Why Does HR Attract So Much Criticism?

For as long as I can remember, the perception of HR in organisations has been challenged. Managers and employees alike have reached for the nickname “Human Remains,” and pop culture has long joined in — from TV caricatures of joyless bureaucrats to columns portraying HR as obstructive. In recent years, however, the critique has intensified. In September 2025, The Times ran “How HR Overtook British Business,” building on a provocative Telegraph piece from December 2024 titled “A Shadow HR Empire Runs Britain.” HR is no longer merely accused of being bogged down in red tape; it is now being blamed for the UK’s productivity crisis, a problem that has persisted since the 2008 financial crisis. That is a serious charge — and worth examining.

Inside the profession, strain is also evident. Investment in senior HR talent has declined, leaving many experienced leaders unemployed. A trend of “juniorisation,” recently highlighted by an influential HR headhunter on LinkedIn, has led to functions that are heavy on process but light on authority. In other words, HR is blamed for being both too powerful and too powerless.

This two-part series uses psychology to probe these contradictions. In this first piece, I ask: why does HR attract so much criticism? Are the critiques grounded in fact, or coloured by bias and cultural perceptions? In the second part, I will examine the value HR creates (or fails to create), and whether insights from organisational justice and predictive analytics can point towards a more credible way forward. This is not to excuse poor practice — there is plenty of that in the profession. However, to effectively address the symptoms of mistrust, we must first understand their underlying causes.

The dual-loyalty problem

HR occupies a structurally conflicted position, which psychology refers to as role conflict (Kahn et al., 1964). It must protect the organisation from legal and reputational risk, while also advocating for employees’ fairness and development. In practice, leaders view HR’s caution as an obstruction, while employees interpret its alignment with management as a betrayal. Attribution biases exacerbate the divide, and HR professionals themselves experience cognitive dissonance (Festinger, 1957), torn between the need for care and the demands of compliance. In this liminal zone, HR becomes an easy scapegoat.

Visibility, time horizons, and the ROI problem

HR’s impact is often real but delayed. Initiatives in leadership, wellbeing, or inclusion generate benefits, lower attrition, stronger pipelines, healthier cultures, but these are lagging indicators, surfacing months or years later. By contrast, sales and operations can show wins immediately. Psychology refers to this phenomenon as temporal discounting (Ainslie, 1975): people tend to undervalue delayed rewards compared to immediate ones. Add availability bias, where immediate results are more salient, and HR looks “soft” or “inefficient,” even when the outcomes are cumulative and significant.

At the individual level, HR is also remembered for its worst moments. Disciplinaries, grievances, and redundancies loom larger than supportive encounters, such as onboarding. This is the negativity bias (Baumeister et al., 2001). In hybrid workplaces, where supportive HR is less visible, the memory gap is magnified — reinforcing the perception of HR as punitive rather than helpful.

Rules, reactance, and perceived coercion

HR is also the face of rules. Policies on compliance, performance, or conduct may be designed to protect, but when experienced as imposed, they provoke backlash. Psychological reactance (Brehm, 1966) suggests that when people feel their autonomy is constrained, they resist, regardless of logic. Research distinguishes enabling bureaucracies (rules that support autonomy and clarity) from coercive ones (rules that feel punitive) (Adler & Borys, 1996). Too often, HR is judged not by the rule itself but by how it is introduced and enforced.

Cultural politics and “wokeness”

HR’s association with diversity, well-being, and culture makes it particularly vulnerable to caricature. In today’s polarised climate, such programmes are often mocked as indulgent, despite evidence linking them to reduced absenteeism and stronger engagement (Robertson & Cooper, 2011; Harter et al., 2020). Engagement levels are indeed falling — Gallup’s State of the Global Workplace 2023 reported that only 23% of employees worldwide are engaged, while the CIPD’s Good Work Index 2024 highlighted rising presenteeism and declining satisfaction in the UK. Some critics attribute this to “wokery,” yet research points instead to systemic pressures: post-pandemic burnout (Maslach & Leiter, 2016), cost-of-living stress (Karasek & Theorell, 1990), breaches of the psychological contract (Guest & Conway, 2002), and digital overload (Tarafdar et al., 2019).

The perception gap persists because sensational headlines about “woke training” are more memorable than the slow-burn benefits of healthier workplaces, a case of availability bias (Tversky & Kahneman, 1973). The challenge for HR is to demonstrate the value of these initiatives in ways that withstand public scepticism.

Historical baggage

The shadow of “personnel administration” still lingers. HR only gained a strategic seat at the table in the late 1990s (Ulrich, 1997), yet cultural memory still codes it as a back-office, low-status function. Psychology refers to this status as incongruence (Berger et al., 1972): once a group is perceived as low-prestige, perceptions shift gradually. Many managers, therefore, continue to treat HR as paperwork handlers rather than strategic partners, a stereotype reinforced by the stereotype content model (Fiske et al., 2002).

Economic scapegoating

Additionally, HR often bears the brunt of blame for economic problems beyond its control. The UK’s productivity slowdown since 2008 has been linked by commentators to HR, but economists from the ONS to Nicholas Bloom (LSE/Stanford) and Andy Haldane (former Bank of England) attribute it instead to weak investment and poor management practices (House of Commons Library, 2023). Psychology explains this dynamic as scapegoating (Girard, 1986): in uncertain times, groups with ambiguous roles and contested legitimacy make easy targets for blame. HR fits that role neatly.

What next?

The temptation for HR leaders is to continually reinvent services to prove relevance: new portals, new frameworks, new surveys. However, if much of the criticism is rooted in psychological bias, reactance, or cultural perception, then the solution is not reinvention but reflection. Understanding the dynamics behind mistrust may be the first step in reshaping HR’s reputation.

In Part Two, I’ll shift the focus to evidence of HR’s actual contribution—and how the profession can persuade CEOs, employees, and investors to move beyond the caricature.