微软的女员工们出离愤怒了。最近，有女员工集体起诉微软存在性别歧视问题。原告据称代表了微软公司的8630名女性工程师和IT技术员。据称在2011年至2016年，微软至少在518次职务晋升中对女性员工搞区别对待，少发给女员工的薪酬总额大约达到1亿到2.38亿美元。

但微软的病根或许出在人力资源部门上。仔细看看起诉书，你就会发现，在原告的叙事语气中，微软的HR一贯对女性员工遇到的问题漠然坐视。据起诉书称，每当有员工就严重问题进行投诉，微软的HR团队往往没有采取任何行动。而一旦HR掺合进来，反而只会把事情弄得更糟。

微软公司则在法庭上强烈抗争，表示这些原告之所以没被提拔晋升，或者之所以拿不到她们期望的薪水，并不是由于性别歧视原因。微软公司的一位发言人对《财富》表示：“微软鼓励员工提出问题，并且我们也有许多让他们反馈问题的渠道。我们对每名员工的问题都认真对待，而且有由经验丰富的专家组成的团队专门对这些问题进行彻底而中立的调查，并且基于证据做出公正结论。”

Microsoft has a woman problem. That, at least, is the claim of an ongoing gender discrimination lawsuit against the venerable technology giant. The class action suit contends that Microsoft cheated the plaintiffs represented—roughly 8,630 women engineers and IT specialists—out of 518 promotions and between $100 million and $238 million in pay between 2011 and 2016.

But maybe what Microsoft really has is an HR problem. A careful reading of the documents in the lawsuit reveals that the company’s human resources department plays a consistent supporting role in the accounts of the plaintiffs—that of a seemingly disinterested observer. At best, according to the complaint, Microsoft’s HR team frequently appears to have done nothing when employees lodged complaints about serious problems. When HR did get involved, plaintiffs allege, it often made things worse.

Microsoft, which is fighting the case in court, strongly denies the allegations and argues there are non-discriminatory reasons that the plaintiffs were not promoted or paid according to their expectations. A company spokesperson gave this statement to Fortune: “Microsoft encourages employees to raise concerns and has numerous channels for them to do so. We take each concern seriously and have a separate team of experienced professionals whose job it is to investigate these types of allegations thoroughly and in a neutral way, and to reach a fair conclusion based on the evidence.”

不过从法院文件中的原告证词中看，这些女性员工似乎并未得到微软HR的支持和保护。

比如微软的互联网安全策略师凯瑟琳•莫索里斯至少曾经到人事部门投诉过三次。2008年，也就是她刚进入微软一年后，她便曾向上司反映她的部门存在性骚扰的问题。虽然她反映的问题证据充足，但那位涉嫌性骚扰的经理只是被调离原岗位，不久后还升了职。莫索里斯怀疑那位经理为了打击报复而一度扣发了她的奖金，便再次向人事部门反映了问题，但此事迟迟没有下文。2014年，她还曾向人事部门反映称，自己虽然是部门里的明星研究员，但每回升职都没有自己的份。她还表示，自从一个男同事当上了领导，他就将自己边缘化了，只给自己安排一些不让男员工做的低端工作。HR依然对她反映的问题置之不理。莫索里斯愤而离职，并将微软告上了法庭。

另一位工程师海蒂•波儿起诉称，2010年，她的老板曾经对她说，他不想把一个晋升的名额“浪费”在她身上。当时她已经有了一个小孩，正做着要二胎的打算。她把这个问题举报给了人事部门，但HR迟迟没有给出回复。另外她2002年还曾受到一位男性员工的性骚扰，不过她的部门也没有“公正处理”那起事件。（波儿在起诉书中称，人事部门的反映只是“加剧了她的痛苦和压力”。）波儿在2017年还曾向人事部门反映，她最近参加的两次公司招聘在薪酬上存在性别歧视问题，但人事部门对此也没有任何回应。

一桩桩控诉，无不说明一个令人无奈的事实：女员工们将HR当成了自己人，HR在问题面前的无动于衷，让她们感觉受到了背叛，也使她们终于认清，HR与自己根本不是站在同一立场。

