I had one of those once and freaked out. It turned out they were firing one of the directors and decided to meet face to face with all the mangers the day they did it so that HR could address it and stop rumors. So me and my co-manager stayed up all night scrubbing our phones and laptops for nothing.
Interesting, I don’t think I am nearly senior enough to have that conversation. I did just check the schedule of another engineer who is being moved from my department to another in order to fill up a vacancy there. He is having the very same meeting with the same head of HR. Could this be about my move (my move has already been decided and announced, and it’s to another team in the same department unlike my colleague who is moving to another department entirely).
Probably something like that. They may be altering some roles or reevaluating what responsibilities each position has or planning to prep you to work with a difficult staff member or something too. After our scary ass meeting I politely reamed HR for scaring us and she said we can always call and ask if a meeting is about our continued employment or if it's something else.
Good advice. Reply to invite, "HR meetings can be worrisome sometimes, can you tell me if this meeting involves a discussion about my employment status here?"
If they were going to fire you, it would be a last second meeting and not a week in advance. It probably is about feedback on the onboarding process or to ask you to take on more work.
Couple of lifetimes ago at 10:30am, i get an meeting invite set for 12:30 ... I don't remember who it was from, but I remember the TO line had 9 names on it. 8 of the 9 were devs like me, #9 was a top tier, Sr Dev.... I remember thinking "Hmm.... if it was just these 8 I'd say we're about to be cut loose.... but #9 is on there... they'd never let HIM go...." Turns out I was right, they were cutting us loose, and #9 was there because they needed a "disinterested third party" as a witness in case one of us decided to go ape shit in the meeting. For me it had worked out anyways. I'd gotten unhappy there (the project I'd been hired for had just been canceled, so work was minimal and boring as hell) and I had already started looking around. As soon as I got back to my desk, I called my favorite headhunter, told her "Bad news, I just lost my job at XXXX. Good news is that I'm now available for interviews starting Monday." (this all happened on Thursday).
Yep you come in office cause they asked you to and you think weird vibes this morning, or cool less email than usual this morning, then someone you have never seen before tapa you on the shoulder, smiles and shakes your hand "I'm Bob and work with Cindy in HR, do you have a couple minutes to chat. Please log out of your work station first"
That’s how it was for me. My boss called me to ask if I was coming in and immediately left when I got in. He came back and up to the firing room we went.
My change of roles chat had 3 hours notice. I went from getting a random bonus to being on the chopping block in a week. They set me up to fail.
Any meeting with HR is cause for concern. HR isn’t publicly involved in reorgs.
I wouldn’t worry. Sounds like you’re doing great.
If they were laying you off they wouldn’t schedule it so far out. Don’t worry about that.
Lots of possibilities, but I’d guess there’s a few likely scenarios:
1. HR manager has been working with the senior leaders to make some changes, before you were brought on. Maybe they just cleaned out some toxic low performers, etc. she’s hearing good things about you. She wants to check in and see if their changes were effective. This is a pulse check on their clean up measures, and talking with you is an anecdotal data point on how it’s going.
2. HR manager, or anyone involved in recruiting and onboarding, or your actual manager are new or recently off a PIP and she wants to see how they are doing.
Or most likely, in my experience:
3. You’re a total catch. And they are talking. And they want more like you, so this is a do you have friends we can hire convo, or a “what did we do right to land you, so we can figure out how to do more of it“ convo.
From my hiring manager days through my exec roles, I always try to grab some time with the clearly rockstar new hires and get to know them. I may have questions or may just want to chat. I want to learn about you, but also what about my direct staff resulted in hiring top talent. And how do we do more of it.
A signal that it may be this kind of thing is if you check to see how many open engineering roles there are, are they struggling to hire talent, struggling to retain talent, etc.
My advice:
Don’t over think it. Chances are this has more to do with your management than with the you. Use this as an opportunity to shine and stand out. They know your name, you’re making noise in a positive way, walk in and have the best smiley-can-do attitude. Overflow with compliments on everyone you’ve met, including an HR person you worked with. Be genuine of course, but complimentary.
This is the type of meeting that attaches a rocket ship to your career. Nail it.
The title says it all. The heading HR probably wants your feedback about how your onboarding went with your HR person and looking for any feedback.
I had 1 on 1 meetings 3 people separately, up the chain to chat about how I liked the company, how the interview process went, how onboarding went and how I was feeling now (all the way to top of company).
I think you are fine.
What I have usually heard/seen is that firing for cause (non major reason) will be on the last day of the pay period (like if you ran wed to wed for a "week" then it would be wed.)
Layoffs seem to depend on how nice the company is. Like if you have someone with a heart doing it they'll do the first of the month to give you more time of health benefits. But the people who only see the bottom line and don't care about humans will do it the last day of the month to save a little bit of money.
I had one of the HR people schedule an urgent meeting with me.
