Department of hate: Why employees like to dislike HR

Mumbai: In 2016, Amitabh K., a senior marketing executive working at a multinational technology company in Mumbai, raised what he thought was a pertinent question: “Where are the non-whites in the senior management team?" In 2024, HR and payroll software provider Ciphr conducted a study of 1,000 employees in the UK and found that HR was considered to be “the least productive department, with one in seven surveyed employees labelling their firm’s HR team as unproductive or very unproductive". “But when the labour market loosens up, HR suddenly seems like a nuisance because we don’t like being told how to behave—and we see no immediate benefit to complying". So, in good economic cycles, HR risks being perceived not so generously—as seasonal workers, visible only during “rangoli making competitions", according to one person we spoke to. “Firms often assume that the skill set required to manage the HR function is one of common sense while skills required in areas like finance or marketing are learned and specially acquired," Chandrasekhar Sripada, a professor at the Indian School of Business told Mint.