HR Fired Them. But Was HR Really the Problem?

If HR is the only department you blame when someone gets fired, you may be blaming the wrong people.

I think we have misunderstood the role of HR in many workplaces.

Somehow, HR has become the face of every uncomfortable employment decision. When someone gets hired, the hiring manager gets the credit. When someone gets promoted, their manager is celebrated for recognising their potential. But when someone is placed on a performance improvement plan, denied a promotion or asked to leave, HR suddenly becomes the villain.

That understanding of HR needs to change.

HR is not supposed to be the department that hires and fires people. At its best, HR facilitates the processes that help an organisation make sound people decisions. It establishes policies, guides managers, interprets employment data, helps address workplace issues and ensures decisions follow fair and consistent procedures.

But HR does not work with every employee on their team every day. Your manager does.

Your manager sees how you approach assignments, how you collaborate with colleagues, whether you meet expectations, how you respond to feedback and what happens when things become difficult.

HR may collect and review information from performance appraisals, manager feedback, employee records and other sources. But the people working directly with you are often central to the evidence behind a performance decision.

So when HR invites you to discuss your performance, it is worth asking where the feedback came from and how the conclusion was reached, rather than assuming the HR representative invented it.

Of course, HR is not automatically right. Managers can be biased, performance reviews can be poorly handled, and HR professionals can make bad decisions. One of HR’s most important responsibilities is to challenge unfair treatment, question weak evidence and ensure that managers are not allowed to turn personal disagreements into official performance concerns.

HR should not exist to rubber stamp whatever management wants. It should help the organisation make better, fairer and more defensible decisions about people.

This is also why I believe managers must take greater responsibility for the people decisions they make.

If you have worked with someone for months, you should be able to explain their performance concerns with specific examples. You should have communicated expectations, provided feedback and given them a reasonable opportunity to improve. You should not be able to hide behind HR when that conversation becomes uncomfortable.

And if HR is independently deciding who should be hired, promoted or fired without meaningful input from the people responsible for the work, I would question how that organisation has designed its decision-making process.

There are exceptions, of course. HR may need to lead decisions involving misconduct, investigations, legal compliance or serious workplace risks. It also has a responsibility to protect employees and the organisation when managers themselves are part of the problem.

The point is not that HR should have no authority. It is that authority and accountability should be properly distributed.

Employees deserve to understand who makes decisions about their careers. Managers must own the consequences of their leadership. And HR must be empowered to facilitate good decisions, challenge bad ones and protect the integrity of the process.

We cannot keep asking HR to fix every people problem while allowing managers to escape accountability for how they lead.

Perhaps the question is not whether HR is doing its job. Perhaps we should also ask whether managers are doing theirs.

What has your experience been? Does HR in your organisation facilitate good people decisions, or does it end up making decisions that should belong to the people leading the teams?