同样的故事在全国职场上每年都要上演无数次。无数公司为了建立内部信任和士气，又不断加深了这种虚幻的认知。连一些经验丰富的职场老将有时也会忘了HR是不会在出现问题时力挺你的。纽约知名劳动法律师凯文•明泽就一针见血地指出：“HR不是你的朋友，更不是你的死党。”

只要你仔细想想，理由是很显然的：就算你人事部的同事人很不错，心肠又好，他毕竟不是给你打工的。他们的薪水是公司管理层发的，所以他们的第一要务是服务和保护公司。你所眼红的那些“资源”是供管理层的领导们享用的，不是每个普通员工都能享受的到的。

“HR不是你的朋友”这种说法已经不新鲜了。随着曝光老板与企业文化不正之风的“MeToo”运动席卷全美，这一残酷现实更显得愈发明显。资本经常性地凌驾于规则和员工权益之上。比如Uber女工程师苏珊•法勒入职第一天就遭到了经理的骚扰，而那位经理却被公司人事部门一句“人才难得”就轻飘飘地放过了。福克斯的罗杰•艾尔斯、比尔•奥莱利干的那些事儿都被公司的保密条款反复遮掩，而且依然能拿到几百万美元的报酬。这些性骚扰者还仅仅是受到媒体关注的一小部分。要知道，每一个哈维•温斯顿的背后，还有86,000个性别歧视和打击报复案件被投诉到美国平等就业机会委员会。而在每个因性骚扰问题落马的高管背后，在每一个歧视女性的职场环境里，都有一个作为加害者同谋的HR部门，他们不约而同地采取同样的措施回避着自己的责任，反歧视培训只是走走过场，调查取证更是敷衍了事，仲裁结果藏着掖着，以各类保密规定为由内部消化。

在人事部门看来，草根们掀起的“MeToo”活动显然是一阵不和谐音，因为所谓的“职场整风运动”根本不是他们要忙活的，他们这几年最大的任务就是招聘。

随着劳动力市场显著缩紧，加之“千禧一代”的员工远不如上一代人容易满足，HR部门的重点也放在了怎样用温情攻势吸引年轻人才上。与此同时，HR部门本身也发展得空前壮大。据彭博BNA去年的一项调查显示，企业HR人员与普通工人的比例已从10年前的1:100上升到了1.4:100。同时他们也在软件硬建设上大搞军备竞赛。看看2018年3月刊《财富》杂志的“百佳雇主”报道，你就能知道美国的顶级企业为招揽人才可谓无所不用其极。有的允许把宠物带到办公室，有的推出灵活工时制，有的提供免费小吃，有的还有人生导师跟你免费谈人生理想。还有些公司投入重金打造自己作为雇主的金字招牌，比如在社交媒体上编故事，为公司疯狂打Call。在HR春天般的温暖中，你可能很容易忘了，在年终绩效考评和职场管理中如秋风般无情的，也是同样这一伙人。

HR专员们自己则辩解称，我们既要服务企业的利益，也要维护员工的权益。他们不认为这二者是对立的关系。或许正因为如此，有些公司的HR部门——特别是在科技界，最近正在努力重新塑造自身的形象。比如一些公司将传统的“人力资源部”的名称改为了更柔性、更友好的“人才事业部”（如谷歌、西南航空）、“员工体验部”（爱彼迎）、“员工成功部“（Salesforce）等等。

不过既然越来越多证据证明，HR在员工体验的管理上并不那么在行，员工们又将如何避免自己落得个失望的境地呢？首先，你应该进一步了解你人事部门的同事面临的挑战。

当代的人力资源结构的雏形可以追溯到19世纪末的第二次工业革命，人事部门的建立，就是为了将大量招来的工人合理分配到各个车间和流水线。不过时至今日，正如劳动法律师凯文•明泽所说，“员工关系的重点是限制企业的责任。”这一方面也是受各种劳动法规的要求，比如20世纪下半叶美国修定的《同酬法案》、《民权法案》第七章、《怀孕歧视法案》等等。

