The HR and the Managers are superfluous

Beyond Growth: Why Evaluating HR and Managerial Performance is a Moral and Strategic Necessity

In the contemporary corporate world, much of the focus revolves around growth, profitability, and efficiency. The conversations at leadership summits, board meetings, and strategic retreats often celebrate numbers—revenue targets, quarterly margins, and expansion indices. What is conveniently ignored, however, is the invisible erosion happening underneath this glossy surface. The decay of trust, empathy, and ethical sensibility. And at the heart of this corrosion often lie the very people entrusted with protecting the human fabric of an organization—HR departments and managerial personnel.

The Culture Crisis: When Leadership Turns into Damage Control

It is ironic that Human Resources—the very term that signals humanity—has come to represent the opposite in many organizations. Instead of facilitating human potential, many HR professionals become instruments of corporate detachment, acting not as bridges between management and workforce, but as filters, spies, and silencers. Similarly, managers, who should ideally mentor and guide, often metamorphose into petty autocrats, driven more by power-play than purpose.

This isn't a sweeping generalization. It is, in fact, a pattern—increasingly visible across industries and geographies.

Take the case of Uber (2017): Former engineer Susan Fowler’s blog post revealed systemic harassment and indifference by HR and management. Her repeated complaints about sexual harassment were ignored or trivialised. The HR department protected high-performing offenders, prioritising numbers over ethics. It led to a massive cultural reckoning, resignations, and a loss of public trust. This is not an exception. It is a reflection of a deeper illness.

The Dirty Job Syndrome: Performing the Violence of the Organization

Too often, HR and managerial staff act as enforcers of unpopular and morally ambiguous policies. Layoffs dressed in PowerPoint euphemisms like "rightsizing", "cost optimization", or "strategic restructuring" are carried out with robotic indifference, with no genuine regard for the emotional cost. Those who survive such culling operations are left bruised, traumatised, and hypervigilant.

This phenomenon is what we may call the “Dirty Job Syndrome”—where HR and managers perform the emotional violence of the organization, but do so while pretending neutrality or professionalism. The workplace warmth deteriorates, conversations become calculated, and employees begin to wear emotional armour. Collaboration gives way to cautious competition, and trust dies a slow death.

Artificial Backbiting, Induced Paranoia

What makes this toxicity worse is that it is often artificially manufactured. Performance reviews and competitive ranking systems (often HR-led) pit peers against one another, incentivising jealousy and betrayal over solidarity and collective learning. A notable example comes from the Microsoft “Stack Ranking” era, where employees were forced into a bell curve evaluation. This practice led to team sabotage, anxiety, and internal politicking—eventually compelling the company to abandon it after years of criticism.

When rewards and recognition are handed out selectively, often to those adept at self-promotion or sycophancy, it creates an atmosphere of quiet rebellion among the less visible yet consistently contributing members. They begin to ask: What is the point of effort if visibility matters more than impact?

The 80/20 Fallacy: A Dangerous Oversimplification

The glorified 80/20 Rule—claiming that 80% of results come from 20% of people—is used by many organizations to justify lopsided policies of reward and recognition. However, this logic is not just flawed; it is dangerously reductionist. It overlooks the interdependencies in real-world work environments, where outcomes are rarely the product of individual brilliance alone.

Imagine a restaurant where the chef is given 90% of the accolades and bonuses, while the servers, dishwashers, and kitchen prep staff are considered replaceable. Over time, morale drops. Turnover increases. And the chef, no matter how skilled, can no longer deliver excellence. The same applies to organizations—the so-called “top 20%” can only perform because the “unseen 80%” keeps the wheels turning.

More importantly, who determines the 20%? Often, it is managers and HR, based on vague criteria and subjective impressions, heavily influenced by biases and perceptions of loyalty rather than performance.

The Myth of “Fair” Competition

It is fashionable in corporate circles to talk about “fair competition.” Let’s break the illusion: Fair competition is an oxymoron. In environments where people do not begin from equal platforms—socially, economically, emotionally, or in terms of access to decision-makers—competition cannot be fair.

Awards, rankings, “employee of the month” badges—these create an ecosystem where the workplace mimics a gladiatorial arena. It breeds resentment, promotes artificial smiles, and perpetuates a zero-sum mindset. Employees no longer grow together; they climb over one another. 

Beyond Business: The Business of Business is More Than Business

As economist Peter Drucker once said, “Culture eats strategy for breakfast.” And yet, most organizations are obsessed with strategic growth while ignoring the cultural decay that such obsession breeds.

