DrVomact's Journal: Sock-Puppet HR

A month ago, we employees were bombarded with a slick advertising campaign to notify us of a new corporate Human(oid) Resources service. It is called "MyHR", and the pitch was that "you can answer all your HR questions by calling one number!" There were glossy photographs of friendly smiling people talking on the phone, clearly eager to reach out and help.

I didn't quite understand why this was supposed to be such a huge benefit for me. It seemed like a lot of trouble to advertise a new HR phone number. If they wanted to provide better services to employees, why didn't HR open a local office where I actually work, and give me some real people to talk to? But HR had eliminated local HR reps years ago...as a "cost saving measure".

I didn't think much more about it until a family crisis manifested. I have an aunt who lives in Europe, and it looked like she might require a couple of months of care while she convalesces from hip replacement surgery. I was considering taking that time off as unpaid leave under my company's "Family Leave Policy", but I wasn't clear if aunts were covered by the policy.

So I gave those nice smiley people at MyHR a call. Sure enough, the phone was answered immediately by a rep...though I sensed right away she wasn't one of those brightly smiling people in the glossy pictures. I asked my question and she told me curtly that "aunts are clearly not covered by the Family Leave Policy." I was a bit shook up by several things that were going on, health-wise, in my family, so I guess I said something that questioned why aunts couldn't be covered. I mean, we're talking unpaid leave here. I was polite. She replied, "Look, if it weren't government mandated, you wouldn't have this benefit at all!". End of conversation.

YOU? . My suspicion meter kicked into the red zone. If I were talking to a fellow employee, why didn't she say "we"? It didn't take much water-boarding to get my PHB to admit that the nice smiley MyHR people were in fact "employees of another company". In other words, HR (or the insignificant portion of it that deals with actually helping employees) has been outsourced—"to cut costs". I guess I must be pretty naive, but I was shocked.

Now for another data point—and a bit of irony. I'm applying for a new job at another large corporation. I was referred to the hiring manager by a mutual friend, and had a very encouraging phone interview with him. He told me that he wanted to set me up for an interview and come meet the rest of the staff, but HR has to arrange the interviews, so it might take a while. I've been contacted by their HR, and the first thing I noticed was that though the name of the company I am applying to was in the rep's email address, it was clearly a sub-domain of another organization (something like [e-mail]_I_want_to_work_for.com). I asked Joe if he is, in fact, an employee of said company, and he assured me that he truly worked for the HR department of maybe_will_hire_me corp.

Well surprise, surprise, I called my friend and he told me that Joe is a sock puppet--that is, he works for an "outside consulting firm that specializes in HR services". Lucky thing I didn't have much emotional investment in that relationship. But for all I know, the same puppeteer is handling my (potential) hiring as is now sympathetically caring for my well-being at my present corporation. Geez.

Two data samples may be statistically insignificant, but mathematical rigor has never stopped me from jumping to conclusions: we are witnessing the rise of another magnificently absurd and completely disastrous management fad. Or am I the last person in the world to catch on again?