今天的企业人事部门汇聚了企业中相当多的职能，比如一部分管理职能（薪酬、福利），一部分吐故纳新的职能（招聘、培训），一部监察职能（员工关系、纪律）等等。美国最高法院1998年曾规定，企业员工若想就性骚扰案请求法律援助，需先本公司的HR部门报案。2017年，一名女性员工状告国防承包商BAE系统公司存在性歧视、性骚扰和打击报复问题，结果被弗吉尼亚地方法院裁定败诉，法院的理由之玉是“原告在明知报案流程的前提下未按程序报案。”（BAE公司则在当时的一份声明中盛赞了法官的裁决，并称原告的指控是“不道德”的。）

对于“MeToo”运动中暴露出的美国职场的种种丑相，雇主品牌咨询公司Exaqueo的CEO苏珊•拉蒙特并不吃惊。“这和20年前没什么不同。”她指出，HR们对媒体近期接连曝出的一些案例早已见怪不怪了。“我也不想这么说，但是要推动系统性变革是很难的。”

人事工作缺乏进步，其实也侧面说明了企业的优先要务是什么。雇主品牌咨询机构Amplify的前HR人员拉尔斯•施密特认为，近几十年来，虽说企业人事工作确实有了不小的变化，比如战略性提升了，与业务结合得更紧密了，自动化、数字化的水平也有提升，但是究其实质，尤其是在员工关系上和对员工投诉的处理上，与几十年前几乎没有任何不同。

另外，企业对这些部门的投资也是明显滞后的。法律事务所Sanford Heisler Sharp曾代理过美国史上最大的一桩性别歧视集体诉讼案，被告诺华制药曾因此案赔偿原告2.53亿美元。该公司董事长大卫•桑福德指出，在该案中，诺华公司的员工有数万人，却只配备了三名调查员。（该公司的HR部门也缺乏集中的歧视投诉跟踪体系。作为和解条件之一，诺华公司此后也在这方面做了一些改进。）

不但企业界整体上没有巩固做好员工关系的基础，经济大环境也对员工权益越来越不利。美国工会代表的工人比例已经从1983年的23.3%下降到11.9%。与此同时，越来越多的企业强迫员工签订强制性的仲裁协议，禁止员工向公开法庭发起诉讼，这一比例已从1992年的2%上升到54%的无工会私营企业。（虽然仲裁一般比诉讼的速度快，成本也更低，但员工在仲裁中往往会处于不利地位。）

这些因素也解释了为什么随着时间的推移和社会的进步，每年在平等就业机会委员会（EEOC）报案的职场歧视和打击报复案件的数量在过去20年间仍没有改观。由于企业界在应对职场骚扰问题上反应不力，2015年，EEOC曾组成专门小组研究这一课题。在专题报告中，EEOC指出，由于受害人害怕打击报复，大部分职场骚扰案件甚至根本没有报案。LegalZoom公司近期进行的一项调查也表明，只有四分之一的员工相信他们的所在企业能快速有效地解决这些职场问题。

针对性骚扰问题，广域的社会救济渠道同样是存在问题的。上一财年，EEOC一共处理了99,109起报案，其中有31,411起涉嫌性骚扰。在这些指控中，EEOC发现其中仅970起存在“正当理由”，约占总数的3.1%。

EEOC主管尼古拉斯•因吉奥表示，由于该机构有一套早期过滤系统，因此它最终调查和裁决的案件只占所有报案的五成。不过他也表示，员工针对雇主提起骚扰指控的门槛仍然是“很高”的。

因吉奥表示：“在很多案件中，有很多职场对话都有性意味，但法庭却表示，这不是‘严重而普遍’的行为。这种情况经常发生。”

不少HR人员向《财富》表示，很多公司的HR部门也在这方面做了深刻反省，不过他们并不认为当前的HR系统完全无用。很多HR人员包括律师都表示，大家的眼睛都盯着一些突出案件，却忽略了在很多日常案件中，HR部门做得其实还是很不错的。

