[hypervisorxxx]

My friend and I (both females) one the CEO of a tech company and me a Staff Engineer, have talked about how to do HR right and we came up with an idea but havnt done anything with it.

Since HR is clearly biased towards the companies and this has proven to cause a lot of problems, they will never side with you over the company if the company is indeed wrong.

HR should ideally be an independent third party and all issues treated the same way a legal audit would. An org comes in promises to keep things confidential. Objectively assesses the situation, inquires for more info (emails, convos etc) and determines the outcome. If someone needs to be fired and it's a male superior, then so be it.

HR is never going to tell their boss that they should be fired for mistreating another employee for example, if they do not also want to lose their jobs.

In reality it makes sense to have an internal HR for all things like hiring recruiting etc etc etc but when it comes to managing deteriorated relationships between employees it will never be done right unless an independent third party comes into asses.

[thayne]

It's a nice idea, but in practice what would likely happen is the "third party" HR contractors would still generally side with the company, because the company is the one paying them, and if the company doesn't like their decisions, they may stop paying them.

[vk6flab]

The crux of this hinges around (perceived) "ownership" of the HR service.

It needs to be jointly owned by both the employer and the employee for there to be any chance of an equitable balance between conflicting interests of the company who's paying the bill and the company who's providing HR services, with that of the employee, as outlined in some of the other responses you've received.

Based on the inherent complexity of the above, I think the simplest model would be where an employee is also the employer, ie. ownership of the company by the employee.

This allows for the greater good, the future of the whole company, against the rights of the employee to be balanced within the company.

There are plenty of examples of companies owned by their employees.

[scoutt]

A 3rd party HR department is still being paid by the company...

If you want something 3rd party that can be impartial ("sometimes", in quotes) and sit on a table with both company and employee, that's unions.

[vaduz]

Unions are not impartial - their power in the company is proportional to the number of unionised employees, so they have an incentive to take your side if you are a member - and against you if you are not. It's more complicated in practice, but impartial they are not.

Arbitration may be impartial ("sometimes"), court system may be impartial ("sometimes") - but you still have to be represented by someone who can navigate these systems.

[scoutt]

At least in Italy, your work contract always falls within the general rules established with the unions. At the end of the day, you are somehow unionized. If there is a dispute you can always call an union representative for arbitration. I saw it happen several times, and more or less they were siding with the employees.

I know the issue has 1000 shades of color, but if somehow, someway, in a sunny day, with all the possible luck in the world, someone sides with you in a dispute (and is not a lawyer you are paying), that will be unions.

[vaduz]

> At least in Italy, your work contract always falls within the general rules established with the unions. At the end of the day, you are somehow unionized.

That is true in many countries - though there are some (US being one) where non-union employees are ostracized or pushed away from being employed, especially as the law allows exclusive union representation in about half of the states [0]. The unions have been known to argue for union members and sacrificing non-members as part of exclusive bargaining with the company.

> I know the issue has 1000 shades of color, but if somehow, someway, in a sunny day, with all the possible luck in the world, someone sides with you in a dispute (and is not a lawyer you are paying), that will be unions.

That's not being impartial - that is being on your side. Yes, there are conditions in which unions may be on your side (in which case: great, but still bring a lawyer) - but the claim in grandparent post is that they may be impartial, whereas they very rarely are.

[0] https://www.nrtw.org/your-right-to-work-rights-in-three-minu...

[scoutt]

Oh. Ok. You are right. I guess with impartial I wanted to mean "someone not siding with the company". I expressed it badly.

[DanHulton]

I would love to work for a place like this, but I can't imagine a company choosing to pay for this HR service unless forced to by law. They can already get the version of HR that will side with them every time. Why pay money for a version that might rule against you?

That said, I can see an eventual path for this. The "problem companies" definitely won't be interested, at least at first, and the only companies that would choose this are the ones least likely to need it. Given time and publicity, these companies may have an easier time hiring, until eventually there is sufficient pressure on the "problem companies" that they feel they have to change to this to continue to hire.

That might have an okay shot in industries like tech, where you could argue that employees still have a lot of choice in employer. I don't see it working in other industries (that could probably use it a lot more), like the legal industry or food production.

[hypervisorxxx]

Yup. My point exactly.

Do you think companies want to waste money on 401k matching or healthcare benefits? They don't. They do it because it's either required by law in some capacity and for when it isn't it's because it's such a uniform standard for any nonfledling startup company who wants to hire someone full-time they would look like idiots for not only providing these benefits but providing them from respectable third parties. Over time these things became standardized and highly regulated and that's a good thing.

You're right, if we had to rely on the goodwill of a company this most certainly would not happen. I don't think it would happen overnight but I do believe the best and brightest will go for places who offer competitive advantages and others will follow suit.

If it garners high quality employees then make the company profitable in the same way every startup wants to pretend they are like google with video games and playrooms and brightly colored walls and provided lunches, actually not treating your employees like crap if they have an issue with another employee is also a competitive benefit that could become a trend for any company who wants to be competitive.

[david38]

That’s what arbitration is supposed to be. Independent. Yet, it’s not. If you don’t side with the org that butters your bread, you lose the contract.

[hypervisorxxx]

Good point but if this went mainstream it could be considered a requirement the same way a good growing company behind a fledgling startup will never get away with hiring people full-time unless they supply a healthcare plan and other standard benefits most employees at respectable companies receive, to the point there is no chance they could not be competitive with out them.

