American View: Why HR’s Traditional Remit Has Become Dangerously Obsolete

Management

What would you do if … scratch that. What do you think you would do if you discovered that one of your workers possessed a hair-trigger temper and a propensity for violence? Nine times out of ten when I ask my students this question, they say something to the effect of “I would report the situation to Human Resources” Can’t get mad at them for it. That’s exactly what they’ve been told to say by the organisation’s HR people in their mandatory HR training in every job they’ve ever had. It’s the universal rule, right? Report every behaviour and situation that might be considered disruptive to HR and HR will take the problem out of your hands. Easy-peasy!

That there’s a second paragraph in this column ought to imply that the “easy” answer is laughably wrong. Despite decades of enthusiastic marketing since Elton Mayo came up with the idea of “human relations” at Harvard Business School, modern HR isn’t the “people focused” antithesis of Taylorist “scientific management” that it’s always claimed to be. Modern HR exists to protect the company from its employees, not to protect the employees from themselves, from each other, or from … I don’t know … bears.

Don’t just take my word for it; read some of the hilarious posts on Reddit’s “HR is not your friend” thread. Or just skim Liz Ryan’s 2016 Forbes article titled “Ten Reasons Everybody Hates HR.” She summarized her own experience in the field with this wonderfully quotable bit: “In many organizations the role of HR is to keep the company out of court. The role of HR is to keep the company from getting sued – by its own employees! Can you imagine a sadder or less inspiring reason to come to work?”

So, yeah. Imagine that one of your direct reports possesses some odd beliefs and tends to act aggressively towards their peers, or with customers, or even with you. You doubtlessly have HR manuals that prohibit “unprofessional conduct” in the workplace. HR keeps telling you that they want to be your ally. You have a mandatory reporting process that’s easy to follow. So … what happens when you use it? What is your HR department really going to do when you sound the alarm? More importantly, will their response solve your problem (as promised)?

I’d wager that most of the time, the answer is “no.” They’ll do nothing useful. They’ll either refuse to act at all, or they’ll deliver some weak “counselling” to your problem employee that angers them, thereby increasing the likelihood of an explosion in the office. Why? Because that’s their job! Your HR people aren’t there to protect you or your non-violent teammates from the one crazy bloke that creeps everyone out. They’re there to prevent the one crazy bloke from suing the company for unlawful termination after you fire them without “sufficient” cause.

In the end, we’re all fungible labour units whose value to the company is calculated on a spreadsheet.

So, where does that leave you? You’ve identified a problem, dutifully sounded the alarm, and – in doing so – alerted the potential violent insider threat that you’re onto them. Your likelihood of experiencing a workplace violence episode just increased to near certainty … and yet no one empowered to do so seems inclined to do anything to prevent it.

I’m sure there are some people thinking that I’m “imagining” worst-case scenarios. For their benefit, let me share a real-world example of this from my own experience.

Back when I was a unit commander in the Air Force, I inherited a squirrelly staff sergeant – let’s call him “SSgt Bob” – that had already been written up multiple times for bizarre and unprofessional workplace behaviour. Bob had been chastised for disobeying orders, missing appointments, back-talking supervisors … What we called a “pattern of misconduct.” We already knew the guy was a disruptive element on top of being a poor performer.

I ordered his SSgt Bob’s supervisor and his ranking senior non-commissioned officer to get Bob “squared away.” That is to say, re-taught how to behave properly whilst on duty. They … didn’t. Most of my NCOs at the time didn’t want to provoke Bob any further. They hoped that he’d either shape up on his own or get denied reenlistment.

I wasn’t about to wait and hope for the best. I asked our Military Personnel Flight (the military’s version of HR) to allow us to issue SSgt Bob a formal written reprimand as a way to get his attention and – hopefully – inspire him to rehabilitate. The MPR staff felt the written reprimand process was too much work. They insisted that we could wait until after Bob did something “more serious” and then issue him paperwork. This was, I told them, bloody stupid. I was, the MPR officer in charge told me, “not Air Force enough” to understand how they did things.

Six months later we were activated for emergency operations. SSgt Bob saw the natural disaster on the news and turned off his personal mobile phone so he couldn’t be activated. He refused to report to the unit’s muster for deployment. This was unambiguously an act of “desertion” [1] under military law – one of the most dishonourable acts a military member can commit – and it forced us to deploy without him.

On our return, I entreated the Judge Advocate General’s office (JAG is the military’s version of a Legal department) to start court martial proceedings against SSgt Bob, so that he might be held accountable for his actions and be dismissed from service. The senior JAG officer refused, claiming it would be “too much work.” Besides, they whinged, the mission was over now so … who cared anymore? Just let it go.

Did you ever stop to question why so many of your “employee wellness” activities are focused on mitigating, relieving, or accepting the stress accumulated at work and not on fixing the systemic problems that generated that stress in the first place?

No matter how much I raved about how SSgt Bob’s actions were corrosive to good order and discipline with everyone else in the unit, neither the MPF nor the JAG would lift a finger. They couldn’t be bothered.