拉莫蒂指出，人事部门自身也是有苦衷的。首先是透明度的问题：HR人员受较高的伦理要求和保密纪律约束，“这样一来，企业就很难向员工证明他们正在采取行动。”比如员工可以公开向企业投诉他们的上级在歧视老同志，但至于企业采取了哪些措施进行调查，往往是不会告知具体当事人的。（拉莫蒂还指出，虽然让举报者知道调查进展也是个很好的选择，但至于哪些能说，哪些不能说，还是要以结果而定，因此也是有限制的。）

另一个问题在年轻员工身上尤为普遍，那就是他们对HR能做什么、应该做什么往往有着不切实际的预期。在某些案件中，开通一个经理貌似是合理的决定，但这种裁决显然不适合所有案件。

而且性骚扰还是一类极为敏感的案件，某个行为构成普通人眼中的性骚扰，却未必构成法律定义中的性骚扰。沃顿商学院人力资源中心主任彼得•卡普利指出：“很多人眼中的性骚扰行为并不符合性骚扰的法律定义。”舆观调查网去年11月的一项调查发现，有17%的18至29岁的美国人认为，只要一个男人约一个女人出去喝酒，就属于性骚扰的范畴。而根据美国法律的判例，性骚扰往往是指下面这两种行为，要么是上级以升职、开除等为借口危逼利诱下级与其发生性关系，要么就是员工受到了某种普遍的具有性意味的行为危害，且这种行为已经普遍到造成了恶意的工作环境的地步。

对性骚扰定义的理解不同，也有可能对受害人造成极大影响。人力资源管理协会（Society for Human Resources Management）的CEO强尼•泰勒表示：“我们都见过这种情形：你找到我，对我说：‘公司里有个高管有两次约我出去，我都拒绝了，结果他又约我出去，我觉得我遭到性骚扰了’。”

如果你告诉这名员工，此类行为实际上并不属于法律意义上的性骚扰，她就会觉得HR失职渎职。泰勒表示：“其实HR做了他该做的事，但是外行人对性骚扰的理解和法律是不一致的。”

另一个问题就是权力的大小了。虽然越来越多的人事部门主管（也有的公司叫他们“首席人力官”）开始直接向CEO报告工作——据彭博社调查，这个比例大约有一半左右——但是他们的权力还是比不上财务总监、运营总监这些实权干部。调查相关案件的HR人员更是难以拥有足够的影响力。如果公司高管不关注，甚至对HR施加影响，则HR通常只能无奈地接受现实。

拥有三十年经验的纽约律师埃里克•尼尔森认为，这是一个系统性的问题。人事部门是一个资源消耗部门，而不是利润产出部门。这意味着人事部门在企业中难以拥有足够的影响力。尼尔森表示：“人事部门的人最清楚，他们在企业里算不上非常重要。如果他们的脖子伸得太长，挨刀子的只会是他们自己。除非给公司赚钱的那些人开始对这些事情负责，否则没有什么会改变。”

HR人员也普遍表示，管理层对企业盈亏问题的重视往往是压倒一切的。商业咨询公司Slalom的HR人员约翰•哈德森表示：“每当你想对一个业绩出众的人动手，他们就要想法子替他开脱。很多问题就是这样造成的。”

哈德森和拉莫蒂都承认，并非所有HR人员都胜任他们的工作，这也是造成员工不信任HR的原因之一。更糟糕的是，一个让员工离心离德的HR部门，更容易造成职场的敌意氛围的滋长。

埃德温娜•普莱斯科特在建筑行业已经干了30年了，她曾在一家高端地产咨询机构担任文件管理专员。在工作中，她经常会听到诸如此类的话：“如果你长了一头金发，奶子再大些，你肯定比现在干得更好。”普莱斯科特是一名黑白混血儿，而且年纪已经五十多岁了。她的工作环境中充满了男同事的这种有毒言论，他们的矛头一开始指向其他女同事，渐渐地她也成了被调侃的对象。她就把情况报告了HR部门。人力资源部门的人对她表示了同情，然后建议她向她的上级反映问题。然而她的上级不仅知道这个情况，而且他自己也对开这种黄腔乐在其中。上级宽慰她道：“他们就是这个样子，埃德温娜。”并表示如果她愿意，可以调她来当自己的秘书。普莱斯科特拒绝了他的提议，但从此就在公司遭到孤立，处处碰壁。最终她被公司解职了，不过她也终于可以解脱了。

The testimonials of the women involved in the lawsuit as presented in the court papers, however, suggest that they didn’t feel supported or protected by Microsoft HR.

