After 36 years in Human Resources, I’ve heard every version of the joke. “HR is not your friend.” “HR protects the company, not you.” Some days, I understand exactly why these jokes exist. But I also know something that took me years to learn: being unbiased in HR comes with a price, but in the long run, it pays.
Let me be honest about what that price looks like. It’s uncomfortable conversations with people who have more power than you. It’s being called “difficult” when you refuse to look the other way. It’s sleepless nights wondering if standing up for what’s right will cost you your job. It’s watching colleagues who play along get promoted while you’re fighting battles no one will thank you for. Some years, the price felt so high that I questioned whether it was worth it.
But here’s what I learned: compromise your integrity once, and it becomes easier the second time. Before you know it, you’ve become the HR professional you never wanted to be. The one who processes problems instead of solving them, who protects power instead of people, who has stopped sleeping well at night. I’ve seen brilliant HR professionals lose themselves this way, one small compromise at a time.
Why did I choose to be unbiased despite the cost? Because my credibility was my only real currency. When you lose the trust of employees, you lose your ability to do anything meaningful. You become someone people avoid rather than approach. And if you can’t help anyone, what’s the point of being in Human Resources?
I paid the price, yes. There were promotions I didn’t get because I refused to fire someone without proper cause. There were leaders who froze me out of meetings because I insisted on following actual policy. There was the year I pushed back on a discriminatory hiring decision and was told I was “too emotional” and “not strategic enough.”
But here’s what happened in the long run: I could sleep at night. Employees started trusting me. When someone had a real problem, they came to me because they knew I wouldn’t just shut them down. Leaders who genuinely cared about doing things right started seeking my counsel because they knew I’d tell them the truth. My reputation became my protection. And over time, I realized that organizations that punished me for being ethical were not organizations I wanted to be part of anyway.
Being unbiased means when a high-performer harasses someone, you investigate properly. When a leader asks you to fire someone without documentation, you insist on following process. When you see discrimination patterns, you present the data even if people don’t want to hear it. It’s not about being anti-management. It’s about being pro-fairness regardless of who’s involved.
The long-term payoff surprised me. Organizations I left came back years later. Employees I’d helped became managers and created the culture I’d advocated for. My career took longer to advance than some peers, but when opportunities came, they were with organizations that valued what I stood for.
Here’s what I wish someone had told me decades ago: you will pay a price for being unbiased, but you’ll pay a bigger price for not being unbiased. The price of integrity is paid upfront. The price of compromise is paid over your entire career in sleepless nights and loss of self-respect.
After 36 years, I can honestly say: it was worth every rupee, every sleepless night, every difficult conversation, every missed promotion. Because I get to retire knowing I was the HR professional I set out to be, not the one the system wanted me to become.
To my fellow HR professionals: the choice is yours. But choose consciously. Because at the end of your career, the only person who has to live with your decisions is you.
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