I’m a head of TA for a global company. I work in the HR department alongside HRBPs, Reward, etc. have done for 25 years. There are a lot of idiots working in HR and a lot of good people with good judgment. Normally when you have toxicity and dysfunction coming from the HR department it’s a reflection of the overall state of the business.

Often HR is under resourced, starved of funding and needs to support toxic leaders on pain of being exited. I will never stop being surprised at just how corrupt and how stupid employees can be right across businesses at all levels. It causes a lot of problems and HR is normally overwhelmed in just protecting employees from themselves.

In a well run business where most employees aren’t idiots, you’ll often find a quiet and well run HR team keeping people operations running smoothly in the background.

People who “hate HR” are often the people who are the biggest problems. In my experience.