Consider, for example, the experience of Katherine Moussouris, an Internet security strategist who filed complaints with Microsoft’s HR department at least three times, according to the lawsuit. In 2008, one year into her tenure at the company, she reported that her director was sexually harassing women in her group. Her claims were allegedly substantiated, but the offending manager was merely reassigned—and subsequently promoted. Moussouris suspected that he had docked her bonus pay before being transferred and she complained to HR about that too. Nothing happened. She went back to HR in 2014 to claim that despite being a star researcher, she had been repeatedly passed over for promotions. She said a male colleague who became her boss disempowered her and assigned her low-level tasks that he didn’t give to men. HR took no action on this complaint either. She eventually left Microsoft and sued.

Then there’s Heidi Boeh, an engineer, who claims in the lawsuit that her boss told her in 2010 that he didn’t want to “waste” a promotion on her. She’d just had one baby, and he imagined she’d want to have another one soon. She reported the exchange to HR, which, she says, didn’t respond in a timely fashion. That wasn’t her first bad experience with HR. Boeh had reported being sexually harassed by a male colleague back in 2002, according to the lawsuit, but she claims the department failed to “properly address” the situation. (In fact, Boeh declared in a court document that HR increased “the pain and stress of the situation.”) Human resources also ignored Boeh in 2017, she claims, when she reported gender disparity in the compensation offers made to two of her recent hires.

In account after account, according to the lawsuit, the Microsoft employees made an assumption that left them feeling betrayed after it was ultimately revealed to be false: They took for granted that HR was on their side.

It’s a narrative that repeats itself innumerable times per year in workplaces across the country—and a misapprehension encouraged by countless internal communications campaigns at companies seeking to build trust and esprit de corps among their workers. Even seasoned employees are apt to forget that HR isn’t likely to have your back when things go bad. “HR is not your friend,” says Kevin Mintzer, a prominent New York–based employment attorney. “HR is not your confidant.”

The reason for that is obvious if you stop and think about it: As nice and well-meaning as they may be, your colleagues in HR don’t work for you. Management signs their paychecks, and their No. 1 priority is to serve and protect the company. The “resources” in question are there for the benefit of the executive team, not the average worker.

Indeed, the idea that HR isn’t your buddy isn’t exactly a novel one. But as the #MeToo movement has swept the country—exposing badly behaving bosses and out-of-control corporate cultures—that harsh reality has become all the more apparent. Money has too often trumped principles or workers’ well-being. The manager who propositioned Uber engineer Susan Fowler—on her very first day working for him—was allegedly given a pass by HR because he was a “high performer.” Fox’s Roger Ailes and Bill O’Reilly had their alleged transgressions repeatedly buried by confidentiality provisions in settlement agreements and alleged multimillion-dollar payoffs. And those are just highly publicized sexual harassment cases: For every Harvey Weinstein, there are roughly 86,000 discrimination and retaliation cases filed with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission each year. And behind every fallen offender and hostile workplace, it seems, there is a complicit HR department—the executor of a liability-avoidance strategy that ticks all the boxes (cookie-cutter antidiscrimination training, a perfunctory investigations process, silencing arbitration, and nondisclosure agreements).

The #MeToo reckoning has been all the more jarring for HR departments because the tough task of policing workplace misconduct often feels at odds with what has emerged as their top priority in recent years: recruiting.

