Your HR Department Hates You: How Corporate Overseers Exploit Workers [View all]

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http://www.alternet.org/corporate-accountability-and-workplace/hr-hates-you-how-corporate-overseers-devalue-workers




For most of the 20th century, corporations got along just fine without human resources departments. Instead, they had personnel managers who found new employees and handled the welfare of those on payroll. Personnel managers were pretty low on the corporate totem pole, quietly administering a multitude of banal tasks.

But something began to change in the 1980s. With the arrival of globalization and the Information Age, corporate stability gave way to rapid, unpredictable change. Corporations no longer saw workers as loyal partners and creative beings in a productive enterprise. Instead, they became commoditized assets on a balance sheet to be acquired and discarded to suit changing fortunes.

Meanwhile, corporations began to see the term “personnel” as synonymous with the support of employees and new workplace efficiency techniques such as Six Sigma created a need for corporate compliance overseers. So, those who were once responsible for advocating for employees were now embedded with management, becoming cold wardens of the workplace.