And that's the thing really. They could be required to have them, so then it's just a matter of which ones are competitive to the employees.

I would love to apply to a company, ask who their third party HR is and say oh man that one SUCKS and everyone knows it. Sorry, gonna take a job at this other company who had external HR with much better rankings, the same way I might for more competitive healthcare plans or benefits between to equally competitive jobs.

Of course companies do not want to spend money on things like 401k matching healthcare and the otherwise but they will if enough companies do it to the point they look sketchy if they do not only provide these benefits but provide these benefits through respectable third parties.

[hypervisorxxx]

Yeh bit arbitration is something that has to be escalated to, and something one employee is not well versed or capable of paying the fees for in relation to the company. I wouldn't say arbitration is the equivalent of my idea which is access to external legal help by default with a fair assessment.

There are definitely metrics by which these parties could be ranked but sure there would be issues with gaming these metrics. For example if there as a legal requirement to accurately report across many companies how many times during an internal issue the person not in the superior position was fired vs the superior despite reporting something like sexual assault or racism or something like this, and the company says 100% of the time we agreed the superior did nothing wrong and 75% of the time the complainant magically failed their performance review and is no longer with the company within 6months of this.

Well that is a pretty bad metric.

There are definitely ways to report metrics anonymously and the results and legally can inquire if they reported the outcome accurately.

Carts is stating to do this with money. They are reporting how much money women and minorities have in equity vs white males, and eventually will break it down by position which means yeh if most women work in HR and I'm a senior engineer yeh probs women will have less equity, but next yr they will expand and show things like all staff level software developers, this is the breakdown of men vs women equity in tech companies....

That's a number I would love to see. And it would say alot.

So there are ways to make this better even if it's not an easy fix. Requiring companies to provide healthcare and 401k plans did not happen overnight Im sure, but noone would take a company seriously without these benefits for long.

[eythian]

In the Netherlands, where I am, it's a requirement of companies over a certain size to have a "works council", which is something like, but not quite, a union. It's made up of employees and they are legally empowered to be a go-between between employees and the company if required.

This year, for example, the council members where I work have been very busy ensuring that company plans for layoffs were as fair to employees as it was possible to be, by doing things like ensuring that if someone could be moved to another role they were, that the voluntary layoff system was suitable, and so forth.

There are also unions which are cross-company and were involved to a lesser degree in this process, providing advice and specialist support, consulting with members, and so on.

[ghevshoo]

I was fired once in one of the worst ways possible. It came as a total surprise.

My boss and my boss’s boss booked a meeting with me at 17:00 in an external meeting room. My boss’s boss did the actual firing. My direct boss just sat there like a sad puppy.

They handed me a piece of paper and I signed it. I was still in shock. I was escorted to my desk to collect my things and then taken to the head of HR for my “exit interview”.

I told her the whole story and she actually seemed shocked herself. I think I spent over an hour with her, holding back tears, explaining “I wasn’t even told what I did wrong. What am I supposed to do now?”

She told me that she thought what the company was wrong. It didn’t change anything but it meant something at least, considering the state I was in.

I noticed from her LinkedIn that she left the company a couple of months later as well.

[hypervisorxxx]

Oh yeh for sure. I've had an HR women on the phone with me crying because she's so disturbed ny what happened but she had to pretend like she wasn't infront of my boss. She even told me 1:1 the man who refused to let me speak also refused to speak to her it was beneath him and he had another male deliver the message to her to fire me.

In the end she was useless to me and powerless and had as much power ad a caged parrot.

If they are not evil they are simply in control of determining nothing and just a euphemistic liaison for corporate abuse.

I have many war stories from companies like these. Never sign the paperwork right away. I was once given 23minutes to sign a severence agreement and found out later they violated state law: 21 days plus a 7 day walk back, and broke federal law by saying I couldn't have cobra health insurance if I didn't promise to shut up.

Typically a shut up you little bitch document also known as a separation agreement holds severence pay hostage, not healthcare. They also fired me days before I vested my equity and didn't tell me why. In my state you can fire anyone for any reason. They don't have to tell you why. Yeh it's really messed up.

Corporations are like small abusive dictatorships. Just try to find a decent one with good work who is successful enough to be focused on good engineering or whatever it is you do they don't need to bully and tear people down to protect themselves and get by in life.

[mizzao]

Sigh. I'm so sorry you had to deal with that.

[kevin_nisbet]

I think it's an interesting idea.

Although, it does remind me of reading about the rush to judgment that killed Nortel. While not totally related, the inciting incident is something along the lines of something appeared a little weird in a financial statement. To avoid even a perception of impropriety, nortel hired a top outside firm to investigate whether there was anything wrong.

The resulting investigation according to the author led to a chain of events and witch hunt that led to the downfall of Nortel and needless criminal prosecution of executives.

Anyways, probably not so much a comment on the idea itself, but more just a thought on possible outcomes when the process goes wrong, whether internal or external.

[hypervisorxxx]

Sure that's an entertaining outlier anecdote.

I think it's better than the current state of things which is: if the company is wrong and covering it up requires some disadvantage to you vs doing the right thing. 100% of these times you are screwed as an employee.

It also wouldn't be a witch hunt anymore than current HR investigations. Just performed by an objective third party.

[pjmlp]

There are outsourced HR management companies, that hardly changes anything, the company is still the one paying their contract.

[goatinaboat]

HR should ideally be an independent third party and all issues treated the same way a legal audit would

This exists, it’s called “binding arbitration” and it is heavily biased towards the company because they pay its bills.