As the labor market has tightened dramatically, and with employers trying to figure out restless millennial workers, HR’s focus has shifted to the warm and fuzzy matter of wooing and winning talent. In service of that mission, HR departments have gotten as big as they’ve ever been. According to a 2017 survey by Bloomberg BNA, there are now 1.4 HR professionals for every 100 workers, vs. 1.0 a decade ago. They’ve also launched an arms race of perks. Look no further than the Fortune 100 Best Companies to Work For list from our March 2018 issue to witness the solicitousness of corporate America’s top employers—dog-friendly offices and flexible hours, free snacks and on-site life coaches. In the same spirit, many corporations have invested in building their “employer brand,” i.e. the story they sell, particularly on social media, to prospective hires. With all the corporate boosterism and glad-handing, it can be easy to forget you’re dealing with the same department that oversees performance review and workplace surveillance efforts.

HR practitioners, for their part, say they’re working to serve both the interests of the company and the employees. They don’t see those efforts as mutually exclusive, and it’s perhaps for that reason that some HR departments, particularly in the tech world, have recently undergone some of their own internal rebranding, shedding the stodgy old “human resources” name in favor of friendlier and more inviting monikers like People Operations (Google, Southwest Airlines), Employee Experience (Airbnb), and Employee Success (Salesforce).

But given the accumulating evidence that—when it comes to managing the employee experience—HR is perhaps not so good at its job, how can workers avoid having disappointing experiences of their own? The first step is to understand better the challenges facing your colleagues in human resources.

The roots of the modern-day HR can be traced back to the Second Industrial Revolution of the late 19th century when personnel departments were needed to allocate the scores of workers that companies were hiring to shore up assembly lines and fill factory floors. But today, “employee relations is really about limiting the liability of the employer,” says Mintzer, the employment attorney. That’s due in part to the workplace regulation—the Equal Pay Act, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, the Pregnancy Discrimination Act—that popped up in the second half of the 20th century.

Today’s HR departments are wide-ranging kingdoms of corporate responsibilities: part administrative functionary (payroll, benefits), part welcome wagon (recruiting and training), and part compliance cop (employee relations, discipline). The Supreme Court determined in 1998 that employees, in order to get legal recourse, have to first file harassment complaints with HR. In fact, in December 2017 a Virginia district court judge ruled against a female plaintiff in a lawsuit alleging sex discrimination, sexual harassment, and retaliation against defense contractor BAE Systems, in part, because she “did not take advantage of BAE’s harassment reporting procedures of which she was well aware.” (In a statement at the time, BAE praised the judge’s decision and called the plaintiff’s claims “meritless.”)

Susan LaMotte, the CEO of employer brand consultancy Exaqueo, is not surprised by the unflattering picture of workplaces that has come into focus through the #MeToo movement. “It’s the same as it was 20 years ago,” she says, noting that HR practitioners have long dealt with cases like those that recently have been making headlines. “I hate to say it, but it’s hard to drive systemic change.”

The lack of progress reflects corporate priorities. Lars Schmidt, a former HR practitioner who now runs Amplify, an employer branding and search consultancy, points out that while the field has evolved significantly over the past few decades—becoming more strategic and aligned with business, as well as more automated and data-driven—the practice of employee relations, or how workplace grievances are handled, has hardly changed.

That lag includes the level of investment in such departments. David Sanford, chairman of Sanford Heisler Sharp, the law firm that argued the largest-ever employment gender discrimination case to go to trial—a class action suit against Novartis Pharmaceuticals that resulted in a $253 million jury award for plaintiffs in 2010, reduced post-trial to $175 million—noted that in that case, the company had just three investigators for a workforce of thousands. (The company’s HR department also lacked a centralized system to track discrimination complaints; as part of the settlement Novartis has since made improvements.)

While corporations have largely failed to bulk up on their employee relations infrastructure, the broader economic scaffolding that has supported workers in the past has continued to fall away. The percentage of U.S. workers represented by unions stands at 11.9%, down from 23.3% in 1983. Meanwhile, more and more companies—54% of non-unionized private sector workplaces, up from 2% in 1992—are forcing employees into mandatory arbitration agreements, a contractual arrangement that prohibits employees from filing suit in public court. (While arbitration is typically speedier and cheaper than litigation, the setup has also been found to disadvantage employees in some ways.)

