So, what do HR teams actually do?

Economic Times

3 days ago

Modern work culture is a self-contained bubble where people say nonsense with extraordinary confidence A few weeks back, after the CEO of data platform company Astronomer, Andy Byron, and the company's HR head, Kristin Cabot, resigned - after being sadly 'caught' like deer in Coldplay headlights - many people arrived at a question they rarely ask out aloud: What does HR actually do? (Privacy at public spaces like concerts remains a separate question. But in most places, undisclosed relationships within workplace hierarchies fall foul of company policies.)No one, it seems, has an answer. Human resources may, in fact, be the strangest post-invention known to a workplace. According to its job description, HR is meant to 'manage all aspects of an employee's life cycle' and 'foster a positive working environment.' Which, frankly, has one scratching one's head right from the onset.
'Manage all aspects of an employee's life cycle' could mean just about anything. Like the HR team at my last job, which had the audacity to offer women - already fraying under institutional patriarchy - a free manicure coupon for International Women's Day. Which really tells us nothing, except what we already know and don't need a brush with HR to find out: one person's positive is another's poison. Besides, how can people who aren't trained in the actual jobs employees do possibly manage their entire life cycle? By their own description, HR professionals are trained in 'positivity', and 'employee management' and can move seamlessly from companies selling ketchup to those making nuclear weapons. To date, no one - and I've whispered it myself behind mugs of black coffee and through eyerolls - has answered this question.Part of the confusion lies in the strange, bloated language of corporate life. Modern work culture is now a self-contained bubble where people say absolute nonsense with extraordinary confidence. The American workplace vocabulary spawned by B-schools became mainstream through the 1980s and 1990s with the rise of management consultancies, Silicon Valley, and self-help business books.It promoted the idea of the worker as the 'entrepreneur of their own self,' with the entire purpose of existence henceforth being the marketing and branding of that self. This language spread across the world via popular American dramas and sitcoms - Ally McBeal, Friends, The Office, Suits - and now parodies itself across LinkedIn profiles worldwide. Here, a man can bleed out his soul in public and it becomes a marketing lesson. A woman can combust from PTSD, and it becomes a case study in reinvention.We're told we must constantly 'reinvent ourselves to stay relevant' - a line so exhausted it forgets that 'relevant' already contains the 're-' in it. At 20, you're not 'creating content'. You're just beginning to figure things out. At 30, you're not 'networking'. You're naturally curious about the world and its connections. And at 40, you're not 'reinventing'. You're evolving.Ironic TV shows like Silicon Valley, Severance, and even older satires like Dilbert and The Devil Wears Prada have held up a mirror to this culture. Entire books have analysed its roots - Barbara Ehrenreich's 2009 Smile or Die: How Positive Thinking Fooled America and the World, and David Graeber's 2018 Bullshit Jobs: A Theory being especially memorable are among them. On LinkedIn, it all collapses into clapping emojis and humblebrags, like a bad parody stuck on loop. As the Coldplay debacle continues to putter along in memes and gags across the internet, people in workplaces are watching with silent glee as this toxic world of self-bestowed titles - 'positivity,' 'reinvention,' and 'energised leadership' - collapses in on itself like a cruel joke, with a Coldplay-loving CEO ducking under the first available table.
That Astronomer's HR head and CEO were caught in an embrace so graphic - Byron wasn't holding Cabot's waist, but her breasts - has only made the moment more visceral: a perfect picture of corporate hypocrisy hiding behind 'corporate culture' rules drawn up by - who else? - HR. Everyone's brimming over with laughter at the punchline - a joke HR never meant to deliver, but did anyway. And that just makes it sit in that sweet HR spot where every delight, like injury, is unintended. (Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this column are that of the writer. The facts and opinions expressed here do not reflect the views of www.economictimes.com.) Elevate your knowledge and leadership skills at a cost cheaper than your daily tea. BlackRock returns, this time with Ambani. Will it be lucky second time?
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