How can I trust HR when managers with complaints get promoted?

Each week, Dr Kirstin Ferguson tackles questions on the workplace, career and leadership in her advice column “Got a Minute?” This week, the role of Human Resources, a lying stakeholder, and a decision on retirement.

I work for a major university and in the past five years I know of two individuals (who don’t know each other) who have made a complaint to HR about a manager. Afterwards, both individuals have left and the manager in question has been promoted. I know that HR do a lot more than take complaints from staff but is the notion that staff can confide in an HR representative a fallacy?

Another staff member went to HR, suffering from extreme anxiety and this was interpreted as a threat to ask for compensation, so her manager gave her a “warning”. Does HR only pretend to be our friend when they are really there to protect the organisation?

Since writing this column, I’ve noticed HR has a bad reputation amongst some employees which is a real shame. Yet as I read your examples, and so many others sent in, I can see why a lack of trust exists.

In my experience, the best HR leaders, and there are many out there, are able to navigate the fine line between maintaining employee trust and confidence while also being responsible to the organisation. They are strategic leaders who understand the success of an HR function, and trust of those they support, depends on it. This means while HR is ultimately responsible to the CEO and therefore the organisation, they understand balancing the rights and concerns of employees is how they can help protect the organisation.

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A talented HR professional is able to find outcomes, especially in sensitive and difficult situations, where both the employee and the organisation can walk away feeling respected and heard. Unfortunately, it doesn’t sound like the HR support your colleagues have received is anything like that so rebuilding trust, whether with you or others, is going to be a long, slow road from here.

After a complex project I’d been working on ended, an important external stakeholder identified a problem and contacted my boss for a “please explain”. I was asked to provide a forensic account of my work, proving the mistake had been the stakeholder’s and not mine. But the stakeholder took no accountability and instead blamed the problem on me. I am confident my boss believes my account but they are not in a position to push this with the stakeholder.

Meanwhile, I need to keep working with someone I have good reason to believe lied to protect themself. My trust is shattered. I’m often asked to go above and beyond for this stakeholder who has behaved, in my opinion, with a complete lack of integrity. What do you suggest?