These factors may help explain why, even with the march of time and social progress, the number of charges of workplace discrimination and retaliation filed annually with the EEOC has remained relatively steady for the past 20 years. Prompted by how little companies had moved the needle in stamping out workplace harassment, the EEOC in 2015 formed a select task force to study the issue. In its special report on the topic, the agency asserted that the majority of workplace harassment cases are never reported because employees fear retaliation; a recent survey from LegalZoom found that just a quarter of workers have faith in their employers to quickly and effectively resolve workplace issues.

The broader system available to employees has its issues as well. Last fiscal year, the EEOC resolved 99,109 claims in total—31,411 of which involved harassment. Of the harassment claims, the EEOC found “reasonable cause” in just 970 or 3.1% of them.

Nicholas Inzeo, director of field programs at the EEOC, says that the agency’s early filtering system means that it investigates and issues judgment in only about 50% of all charges. But still, he says, the bar for employees bringing harassment claims against their employer “is very high.”

“We see a lot of cases where there’s a lot of talk in the workplace of a sexual nature but courts have said that’s not ‘severe and pervasive’ conduct,” Inzeo says. “It happens a lot.”

A number of HR practitioners told Fortune that the current moment has prompted soul searching in the field, though they’re hesitant to say the system is completely broken. Many point out—and employment lawyers do too—that you don’t read about the many everyday cases in which HR does its job well.

There are also limitations that give HR a bad rap, says LaMotte. One issue is transparency: HR professionals are committed to upholding a high level of ethics and confidentiality. Says LaMotte: “It makes it really hard for organizations to show they’re doing what they said they’d do.” Employees may complain that their boss is bullying them or committing ageism, for example, but they may be kept in the dark about what actions are actually taken to investigate their claim or discipline the accused. (LaMotte notes that while it’s best practice to keep the accuser informed, there are limitations on what they can say depending on the outcome.)

Another issue, particularly acute with younger workers, many say, is that those who take issues to HR often have unrealistic expectations of what could and should be done about their situation. Removing a manager makes sense in response to some complaints, but not all of them.

Sexual harassment cases can be especially tricky, as HR is responsible for investigating a behavior whose legal definition often doesn’t match its conventional one. “Part of the problem is what many people believe counts as sexual harassment is not the legal definition of sexual harassment,” says Peter Cappelli, director of Wharton’s Center for Human Resources. A YouGov poll in November found that 17% of Americans ages 18–29 felt that a man asking a woman out for a drink could be an instance of sexual harassment. Legal precedent, meanwhile, tends to define sexual harassment as occurring either when a supervisor requests sex in exchange for a subordinate being promoted or not being fired, or when an employee is subject to behavior of a sexual nature that’s so pervasive it creates a hostile work environment.

Differing interpretations of sexual harassment can have devastating results for victims. “We’ve seen this play out,” says Johnny Taylor, CEO of the Society for Human Resources Management. “You come to me and say, ‘An executive asked me out on two different occasions. I said no and he asked again and I feel like I’m being harassed.’”

If the employee is told that such behavior is not, in fact, sexual harassment from a legal standpoint, she feels HR didn’t do its job, Taylor says. “HR did exactly its job, but a lay person’s understanding of sexual harassment and what the law is don’t match.”

The other issue, of course, is power. While more and more heads of human resources (or “Chief People Officers”) report directly to the CEO—half currently do, according to Bloomberg BNA—they rarely wield the corporate clout of, say, the CFO or the CMO. HR professionals who investigate complaints have even less influence. If senior leaders don’t pay attention or overrule HR’s concerns, says LaMotte, HR usually has to live with it.

It’s a systemic problem, says Eric Nelson, a New York business and employment lawyer with three decades of experience. HR is a cost center, not a profit generator. That means the human resources professionals have very little leverage. “People in HR understand more than most that they’re not essential,” says Nelson. “If they stick their necks out too far, they’re not going to get anything but the hatchet themselves. Until the people who make companies money are made responsible for what goes on, nothing is going to change.”

