints, the updates on valuable new benefits—it is not a union. In a strong job market, HR is the soul of generosity, making employees feel valued and significant. But should the economy change, or should management decide to go in another direction, HR can just as quickly become assassin as friend. The last face you’ll see is Jane’s—your pal from HR, who hands out the discounted tickets to Knott’s Berry Farm and sends the blast emails about Chipotle Friday—and she’ll be dry-eyed while collecting your employee badge and invoking the executioner’s code: COBRA.
Jane’s not a bad person—she’s just carrying out orders from far up the ladder. And when it comes to sexual harassment, women understand that Jane reports to upper management, not some neutral body that stands in allegiance with right moral action. If employers judged HR departments by their ability to prevent sexual harassment, most would have gotten a failing grade long ago. What HR is actually responsible for—one of the central ways the department “adds value” to a company—is serving as the first line of defense against a sexual-harassment lawsuit. These two goals are clearly aligned, but if the past year has taught us anything, it’s that you can achieve the latter without doing much of anything at all about the former.
In october 2014, Ellen DeGeneres did something on her talk show that we can hardly imagine in today’s environment: She made an extended joke about sexual harassment. “Last week we had our mandatory sexual-harassment training seminar,” she told the audience. “We have it every year for all of the employees, and it combines frank discussions about the workplace behavior and … mind-numbing boredom.” The people in the audience laughed appreciatively—they knew exactly what she meant. Then she introduced a game: “Sexual-Harassment Training or Late-Night Movie?” And, with the eager participation of the audience, she read lines of dialogue and asked the crowd to guess their source.
Ellen’s joke depended on our common understanding that in the decades since Anita Hill’s testimony, HR has created a huge body of instructional films, computer training modules, seminar scripts, and written policies on sexual harassment. That a subject as urgent and—in its own, lurid way—bound with eros, fear, and guilt created an oeuvre known primarily for its stupefying dullness should have been a clue that the serious issue of harassment was being funneled through a bureaucracy whose aim was not (at least not purely) protecting women workers.
Hill’s testimony riveted the nation. It occurred years before the forensically prurient Starr Report became part of breakfast-table discourse; before hard-core pornography became a subject of open conversation; before sex workers were interviewed, respectfully, on staid national news programs. It was unprecedented: a dignified and extremely well-educated woman testifying before a group of male senators about pubic hair on a Coke can, all while the camera whirred before her and the entire country looked on. It was, in other words, exactly the kind of sui generis event that should not have resonated on a deeply personal level with any woman, save perhaps some of Clarence Thomas’s law clerks. Yet it did resonate with women—millions of them. Their response was nonpartisan, unifying, nationwide, and—for many men—eye-opening. The concept, if not the linguistic formation, of “Me too” was born almost overnight. Hill’s composure in the face of withering and often humiliating male commentary (including, let us not forget, that of Joe Biden) was stirring. “I am not given to fantasy,” she said simply. “This is not something I would have come forward with if I were not absolutely sure.”
Hill’s testimony gave American women a way of understanding something that the Supreme Court had decided four and a half years earlier, in the famous Meritor Savings Bank v. Vinson case, which established that sexual harassment is a form of discrimination as defined by Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. A potent combination of factors was born: Women could sue for sexual harassment, and their employer could be on the line for big damages. That last fact caught the attention of American employers and is the true father of the system that Ellen and so many other Americans have mocked.
At solving the problem, HR is not great. At creating protocols of “compliance” to defend a company against lawsuits? By that criterion, it has been a smashing success. How do we know? Partly because employers are so devoted to it; the first thing many an executive will do when a company is under scrutiny for sexual harassment is heap praise on its crackerjack HR team, and describe the accused men as outliers.
Pam Teren, an employment lawyer in Los Angeles, graduated from law school and began working at a firm in 1990. “I thought I’d probably never have a sexual-harassment case,” she told me. The next year, Anita Hill testified, and these cases poured in. She told herself, “This is a five-year window. Because how simple is this? Don’t grab women. Don’t stare at their chests.” We both laughed—it really was pretty obvious. She figured that men would catch on quickly and the window would close. But she was wrong. Like thousands of lawyers across the country, she has been taking sexual-harassment cases ever since. Her entire career has been devoted to this work.
by Caitlin Flanagan, The Atlantic | Read more:
Image: New Studio
