HR horror stories from the big and little screen

The pumpkins may be carved and lit, baskets laden with sweets for trick or treaters, and a good slasher movie lined up for this Halloween night. But here at The HR Dept, we don’t need to wait until 31st October to get a dose of horror from the big or little screen. In fact plenty of regular productions are packed full of HR horror anyway. Here are three of our favourites…

The Devil Wears Prada

This 2006 classic pits young Andy Sachs (Anne Hathaway) in the crucible of high fashion journalism, as second assistant to a devilishly demanding Miranda Priestly (Meryl Streep).

Actually let’s make that totally toxic Miranda: phone calls at all hours of night, tasking employees with sourcing unpublished copies of the latest Harry Potter novel with just a few hours’ notice, a constant stream of HOT Starbucks or else; and we could go on…

It makes for a good movie, but it would spell big trouble for an SME business. In fact, we see the results of such behaviour in the film itself. These include a high turnover of staff, presenteeism when ill, even poor Emily (Andy’s colleague) getting run over whilst distracted on a work call, not to mention breakdowns in relationships, including another divorce for the boss at the end!

The Office

It hardly needs an introduction. Whether you are a fan of the UK version of The Office or its American cousin, either just about writes the manual on bad boss behaviour.

Where to begin? How about inappropriate jokes, especially the ones drawing on protected characteristics like race and sex. Or we could suggest hijacking an important training session being delivered by an outside trainer, slowly degrading it into a personal acoustic guitar set. Then there was the time David Brent headbutted a new starter (albeit accidentally) on her induction – that’s not how we recommend they are done!

Advice for SMEs based on The Office? Just ignore everything David Brent does, in fact most of the time do the opposite. Most episodes are like watching a car crash with one cringe inducing moment after another. It is fine to have a casual culture, but boundaries are important, guided by clear policies and training. It all ends in tears for David in the UK version after just two series.

Horrible Bosses

This 2011 film pulls no punches, and does what it says on the tin, depicting no fewer than three “horrible bosses” played by Kevin Spacey, Jenifer Aniston and Colin Farrell. In fact, their behaviour is so toxic that their employees conspire to murder them!

While here in the UK a tribunal is hopefully a more likely outcome, that is still not a desirable state of affairs for any SME business. A lot of the behaviours are too bad to mention here, but they include tricking employees into drinking on the job, firing people for having protected characteristics and much inappropriate behaviour.

What can we learn? Aside from not wishing to see such immoral behaviour in any circumstances, SME’s need to have clear and fair grievance procedures and whistleblowing policies to protect staff, should something bad happen. With a legitimate route to justice, they do not need to take the law into their own hands.

Your Halloween HR hero

Happy Halloween from The HR Dept. We hope you have fun, and should you need some help dealing with your own HR horror, remember, we are just a phone call away.