HR is neither your friend nor it is some evil secret police that’s here to root out the saboteurs in your company...
HR is an agent between you and the company. It’s there to run the negotiations between what the company wants and what you want. If you don’t understand that, you won’t be able to use HR to your benefit.
HR is there for you to ask stuff. You want a shower on your floor? Ask them. You want a course in React? Ask them. You can get plenty of things for you to work well if you know how to play HR.
Just to be more specific, HR is an agent of your company. Their job is to make every interaction resolve in favor of the company. Often, this is a good thing for you, because when things are running smoothly, a lot of the stuff that is good for the employees is good for the company.
The important part to always remember is that when there is a clear conflict, a situation where something that is good for you is bad for the company and vice versa, their job is to make you lose. Their job is to be the negotiator that resolves the situation maximally in the favor of the company and against your interests. In those situations, it is important to remember that "your boss, hr and you" is not two parties and a neutral intermediary, it's two parties, one of which has two representatives. Bring either an union rep or a lawyer.
I don't think you mean "legally bound" here - there is no legal obligation for HR to operate with anyone's best interest in mind, corporate person or organic person.
It's an agent but like any agent they act on behalf of someone and represent their interests first or only. And that's the company's. Sure you can extract value from them as an employee but you have to keep in mind that HR is there for you only as long as your interests almost perfectly align with the company's interests and not a step further.
That shower? Keeps you working longer in the office. Same goes for most of these perks. The course in React? You can deliver in more projects or upsell you to a customer. Try to ask for something when you underdeliver and you'll see whether HR or the company value your happiness or your happiness derived productivity.
> HR is an agent between you and the company. It’s there to run the negotiations between what the company wants and what you want. If you don’t understand that, you won’t be able to use HR to your benefit.
-I like to think of HR as an abstraction layer between management and employees, whose basic function is to shield management from having to interact with the employees.
Also, HR receives its pay from the company, not their coworkers - so HR is very much an agent of the company, not you. (Which is fair - after all, their loyalty is with whoever pays them, which is not unreasonable)
That being said, there is good HR and bad HR out there - just don't think that HR is there for you; they're not.
"-I like to think of HR as an abstraction layer between management and employees, whose basic function is to shield management from having to interact with the employees."
This sounds cynical, but it's not nefarious at all:
1) As a manager (at various points in my career), I have better things to focus my time on than sick policies, vacations, sick leave, or similar. I'd rather focus on mentorship, growth, strategy, and technology. Outsourcing the menial stuff to someone else means I can manage people better. Plus, they're more likely to do it right. If I have a 16 year old intern who is a resident of Ohio working remotely whose parents are on an H1B visa who wants to do an unpaid work-sponsored training program beyond their 40 hour work week...
2) As a manager, I have no background in how to resolve legal issues. If an employee engaged in improper behavior (harassment, theft, etc.), the last thing you want are amateurs handling this. It's a relief to offload that onto professionals, both for the manager (who doesn't want the stress or liability) and the company (who doesn't want the liability).
... and so on.
HR is the company's agent. It's not your friend. It's job isn't fairness, anonymity, or justice, but to protect the company. It's still a necessary function and having it there is not evil, so long as employees don't go in with the expectation HR is some impartial judge. It's not. A lot of kids come in and treat it that way, and get into a lot of trouble.
HR is taking money from the employer. It's not taking money from employees. In theory they should help both sides, in practice you don't need to look hard to spot a conflict of interest.
HR is an agent between you and the company. It’s there to run the negotiations between what the company wants and what you want. If you don’t understand that, you won’t be able to use HR to your benefit.
HR is there for you to ask stuff. You want a shower on your floor? Ask them. You want a course in React? Ask them. You can get plenty of things for you to work well if you know how to play HR.