What Can A Manager Justifiably Kick Over To HR?

There seems to be a lot of confusion about this one.

Here’s a site I mostly like for work-related trend news:

WorkLife - Authority on how modern work is changing people's lives

If you scan it recently, you can tell that some consultant came in there and said, “Your core audience is HR,” because now almost every article is about how HR should respond to something, be it employees, generalized employee engagement, moms off maternity leave, people who disagree with the election results in November, etc.

But is all this stuff really the domain of HR?

I think this question merits a brief discussion, as it seems to be a point of corporate confusion over the last 10–12 years.

Here is the high-level answer:

In for-profit situations, HR is a cover-your-ass department that is designed to be the top of the funnel for hiring and help force people out of the company because managers are too chicken-shit to do it. Those are the main reasons HR exists in enterprise. Most C-Suite guys will call it…