IS HR FAILING US? OR ARE WE FAILING HR?

HR is under fire and not always fairly.

In too many organisations, HR has become a scapegoat for everything that’s broken in workplace culture.  Ask employees what they think of HR and the responses are often loaded: they’re the department of “no,” the silent bystanders to toxicity, the ones who push policies instead of people.

But is HR really the problem?  Or is it our unrealistic expectations of what HR can and should do that need to be reexamined?

The Criticism: A Crisis of Relevance

Let’s start with the real issues.  Over the past decade, HR has increasingly been perceived as reactive, risk-averse, and disconnected.  A 2023 Gallup study found that only 25% of employees strongly agree that their organisation delivers on promises made during recruitment.  That disconnect is often felt most acutely in HR’s role.

When leadership fails, people look to HR.  When culture turns toxic, people expect HR to intervene.  When engagement dips, retention drops, or burnout rises, HR is held responsible.  And too often, HR lacks the authority, resources, or support to fix what’s broken.

DEI statements go out.  Training workshops are run.  But when the real work of behaviour change begins, HR is sidelined or silenced.

The Defence: HR Is Fighting an Uphill Battle

What’s often missed in these criticisms is just how under-resourced and overburdened many HR teams are.  According to the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM), the average HR-to-employee ratio is 1.4 to 100.  That’s one person responsible for the culture, wellbeing, compliance, development, performance, hiring, firing and everything in between, for every hundred people.

The best HR leaders work quietly behind the scenes, embedding themselves into the fabric of the business.  They’re shaping onboarding experiences, defining leadership expectations, identifying burnout before it spikes, and influencing strategy in ways that rarely make the org chart.

But when HR isn’t given a seat at the table or when leaders see them as “admin support” rather than culture architects, everything suffers.

The Truth: We’re Asking the Wrong Question

It’s not that HR is broken.

It’s that what we’ve expected from HR has been broken for a long time.  We’ve outsourced the emotional labour of leadership.  We’ve handed culture to a department and called it done.  

We can’t ask HR to “fix culture” and then exclude them from strategic conversations.  We can’t demand better leadership and then underfund the people who enable it. We can’t claim to be “people first” if we treat HR like paperwork.  And we cant expect HR leaders to report to Finance, without there role being numerically critiqued.  

So What Now?

At True North, I work with leaders and leadership teams to rethink the role they play in culture.

Culture isn’t a policy.  It’s how leaders show up, follow through, and act when no one’s watching.  The most impactful cultures aren’t built by HR, they’re lived by leadership.

The future of HR isn’t about being louder.  It’s about leaders being braver.  No amount of process can replace a leader who actually gives a sh*&. 

Sources:

• Gallup, “State of the Global Workplace” (2023)

• SHRM, “HR-to-Employee Ratio” Benchmark Report (2022)