The Problem With Human Resources

The newly hired employees nodded along as the trainer explained why the term “Jerry-rigged” was problematic. “When the Americans were on the verge of winning World War II, the Germans couldn’t produce replacement parts to fix their tanks and vehicles. They would improvise solutions on the field, and Americans called these vehicles ‘Jerry-rigged’ vehicles.” The trainer went on to describe how, because “Jerry” was a slur against Germans, the phrase was unacceptable to use on campus. The new employees all nodded in understanding, and I nodded along with them.

This was the early 2010s, and I had just accepted a job at a local university. The other new hires and I had come together for mandatory anti-discrimination training. There were a handful of professor and manager types in the room, but they were outnumbered by Carhartt wearing groundskeeping hires and dining hall staff. So far, the room was in agreement: of course we wouldn’t sexually harass our colleagues, use racial slurs or denigrate our LGBTQ colleagues. This training was proving to be a breeze.

Things changed when one of the new hires, a grandma hired to work in a dining hall, asked if there was a list of bad words and phrases that needed to be avoided to work on campus. “Here’s the thing,” continued the HR rep. “I can’t give you a full list of prohibited language because language changes all the time. Also, it misses a greater point. The point is if the person you are interacting with finds your language or behavior harassing, that’s harassment. That is enough to garner disciplinary action.”

Confusion fell across the room. A facilities worker objected: “So if I don’t mean offense, but they take offense, I can get in trouble?” “Yes.” said the HR rep unequivocally. A lunch lady asked “But what if they’re lying to get me in trouble?” “Dishonesty has not yet been an issue with this policy,” asserted the trainer. A groundskeeper: “So if I’m just plain nice to a woman, but she doesn’t tell me to step off, she can still complain about harassment and get me fired?” “It will certainly start an investigation,” the rep responded. I joined in with the room’s skepticism: “So you’re telling us to abide by a policy that has no defined set of guidelines, no system of checks for dishonesty, and can be accidentally violated at any time?” “Well, I wouldn’t phrase it like that …” the trainer backpedaled, but acknowledged my statement was mostly correct. By then, she had lost most of the room.

The room of mostly hourly wage workers didn’t have language to identify the tension felt, but this decade old training seminar foreshadowed many flashpoints in the ongoing culture war, whether it be DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) initiatives, #MeToo, BLM, or debates over free speech. Underlying the training was a latent moral framework — a division between the oppressed and oppressor, the privileged and the outsider, the dominant and the victim. This framework is intended to reduce both explicit and subliminal forms of discrimination against people who have historically been targets of discrimination. While its goals are good and right and true, what strikes me now is how counterproductive this particular training turned out to be.

What had started as a mutual agreement to treat colleagues across race, religion, sex, and orientation with respect had devolved into division, resistance, anger, and fear. I know this because, riding the elevator down to the parking garage, other attendees joked that they didn’t plan to talk to any women, black coworkers, or gay colleagues at work. It was the only way they wouldn’t accidentally say something offensive and lose their job. I can’t say I disagreed with them. I considered myself a pretty enlightened person, but walking away from that training, I found myself quietly grateful that I would be working out of my own private office. Instead of offering a clear policy for these new employees to follow, the HR instructive became a sword of Damocles over their careers, finances, and families. It gave the university legal cover to fire employees for the slightest harassments, but it instigated friction with people the policy was designed to bring together. The result was compliance with a policy, but resentment and opposition to the ideology. It was debatable whether progress was made that day.

Say what you will about the Christian faith, but something helpful about the religion is that it offers an appealing moral framework. It recognizes that systems of rules and punishment aren’t enough to catalyze spiritual growth or social cohesion. The Good Book is known for its moral values and rules, but what is less acknowledged is that it also provides ways for transgressors to be reinstated back into the people of God. If there is a rule that will bring down the hammer of God, there is also a set mechanism in place to bring about restoration.