The old mantra “the business of business is business” no longer holds water. Today, the business of business is to evolve, to include, to care, and to correct. A truly learning organization must measure not just profits, but emotional health, retention of integrity, and cultivation of creativity.

If HR and managers are not being evaluated on moral courage, ethical integrity, emotional intelligence, and inclusivity, then the entire performance evaluation process is a farce.

Proposed Metrics for HR and Managerial Evaluation:

1. Trust Quotient – anonymous feedback from team members.
2. Ethical Decision Index – audit of past decisions and their social/emotional impact.
3. Inclusion and Empathy Rating – diversity of interactions and non-discriminatory behavior.
4. Supportiveness Score – how many team members grew or improved under their leadership.
5. Crisis Response Effectiveness – how well they protected people, not just policies.

HR and Managers, a tragedy of errors

It is one of the quietest tragedies of the corporate world—how **brilliant students from esteemed institutions**, the so-called blue-eyed boys and girls of society, brimming with dreams and purpose, slowly transform into **monsters with stony eyes**, their souls calcified by power, hierarchy, and ambition. Once idealists, they become **heinous hyenas**, feeding off the flesh and fatigue of the workforce, thriving in boardroom hunts and email ambushes. They forget that leadership is not about making others work while doing nothing—it is about working *with* others. In a truly organic organization, the flow of work would be *horizontal*, not vertical—workers would rise to become managers through experience, merit, and wisdom, not through degrees and detachment. *Self-policing* and *mutual respect* would replace surveillance and authoritarianism. 

Layoffs, an organizational failure

Layoffs, meanwhile, are not signs of corporate maturity but *institutional failure*. Every time an employee is shown the door, an organization should hang its head in shame, not pat its back for creating "re-employable" profiles. What pride can there be in displacing lives? And let us make no mistake—HR and managers do not do the “dirty job.” That title belongs, with dignity, to our sanitation workers, our scavengers, our sweepers—the ones who clean without cruelty, who leave behind cleanliness, not chaos. In contrast, many HR managers **spread dirt with policy** and **spray fear with emails**. Thus, the new vision of learning organizations must be **radical**: a model where HR and managerial positions are either **reinvented** or **dissolved**, where trust, self-direction, and shared ownership create a workplace of *fresh air*, not polluted hierarchies. Imagine such a place—*a Manager-Free, HR-Free zone*—not as anarchy, but as a sanctuary where people come to work, not to survive, but to **breathe, belong, and build**.

Conclusion: Toward a Culture of Accountability and Healing

In conclusion, HR and managers must no longer be allowed to operate in insulated bubbles, armed with flawed theories, toxic hierarchies, and power without accountability. A business that grows while its soul rots from within is destined to implode. Evaluating the performance of HR and managers is not merely an HR function—it is a cultural detox, a strategic intervention, and a philosophical necessity.

It’s time we asked: Are they here to facilitate growth—or to sabotage it from within?

Until we treat emotional erosion with the same seriousness as financial loss, no organization can claim to be future-ready.

The Case for a New Corporate Humanity

In the architecture of a truly learning organization, **HR and managerial roles as they exist today are not just redundant—they are counterproductive**. These positions have become synonymous not with empowerment or evolution, but with constant critique, exclusion, and fear. Their purpose seems fixated on **highlighting what is not going right**, *who* is not right, and *why* someone should be "corrected," disciplined, or removed—rather than focusing on **how to make every individual feel seen, valued, and emotionally energized**. HR and managers, more often than not, become **curators of failure** rather than catalysts of growth.

Let's call a human a human

Their inflated titles and inflated egos often lead them to assume the role of **demi-gods and goddesses**, issuing verdicts with a disturbing sense of moral superiority, untouched by the very labour they assess. But we must resist the urge to discard them as individuals. Instead, let us **re-humanize** these roles. Let HR and managers become *workers* again—humble participants in the shared journey of progress. Let them sweep floors, write code, handle customers, and learn the daily struggles of the people they once judged from glass cabins. **Let the process make them human again**—not gatekeepers of punishment, but **facilitators of empathy**.

Out-of-the-box thinking

The audacity to throw someone out of their livelihood, masked as "policy implementation," is no less destructive than ideological terror—it devastates families, dreams, and psyches. Managers and HR should not behave like corporate terrorists, instilling fear and silencing voices. They should instead be **healers**, **listeners**, and **doers**. Only then can we move toward workplaces that are truly inclusive, ethical, and emotionally sustainable.

It is time to **rebuild organizations not around hierarchy, but around humanity**—a structure where no one watches over others with suspicion, but where all stand shoulder to shoulder, building something meaningful with mutual care. That is the future of work. That is the soul of a learning organization.