‘What’s the biggest cock-up by HR that you’ve witnessed?’ – 22 epic work mistakes by people who are meant to know what they’re doing

There are plenty of deserving recipients for work-based ire, such as line managers, CEOs and the person who pinches your mug on a regular basis and never washes it up. But surely the department that causes the most annoyance across the board is the overly bureaucratic, empathy-free Human Resources. They really know how to ruin someone’s day.

However, it turns out that, far from being perfect, they make an almighty balls up as much as the lowly employees they often seem so keen to persecute. Over on the AskUK subreddit, user MoonlightByWindow posted this:

What’s the biggest cock-up by HR that you’ve witnessed?

My friend was telling me about how the latest drama in their org is that someone was promoted to a managerial role. Big announcement email sent out to all staff, people in the office congratulating that person etc. A few hours later, HR announce that they’ve ‘suddenly’ realised that someone else would be better suited for the role. Cue embarrassment.

Now I’m curious if there are any other stories like this.

And lots of people happily chipped in with stories about the ways in which this most cursed of branches had shown themselves up.

1.

‘HR came to see me a told me to collect my things and meet them in the office with a high up manager. So I did.

They then informed me I was being suspended from my job pending both an internal investigation and a possible criminal investigation. I was suspected of gross misconduct (theft of money) and sexual harassment.

Manager looked dumbfounded during it, as I did. HR had somehow got themselves confused, I was the victim of the sexual harassment and the witness to the theft of money…’
–MissLotti

2.

‘Everyone’s contract at my level stated employees needed to give three months’ notice and the company only needs to give one month to let you go. But mine read that the company needed to give me three months notice… so when redundancy came round I was in quite a strong position.’
–CIMAJ98

3.

‘Work for the fire service. On the first day of training school, all the new recruits were discussing the selection process, practical assessment and interviews etc.

One guy is suspiciously quiet. He didn’t experience any of these things, just got a job offer after the initial application form. Just had the same name as another applicant, and they sent the offer to the wrong guy.

He was pretty decent at the job though. Had much worse candidates that HAD been through the testing!’
–general__beef

4.

‘I know a guy who was interviewing for a senior role and happened to mention where he went to school. The guy interviewing him misheard and thought he went to a different, extremely exclusive school that he went to. Basically hand waved the rest of the interview because he knew my friend was the ‘right sort of guy’ because they went to the same school. My friend just sort of went along with it and got hired.’
–essjay2009

5.

‘HR managed to put someone’s phone number in the hourly rate field on their payroll, and then tried to pay them several billion pounds when payroll ran.’
–BarNo3385

6.

‘Someone – I won’t say his real name, but he was called Ken – was appalling at his job. He got pulled up for a disciplinary for faking expenses skiving off work and general fucking lazy arsehole-ness.

They had him bang to rights. Including for claiming driving expenses for a meeting 50 miles away, not attending, and instead just going home. And at disciplinary, the stupid admin they’d relied on to do the legwork had just utterly shat the bed.

They got every single date wrong. Including claiming he’d been up to no good when he could prove he was in a meeting with his boss.’
–ResplendentBear

7.

‘I decided to quit my government job and move to Australia one day. Told my supervisor I was quitting and leaving at the end of the month. She wished me all the best and left it at that.

I’m assuming she either didn’t inform HR that I was leaving or she did and they did nothing about it because they kept paying me after I left.’
–apeliott

8.

‘An email saying ‘I’ve cut your post because you are pregnant’.’
–Spottyjamie

9.

‘Got accused of stealing money. Suspended and fired. This was despite me not even being in the country when the theft took place. I was on holiday in the USA. I told them this. Proved it on numerous occasions and was still dismissed.

Appealed and that was dismissed. Took them to tribunal and got a decent payout. So because they didn’t do their due diligence in the investigation, what should have cost them £40 (the amount missing) it ended up costing them a few thousand.’
–TheEchoingVoid

10.

‘Pretty much any time HR tries to improve morale it has the opposite impact. For instance, when they share a ‘mental health webinar’ or whatever, rather than addressing the issue, it makes things worse.’
–Craft_on_draft

11.

‘My favourite one of these was HR running a ‘managing finances’ course when everyone said in a survey they’re chronically underpaid. 90% of the team have now quit within a year.’
–Super-Surround-4347