HR professionals agree that management’s emphasis on the bottom line often overrides other concerns. “Whenever you deal with a high performer, people tend to look the other way,” says John Hudson, a transparency-minded HR veteran who currently works for Slalom, the business consulting firm, and who previously worked for Oprah’s Harpo Studios. “That’s where a lot of the distrust happens.”

Both Hudson and Lamotte concede not all HR professionals are great at their job, and that also sows distrust. Even worse, a disconnected HR department can allow a hostile workplace environment to fester.

When Edwina Prescott, a construction industry veteran of 30 years, worked as a document control specialist at a construction firm that works on high-end property development, she grew accustomed to routinely being told things like, “If you had blond hair and bigger tits, you’d go further.” Prescott is biracial and in her fifties, and she says the toxic environment fueled by demeaning comments made by her mostly male colleagues—and their behavior toward other women—eventually got to her. She reported the situation to the company’s HR department. The human resources team expressed sympathy, says Prescott, and advised her to go to her supervisor. But her supervisor was not only well aware of the behavior but also a participant in it. She claims he dismissed her concerns—“that’s just how they are, Edwina”—and said if she preferred she could become his secretary. Prescott rejected the offer and says she was shunned and isolated thereafter. Eventually she was terminated, and she says she was relieved to move on.

另外，还有些HR人员自己也不遵守他们给别人立下的规矩。比如在诺华公司的案例中，有一幕让人不禁想起情景喜剧《办公室》里的情节——据证词称，该公司的人事部门每年都搞一次“年度奥斯卡”，部门成员吃喝玩乐之余，还会表演这一年来在人事工作中碰到的最花边最八卦的段子。据一位前HR经理的证词称，有一次他们的表演的“剧情”是一位地区经理邀请了两个下属一起搞3P。这场“奥斯卡”活动本身，就赤裸裸地揭了部门里另一个员工的伤疤。

清除这样的恶俗行为，对于任何一家公司都是应有之义，但要想打造一个HR受尊重的安全的环境，光靠这些步骤显然不够。人力资源管理协会的泰勒表示：“这就是需要HR部门进化的地方了。”他表示，在人事管理上，人事部门不能只是按表打勾，而是要通过规矩建立健康的职场文化，并且让员工和管理层遵守这些规矩。

微软面临的这起官司目前仍未审结。不过去年12月，微软取消了强制的仲裁协议，使受到委屈的员工对公司的职场文化有了更多的监督权。微软还表示，它支持联邦通过立法彻底废止这类强制仲裁协议。另外微软还称，公司将在2020年底前，每年拨款5540万美元用于公司的多元化举措。

这些行为也算在构建员工友好型职场环境上迈出一大步了，但它仍然无法使HR成为你的朋友。

本文的另一版本见于2018年3月刊的《财富》杂志。（财富中文网）

译者：朴成奎

There’s also the matter of HR personnel not living up to the standards they set for others. In Sanford’s Novartis case, it was revealed in depositions that the company’s HR department—in a scene reminiscent of the sitcom The Office—hosted an annual “Oscars” event in which members of the department would buy props and booze and act out the most colorful personnel issues they’d encountered during the year. As the former HR director acknowledged in testimony, one such tableau included an incident in which a regional manager had invited two direct reports to participate in a threesome. The Oscars event itself offended another member of the HR team.

Rooting out that kind of misguided behavior is a must for any company, but fostering a safe workplace where HR is a respected sounding board for employees means going beyond such obvious steps. “That’s where HR is evolving,” says Taylor of the Society for Human Resources Management. Rather than simply checking the boxes of workplace regulations, he says, HR departments must help create a workplace culture with its own standards and hold employees and management to them.

The lawsuit against Microsoft is still pending. Yet in December, the tech giant took an important step to make its workplace culture more amenable to aggrieved employees when it eliminated forced arbitration agreements with workers who bring sexual harassment claims. What’s more, the company said it supported federal legislation that would ban such agreements altogether. In another welcome move, Microsoft says it will spend $55.4 million a year on corporate diversity initiatives through 2020.

Such action goes a long way in fostering an employee-friendly environment. But it still doesn’t make HR your friend.

A version of this article appears in the March 2018 issue of Fortune.