Here's how we killed HR
The fastest way to destroy a profession is to fill it with incompetent people who never chose it.
That’s exactly what happened to HR.
Over the last two decades, companies quietly dismantled the soul of the function by turning it into a career parking lot.
Couldn’t crack marketing? Moved to HR.
Burned out in sales? Moved to HR.
Executive assistant outgrew her role? Promoted to Head of People.
That’s the deeper problem.
HR is no longer led by HR. It’s been infiltrated. By operators with no grounding in labor psychology. By admin staff who’ve never conducted a termination. By generalists who treat performance reviews like Google Forms.
The result is a function bloated with intent but hollow in expertise.
But this wasn’t always the case.
Like I mentioned in the previous post, HR wasn’t invented to help people. It was invented to contain them.
In 1901, National Cash Register created the first HR department to prevent labor unrest. It was a strategic response to rising union activity. Not an act of care, but of control. For decades, HR worked in service of power, pretending to represent people.
But over time, something shifted.
By the 1970s and 80s, HR began evolving. Practitioners emerged who saw the potential for balance. They trained in industrial relations, behavioral science, compensation theory. They studied Freud, Maslow, Drucker. They knew how to mediate between capital and labor. They could negotiate with unions. Design work. Listen to trauma.
HR was still part of the machine. But it started to develop a conscience.
But then came the liberalization and the startup wave and everything went down the drain.
HR became a placeholder filled with whoever.
Founders and Founder’s office extensions were rebranded as Chief People Officers. Executive assistants became CHROs overnight. MBAs with zero HR training began rewriting org charts. Culture was reduced to a WhatsApp group. Wellness to a long weekend. The HRBP title became a passport for everyone who didn’t fit anywhere else.
What got lost was dangerous.
Because you cannot fake credibility in HR. Not for long. At some point, someone gets fired. Someone gets assaulted. Someone breaks. And in that room, they don’t need template decks and soft eyes. They need competence. Emotional, legal, strategic.
But today, HR has no spine because it was never allowed to grow one.
It’s used as a shield. A script reader. A festival planner. A middleman. A convenient silence.
And that dilution comes at a cost.
Because when real HR is missing, people suffer quietly. They leave silently. They burn out systematically. And no one notices, because the ones meant to notice were never trained to see.
HR was never meant to be a dumping ground.
It was supposed to be a crucible.
Where conflict meets clarity.
Where dignity meets discipline.
Where people are not just processed but understood.
This is what happens when a firewall forgets it was once built to hold a soul.
Bingo this 100% what is wrong with HR, only 7% of those in HR have a degree in HR. Why so few people with degrees in HR, this poster nails it on the head that HR has been infiltrated by people who don't have any experience or education in HR they're not about to hire someone who will expose their incompetence. I've witness HR bypass a male applicant with a master's degree in human resources and 3x more HR experience only to hire a less qualified female applicant with an associate's degree in Fashion. Also, the 1970's brought about a need to find a place to put women as they entered the workforce, so companies started using HR as a dumping ground and HR has become infiltrated by women and that has resulted in HR being the most discriminatory profession in the workplace.
Unfortunately, HR is incapable of change, HR simply won't change on their own and the only way to bring about change in HR is for CEO's & COO's along with shareholders to force HR to change. CEO's and COO's need to make HR change.