The World of H.R.

[The following is a repeat from a blog of mine on 4/3/2010.]

I had to spend a few days over the last couple weeks with my H.R. boss. Someone in one of my offices had filed a complaint with the State Human Rights Commission about an incident she alleged had happened. Of course I cannot divulge anything about the complaint or our investigation. But I will say that this was not an entry level Human Resources investigation. This was a post-graduate thesis level Human Resources investigation.

It has been a strange couple of weeks at my H.R. office, and the above mentioned complaint was just the icing on the cake. I also had to deal with the following:

1. A bunch of people quit at once.
2. I had to hire a bunch of people.
3. One person I hired didn't show for her orientation. My Gruff Boss had be call her to have her come in the next day. It was not a surprise that she only lasted about 2 days before her attendance was a problem. In the one week surrounding her employment, she presented a bunch of reasons she had to delay her start date and/or had to leave work early and/or had to miss work. She had an uncle who was going to have his leg amputated and she needed to be there. She had a toothache that required her to be at the Emergency Room for 2 solid days. And some others I've forgotten already.
4. We had people from our American Headquarters come and train us on the new software we would be using. I had been in our Regional Headquarters at the end of February to train on the software. However, the computer network had issues and the 2 days of training were a complete waste of time.
5. IT people from our American HQ invaded our office to install new stuff that would make it possible for our European Corporate Corporate HQ to upload all payroll and billing information faster and more frequently.