Wednesday, February 16, 2011

Does HR Qualify As A "Dirty Job"?

Mike Rowe is the creator and executive producer of Discovery Channel’s Dirty Jobs with Mike Rowe. He travels the country, working as an apprentice on jobs that typically people just don’t want. Well, I wish he would step into my HR role for about a week. While I may not get physically dirty, at times I do feel like I’ve been rolling around in the muck and mud.

Several years ago my younger son explained to a friend that my job was to “fire people.” When I thought about it, I realized that the only time I really talked about my job was when I was agonizing over the role I played in destroying someone’s life. (Maybe a bit dramatic, but that’s how I feel.) While I readily embrace the role of HR within an organization, oftentimes there are responsibilities that I would gladly relinquish to another person:

• Terminating an employee, due to organizational restructuring, etc., with the knowledge that the employee is in the midst of purchasing a new home, or having a baby, or the spouse has lost his/her job.
• Freezing employee annual wage increases.
• Dealing with consistently negative people.
• Cutting employee hours.
• Constantly “harping” at managers to get performance reviews completed.
• Dealing with sexual harassment complaints against senior management (sigh).
• Paperwork, paperwork, paperwork.

Do you think Mike Rowe would consider HR a “dirty job”?

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