this post was submitted on 30 Jun 2026
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HR is there to manage benefits mostly. if the US went to medicare for all, and done away with employer sponsored health care, then a ton of HR could go away. Company culture might actually improve for once.
My partner works in HR, and from what I've heard about her stories from her job, this is nowhere near true. Anecdotal evidence, though.
There is a lot of paperwork that needs to be done. If everyone could follow simple, written and documented directions that have actual pictures about how to fill the form you have to fill, you could have a lot less HR people.
But majority of employees are not able to. They have to remind them dozens of times and chase people who didn't do it unless personally threatened. They have to constantly answer questions that are very well documented. They have to parse out information that finances should be able to access, but they need it directly copied from the systems.
It sounds like hell of a job, that would've been so much easier if people were able to follow simple instructions. And the kind of people that can't follow a step-by-step guide that had 5 notifications about needing to be done in a Slack channel won't do it if some AI is telling them to.
From what I've heard, she is just managing disasters that could be a legal problem, always chasing people who don't care about their annoying beraucracy that could cause a lot of trouble.
I have a lot more respect for HR after seeing it from the other side.
I think you might be pleasantly surprised to find that if we all just collectively agreed not to do a lot of that paperwork, absolutely nothing bad would happen.
I have worked for more than one company that had paperwork requirements that, once traced down, had their causes and effects commingled and were a self-perpetuating problem that was causing itself.
Surely some paperwork and documentation is important and serves a purpose that justifies the nuisance, but a good deal of it does not, and it could simply disappear if we could dispense with our collective obsession to document irrelevant information simply because it exists.
That sounds like a self-created problem. Other than joining and leaving, I have had to fill out very little HR paperwork in my career.
Fair enough. I suppose I'm showing my bias. The only time I ever deal with HR is for open enrollment.
True, but I still think there would be plenty for HR to be mediating in terms of employee-to-employee relationships. However, it's a big ask for HR to stop being a "cover your ass" department that is otherwise dedicated to making sure things like sexual harassment and hostile workplace environments don't impact the company itself despite existing in the company all the same. Because that too is a large function of HR.