Much of what HR used to do seems to be automated away and they seem to be glad that it was. Every company that I've worked at for the last 20 years HR doesn't manage your payroll or deductions or any of that they have a system you log into and you do it yourself. Along with all the other benefit styles systems they are not something they manage individually anymore they have outsourced it.

Most of the people that I see who are attracted to HR positions or are in current HR positions remind me very much of that high School click of kids that thought they were better than everyone else, but they didn't have any tangible merits or reasons for this self-belief, and for some reason everyone wanted to suck up to them. So HR seems to be this popularity contest people that are meant to resolve interpersonal disputes that arise from work but those disputes don't get solved on any kind of merit. Those disputes get solved in one of three ways usually; by the popularity of the persons involved, the dei initiatives that the company needs to adhere to or, the person who cried first. There's nothing about merit or an unbiased investigation or attempting to truly resolve things. HR seems to want to put together yoga and wellness classes and other nonsense because they literally lack any other job function in the company now because it is all outsourced.

There are of course exceptions but those exceptions are becoming quite exceptional nowadays. I am not a fan of AI but with as bad as most HR is at any company I've worked at replacing it with AI I would literally notice no difference.

I would like to add that (and not since I come from law background) today the HR can be mostly automated for a lot of stuff as other said in this thread. Some processes such as personality tests can be outsourced to outside psychologist. I always like to add that having with knows ins and outs of business and legal, is far more beneficial for business. To be fair everyone will always calculate costs & benefits of each position, and at this point, HR as it is now is large expense.

Earlier HR had two main functions viz. recruitment of candidates and secondly, act as a shield for top management and save them from embarrassment (of firing peeps without giving them any reason, for example).

In the last 1-2 decades, the first function has gradually been eroded as social media made finding folks very easy on linkedin, etc. Now only this second function stays in most companies.

HR was much more useful when they did onboarding, payroll, benefits, etc.

Much if not all of that is now outsourced or automated, so having a department feels a bit of a relic.

At my current small company, the CTO is HR, in that he takes care of setting people up in those aforementioned systems. It's really not much work.

> HR has mostly become useless

When was it useful?

The function of HR is set up to fail. There's a lot that it can do but the way companies structure it as of today it's not much more than a glorified assistant.

I agree with all of your points. From my limited exposure, HR departments are an anchor the business must drag.

Seems like a good opportunity for disruption and competition.

> The education is simply lacking when you have the HRM, HRS coming from majors such as Literature, or even in some cases Biology ... People with majors in other fields are simply not capable to handle it, without any training or complementary HR education.

Are you serious on this point? That unless you studied the right subjects in undergrad, you are not capable? Oof. Being that close-minded to people's abilities makes me question the validity of everything else you have said. You may have some valid underlying points - HR is definitely imperfect. But the opinions are running more strongly than facts on this post.