For example, in the Law of Moses, the vast majority of transgressions may be atoned for through one of two mechanisms: restitutions or offerings. In civil matters, the “eye for an eye” framework of justice was the primary guide. Transgressions against one’s neighbor could be expiated – washed away as water under a bridge — if restitution was made. In transgressions of divine ordinances, one was to offer a sacrifice to God of their livestock or money as a token of repentance. The offerings were outward acts of contrition that indicated an inner remorse, which God accepted with forgiveness if the heart was sincere. A handful of offenses were considered unforgivable — murder and incest among them — but the vast majority of commands in the Law of Moses offered a way for sinners to ditch the label and exit the dog house.

In the New Testament, this system of sacrifice-for-sin is re-envisioned. The moral framework of Jesus’s teaching is a higher moral perfection than what the Law of Moses outlines. The man from Nazareth has no problem telling his followers that the inner dispositions of lust or jealousy or hatred deserve hellfire. In his moral framework, repentance and faith are all that is needed to avert such a tragic end. The death and resurrection of Jesus Christ provides the one final, total, and sufficient sacrifice for all those transgressions, and the Christian’s trust and faith in this gospel message is enough to receive its benefits. Now, all sins have become forgivable — including murder and incest. Followers of Jesus, then, have for themselves impossibly high moral standards that they strive toward, and when (not if) they fail, the safety net of God’s mercy and grace, secured by Jesus’s death and resurrection, is there to catch them. This is true regardless of one’s race, sex, or gender. (It’s also true of class as well, an important note since most of the objections to the policy came from the new hires from the working class.)

One of the unexplored criticisms with the HR policy I was made to adhere to (and from what I understand, many other training programs and policies are similarly structured) is that it lacked a moral logic that invited universal buy-in. It creates a system of punishment without clearly defined boundaries. It created hostility in the hearts of those who were deemed to have privilege. It allowed no room for error in following rules which were not clearly defined. There were no checks and balances in place if the policy was abused. The goals of the policy were good, but the moral logic at play was incoherent.

Here’s an anecdotal example of how HR policies like this backfire: a close friend of mine working for the same university was sexually harassed. At first it was comments about clothes, and then it was demeaning tasks like picking up personal packages at the post office. Crude jokes during work meetings, X-rated memes texted during work hours, etc. My friend knew it was harassment, but didn’t trust HR to handle the matter. Nobody did — in her working class department, everyone had been through the same training, and had written off HR as an enemy. Desperate for freedom, my friend found a position in another department, and hoping to make a change as she left, she filed an HR grievance on the way out the door. Her grievance uncovered a trail of harassment that included testimonies of nearly a dozen other women, all of whom could have reported the man, but none of them trusted HR to do anything about it.  The man in question was fired, but he might have been fired sooner if the general consensus among the campus working class was that HR only cared if race or sexual orientation were involved.  Every institution has trouble garnering trust from its employees, but commitments to ineffective moral frameworks make the problem worse.

Say what you will about Christianity, but it’s been a historic catalyst of achieving the goals that HR programs aim for. Its initial spread came through the underclass of slaves, women, and the poor throughout the Roman Empire, developing one of the world’s first truly extranational communities. Its adherents established the first hospitals to take care of the sick and elderly. It became a champion of literacy so that normal people could have direct access to its sacred texts (and reform its own corrupt religious hierarchy). Whether it’s the end of chattel slavery, the American civil rights movement, the decolonization of the British empire, or the end of South African apartheid, the moral logic of Christianity has historically been a tool of the dispossessed to challenge their oppressors. Why has Christianity been successful in this way? One imagines that its success is, in no small part, due to the fact it allows for all sins, including oppression, to be expiated as water under a bridge.

I’d wager that most people want to be a part of an inclusive, welcoming, productive, and diverse community, free from harassment, discrimination, and judgment. It’s clear that my university employer wanted it too. Unless there are significant changes to the programming of the university, however, that goal seems to be out of reach. Law will not increase holiness, but it will increase trespass and create the opposite of the university’s goals. Mercy, on the other hand, even mercy in the HR department, can do what the law cannot: changing racist hearts, humbling serial harassers, and creating a community of truly mutual affection.