70% of employees don't trust HR. Are they blaming the wrong people?

A TeamBlind survey of over 11,000 employees found that 70% or more do not trust HR. At some companies it's even higher: 83% at Intel, 79% at Amazon, 75% at eBay.

That's a striking number, but having spent over a decade in HR, I think it needs a bit more context.

Most HR professionals I know got into this work because they care about people. I've seen colleagues advocate hard behind closed doors for employees: pushing for a final written warning instead of dismissal, arguing for a welfare meeting for a grieving mother instead of a performance investigation, pushing back on managers who wanted to discipline parents for leaving to collect a sick child and telling them to have a proper conversation about flexibility instead.

That work happens. More than people realise.

It also comes at a cost. HR burnout is real, and most people wouldn't expect the reasons why. The emotional weight alone is heavy, but sometimes HR is also expected to absorb work far outside its expertise. At the height of furloughing 80 staff during Covid, I was asked to sign off a health and safety inspection I wasn't qualified to carry out. I refused, but that kind of demand is more common than people think.

On top of that, HR is often on the receiving end of abuse, from angry emails to deeply distressing workplace situations, while being blamed for decisions that were never theirs to make. Some even experience this outside of work.

That said, HR is not without fault. There are absolutely times where policy overrides common sense, where process is followed at the expense of basic decency. When that happens, distrust is justified. It should be challenged, and unfortunately just because something feels unfair, it doesn't mean it's illegal.

But the bigger issue is structural. HR works for the organisation, and leadership decides how it is used. The CEO announces the new benefits and the amazing company performance. HR delivers the mass redundancy announcement. So while leadership takes the credit, HR delivers the fallout and employees notice.

When pressure comes from the top, HR becomes the vehicle for decisions they didn't make and don't always agree with. It doesn't stop there. I once spent time preparing a manager for a difficult conversation with an underperforming employee, walking through exactly what to say and how to say it. We went through it together beforehand. When the meeting happened, the manager said nothing. Just sat in silence and looked at me to deliver the message instead. Afterwards, they claimed they hadn't known what to do. HR ends up carrying what managers won't, and employees are left to draw their own conclusions about who is really responsible.

Sometimes the distrust is fair, but very often, it's aimed at the wrong place.

The reality is that HR sits in the middle, but they're employed by the company. They can and often do push for better outcomes behind the scenes, but that position shapes what they can actually do for you.

That's where Klar comes in.

If you're dealing with a disciplinary, redundancy, grievance, or a manager pushing boundaries, I'll help you understand what's actually happening, what your rights are, and where you can push back. You don't have to just accept what you're told and you don't have to figure it out on your own. You can book in a call with me if you're facing something that doesn't seem right.