I hate it when HR is done poorly!

26 October 2025|blog culture industrial-relations leadership psychology-hr

This is something different than what I would normally write about but I hate it when HR is done poorly. Don’t get me wrong though, I love helping people, I love helping leaders in organisations with managing people and they usually are seeking and wanting the help to do things properly or better. So, I don’t mind when helping those in the business, I love that, I love HR, but I hate it when other HR professionals (or people) do HR poorly!

I was recently privy to an employee’s treatment of performance counselling and conduct issue. The process was wrong and harsh, the employee didn’t get to fully respond to the issues raised, the time taken to advise the employee of the outcome was unnecessarily long, the conduct was labelled as something under legislation which it clearly wasn’t. Further to that, the process was a mix of sort of an investigation and sort of performance counselling. Even, if the process wasn’t correct, the employee was not able to fully respond to the concerns raised and the time delay in being advised of the outcome was not respectful or considerate let alone being favourable to the employee’s mental health. Also, for the issues at hand and the ‘investigation’ that had already taken place, that amount of time was not required. There was more wrong about the situation and how it was dealt with – but the point was HR was done poorly by HR and I hate that!

I hate that because when HR is not done properly by HR, it reflects poorly on other HR professionals, the employer and not to mention the company brand. I also hate it though and more to the point, that employees and in fact individuals that deserve better, they deserve to be treated better and to be honest treated like human beings. The human in human resources sadly is at times forgotten and, in this case, that I mentioned, I really felt like it was. There of course have been many other examples that we’ve all heard of with the treatment of employees during performance counselling, termination of employment, redundancies or when dealing with conflict, bullying or harassment from others in the workplace.

As I said we love helping businesses manage their people in a way that is respectful, compassionate but still meet the needs of the business. And as I’ve said many times before, at HR Business Direction we are passionate about helping our clients get a ROI from their people and creating working environments that support and prevent mental health. We believe this allows us to make a true difference in society for businesses and individuals.

Leisa Messer BBus(HRM); GradDipIR; FCPHR
Managing Director | HR Strategist
leisa.messer@hrbd.com.au
07 3890 2066
hrbd.com.au