Six months later, my techs were goofing off on a boring Thursday afternoon. Someone in the repair shop bonked SSgt Bob with a tossed foam ball. Where most people would shrug it off, Bob snapped: he threatened to murder all the other airmen in the bay and stormed off. Bob appeared minutes later in our data centre. Witnesses later said Bob encountered a group of airmen and civilian contractors working on our electrics. SSgt Bob threatened to murder the men working there, too. Then he left his duty station and disappeared. Threat + threat + AWOL. Lovely.

Bob’s Senior NCO reported the incident to me … later that night. Long after SSgt Bob had fled the scene. I was aghast. I asked why they hadn’t dealt with the problem on the spot. They stared at me blankly.

Then the SNCO sheepishly admitted that SSgt Bob had threatened to attack his supervisor with a knife six months prior and the NCOs had all agreed to cover the incident up. [2] They knew from experience that HR wouldn’t do anything about it if they reported it, so they laughed it off and pretended like it never happened.

I wasn’t having it; I agreed that HR and JAG would refuse to support us, so I called the Military Police instead. Together we made plans to safely secure SSgt Bob the moment he reappeared on base. He would not be allowed to endanger anyone else.

Shortly after first light the next morning, we received confirmation that SSgt Bob had entered the base and was headed to one of our buildings to finish some cabling work. I linked up with a pair of MPs and led them into the facility. We cornered SSgt Bob in a writing closet and the MPs did their thing. I stared SSgt Bob dead in the eyes while the MPs cuffed him … and promptly relieved him of the many illegal weapons he’d brought to work. It seemed like Bob was either planning or at least preparing for a potential murderous confrontation with someone. The MPs agreed that we’d intercepted him just in time.

Hours later, after all the statements were recorded at the MP station, we briefed the Wing Commander and the Base Commander on what had happened. Our Wing Commander forced his MPF and JAG to act. Both departments hemmed and hawed, but the Big-Colonel-What-Was-In-Charge wouldn’t tolerate any more foot dragging. Bob had to go. NOW.

Try to imagine your reaction to an HR “professional” saying “What if we start with a written warning?” after being told how an employee brought knives to work and twice threatened to murder his colleagues.

SSgt Bob was released from MP custody (without his contraband) at his car. The cops searched his car and confiscated even more contraband (including a bulletproof vest). Bob was then escorted off base and was permanently barred from ever re-entering a Department of Defense facility. By sundown the next day SSgt Bob’s discharge from military service and his bar-to-reenlistment papers were finished and copies were mailed to him, terminating his military career.

The reason I’m sharing this story is to make the solution to this problem obvious. HR is not your friend. Say it with me: HR exists to protect the organisation from the employees. Your Legal department might very well have a similar mindset depending on what sort of work you do. The one sub-organisation that’s focused on protecting people, processes, and production is the Security department … not HR.

That’s why I called the Military Police to deal with my SSgt Bob problem. I felt there was an immediate threat to the safety of my subordinates from the “having a knife” and “threatening to murder people with said knife” aspects of SSgt Bob’s episodes of “unprofessional conduct.” The MPs agreed and removed Bob from our work environment before anyone got stabbed. After that fait accompli, executive management was compelled to assess the situation whereupon they correctly placed the welfare of the workers above the risk of a lawsuit, cost be damned. Only the Big Boss had the power and clout to compel HR and Legal to act against their nature.

This is not meant to be a condemnation of all HR and/or Legal folks. They do what they were hired to do and many of them do it brilliantly. This isn’t about cowardice or incompetence or evil; it’s about remit. The best HR practitioners and lawyers understand their role and perform it to the best of their abilities, as you’d expect from professionals. The problem is not the people; it’s the mission. Their tendency to avoid controversy and confrontation until it’s too late is baked into their job description.

That’s why I suggest you communicate to your business unit leaders that they can – and should! – alert Security when they identify the potential for violence in one of their people. Sure, HR and Legal must be notified. Even if it’s not required by policy, it’s still good practice. That said, business leaders should expect HR and Legal to hesitate and recommend the least disruptive approach because that’s often the best way to calm things down without creating unnecessary drama. Right up until it isn’t.

Security people, however, are far more likely to take decisive action to isolate, constrain, and neutralize the threat before something unforgivable happens. Again, it’s about remit. Security people are faster to interdict and isolate potential threats before they can fully manifest. If that’s disruptive, so be it. Security people must think in terms of the worse possible outcomes and act accordingly. I submit that in this new age of nihilistic livestreamed murder sprees, the traditional HR practice of cautiously taking things slow is horrifyingly obsolete.

[1] Per the Texas Code of Military Justice, Sec. 432.130. “DESERTION. (a) A member of the state military forces is guilty of desertion if the member: … (2) quits his unit, organization, or place of duty with intent to avoid hazardous duty or to shirk important service;”

[2] Remembering that moment just caused my blood pressure to spike to unhealthy levels. This threat was active under our roof without me knowing about it for over a year. It’s astounding that no one was killed or seriously hurt.

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