Dive Brief:
- Being a "good guy" in the office is preferred by most everyone. But a Wall Street Journal article explores the idea that there are some people - in many cases, HR professionals - who are thrust into bad guy roles and, while they may not be thrilled, have to make the best of it.
- The jobs center around the "dirty work" of business, managing things such as delivering negative feedback, cutting off project funding or handing out pink slips, says the Journal, which adds that people in that position know that it's part of the job so they deal with it and soldier on.
- Of course, there also are those personality types who actually enjoy wearing the "black hat," but for others, it's too much to take and they give it up and change careers.
Dive Insight:
Jennifer Lee Magas told the Journal that “It’s lonely being the bad guy.” Magas, who once served as both employment attorney and human resources specialist, had to "reduce headcount" in her previous HR role. Magas once had to dodge a tissue box and earned the nickname of “The Terminator" in the course of that work, the Journal reported. How did she manage it? She was an avid runner to relieve stress and a fund-raiser for low-income families to relieve her conscience (and she is no longer an HR professional; rather she is vice president of Magas Media Consultants).
According to the Journal article, many offices can't function without people willing to make unpopular decisions and then carry out the needed changes. David Lewis, president of OperationsInc., a Norwalk, Conn., human resources consulting firm, told the Journal that managers with a distaste for the dirty work when an employee has to be canned or put on notice for performance issues often employ a consultant.
Of course, the hope for HR types is that the upside of their jobs greatly outweighs the downside of occcasionally being the bad guy.
