Dear Andy,
Of course, your question is very valid and crucial. I appreciate your honest attemp to know the intricacy about HR. But frankly speaking your question misses one aspect, "is disliked."
There is a lot of difference between the terms, "need to be disliked" and "is disliked."
In fact,
based on my in-service experience of about 40 years and post service experience of 10 more years, as a consultant, my firm opinion is
"HR does not need to be disliked, BUT is generally disliked by the employees". But generally the HR personnel neither try to know, nor want to know why they are not liked by the employees and how they can avoid that dilemma, while the answer is quite simple for them to understand, provided if they try to understand. That is ......
Their own attitude and the working style.
In this respect you may also like to see my post on the issue of employees attrition from the following link:
http://citehr.com#post1551555
In your eyes your HR Manager may be an experienced person, but I may frankly rate her as an inefficient Manager, if she is being disliked by her subordinate employees, as she has not been able to learn anything out of her experience. An experience person is that who learns well from his or her own experience, as experience is a great teacher for a person. Nobody else can teach him/her well than his/her own experience.
Even if you try to pay your employees an increase of 25-50% instead of 10-12%, the employees won't stop disliking your HR Manager irrespective of her plenty of experience. She may be implementing the HR Rules or disciplinary rules very perfectly, sincerely, honestly and without any bias, but unless there is a human touch in her working style, she cannot earn any respect, as an individual HR Manager.
Rules and procedures are made only for the guidance of one and all in order to streamline the processes. Human values have also to be taken in to account and considered before implementing such rules and procedures. Rigidity in implementation always works adversely. Not the words, but the spirit of rules have to be observed. A person if aware of the fact that you have a stick or rod in your hand, he would definitely be afraid of you with the fear that you would use that to beat him. But the moment you use that he would become fearless. So, punitive rules should be used only sparingly and that too with the tough type of an employee only, so that others should also take a lesson from that incident.
We have to treat our human resourse, not merely as human resourse, BUT AS "Human Capital" to work for and in the interest of the organisation, but by respecting their values, needs, passions and emotions also, so that they may feel the sense of belonging and also feel themselves about their responsibilities towards the organisation, its development and progress without any need for enforcement of policies. Needless to emphasize, no one likes to be treated as inhuman.
An organization is just like a family and has to work as a family only. Mere idea of bossism cannot work. So, unless your HR Manager starts dealing with the employees as the 2nd head of the family she can't succeed.
HOPE, YOU WOULD LIKE TO AGREE WITH MY OPINION.
PS DHINGRA
Chief Executive Officer
Dhingra Group of Management & Vigilance Consultants
New Delhi, India
[dcgroup1962@gmail.com]