I was reading an interesting story, a few days ago, here in linkedin about someone that has been fired even if doing the right thing

I Did the Right Thing and Still Got Fired: My Cautionary Tale

Story and comments were interesting and make me thinking about a crucial point of the story, the role of the HR.

It is quite commonly accepted that HR people are not on the employee side, and mostly they’re just the firearm of the management accomplishing all the worst and filthy actions you can imagine.

But Why this is like that? What is HR role nowadays and what should it be?

I have some personal opinions but I am not an HR manager and I would really appreciate an HR opinion on this, why HR are so hated and feared by employee?

HR department is always considered a center of power inside a company, and mostly identified with the worse action the company do. When there is something ethically doubtful, a dirty job against an employee (no matter the level form the lower to high management) the HR are always involved in an active role, doing the dirty job.

How many story we heard about this? How many times we experienced this?

But has this to be the way?

Does HR department manage the resource most important in a company, people? If so what means to manage people?

And does managing people means to accomplish anything the higher management ask?

If we think that managers work for the greater good of the company, in the most ethical honest and moral way, well we probably believe also in Santa Claus, so if managers makes mistakes, or act doubtfully, would not be in the best interest of the company that HR department would act as the ethical balancer?

And if this happen in most of the case, why there is a completely different perception out there?

In my personal experience I’ve met good and bad (I remember two actually) HR, sometimes they were just simply yesmen\ladies but we should also consider that HR are also employee and sometimes are just force to be compliant, sometimes are chosen just because managers want them to be compliant. so maybe the problem with HR should be widen on the overall quality of the management.