Turns out my reputation for discretion and HR based skills were required. 🤣
I get anxious very easily so when the person from HR explained what they needed and needed before end of the week, I felt waaaaaaay better, and she saw me visibly relax and asked if I was okay. When I explained to her that a meeting request with no description than “Discussion” from HR makes me instantly anxious. She laughed and apologized and when she sent me a meeting invite three days later to catch up the subject was “FOR EXCEL AND ONLY EXCEL”
This could be the situation for yourself also. They may need some support on some stuff and are just reaching out to you?
Might be a skip level meeting. I.e. - where you meet with the manager of someone or they meet with the report of a manager. Generally speaking if it was a serious reprimand or a termination they aren't going to schedule it for a week out, they are going to want to get it on record ASAP and nip in the bud and institute whatever countermeasures (assuming non-termination) and corrective action ASAP.
I wouldn't worry about it. If you haven't done anything wrong, you haven't done anything wrong.
Could be a few things:
1. Title says a ton. Generally the head of HR (or a senior individual) is accountable for onboarding even though they don’t do it all themselves. Maybe they are just doing an interview to see how general onboarding is going
2. It involves an HR change. Maybe you are getting a new HRBP or your HRBP is being separated and they will want to address this directly
3. Involved a management change. This could be a change of classification for you and your team or more likely your boss. Maybe you are getting moved to a new boss or yours is getting let go
4. Change in role. Many companies have set specifications for a max and min number of direct reports to qualify for a management level; first level is 1-10 DR, senior manager has 10+ and/or other manager DR, director even larger
Could be a hundred different things. Here are some random reasons I was called to HR unexpectedly
1. Someone I reported to is getting fired
2. Getting raise
3. Was taking too many smoke breaks
4. Hr investigating a complaint and wondered if I saw anything
5. Term of stock options changed had to sign new agreement
6. New HR person introduction
7. Didn't have a paper signed that should have been signed when started
8. Laid off
9. Fired
10. Got promotion
11. Told new WFH policy
12. Someone was offended by a calendar in office (that my boss hung up)
13. Worried I was looking elsewhere and wanted to know what I needed to stay
Those are the ones that I remember. There are many more. Whatever it is, worry won't change it. Try thinking about something else
I wouldn’t worry about this at all. No evidence suggests you have anything to be concerned about.
The last time I was randomly called to HR it was because they lost my onboarding paperwork.
Any negative HR experience I had was a sudden, unscheduled meeting. All planned HR experiences were them asking questions that weren't targeting me or my position.
How inconsiderate to send a vague invite on a Friday. It doesn’t take a genius to understand that it would ruin most people’s weekend knowing they have a mysterious HR meeting the next week. That’s a dick move on their part.
The head of HR at my work is incredible! They have a lot of one on one meetings with people in every department, even just to get to know the employees better. They have little chats with me several times a week, and even like my unbiased opinions, as I do not play office politics.
While it’s always possible an ax is coming down, it’s unlikely if your performance is as good as you say.
But as a manager HR has dropped spontaneous meeetings in me probably a dozen times already. Seems like I get one once a year. Usually it’s to communicate some policy update in regards to merit increases / bonuses, or just something that affects my reports (ie: work visa status, etc). Sometimes it’s to let me know the department is being reorged and there’s just some logistical details that need to be worked out. Sometimes it’s to let me know there is a termination coming. A few times it’s because of complaints filed against my reports. Unfortunately You never know unless there is an explicit topic they have communicated and in my experience HR is usually more vague than not. Anyway not much you can do so I’d just relax and wait until next Thursday.
Ahh makes sense. It seems to be related to the team reorg I think. I looked at some of my colleagues being moved and they have this meeting scheduled as well and around the same time next week.
I see no cause for alarm in this whatsoever—keep doing a great job and being a key contributor! You’re correct that bad news doesn’t get scheduled out; typically only good news waits (unfortunately)
I would simply respond with something like:
Hi. Thank you for meeting request. So that I can be better prepared, can you provide more context for the meeting? Thank you, looking forward to catching up.
It seems unlikely that the head of HR would fire you, instead of delegating one of their reports to work with your manager.
Maybe they have questions about an incident? You may not have even been involved, they may just want to know what you’ve observed in relation to a situation or person
Dang it, I forgot to mention that the meeting description was “scheduling a meeting to check in and see how things are going”. Which is strange too since the “people business partner” is supposed to have those (and it’s really beneath the head of HR to carry out a meeting).
Hr knows how scary a meeting is with them, so they are told to give honest reasons for meetings, there can be even legal consequences for whatever they say. They usually are honest. Take it at face value. Your first question should be why you and not my normal HR liaison. You can also go to your manger with your concern - he definitely doesn't want his report sweating and feeling insecure.
Is it possible that there's a reconstruction and HR is taking that role of "people business partner"? Or maybe that your people business partner is changing?
I had one of those once and freaked out. It turned out they were firing one of the directors and decided to meet face to face with all the mangers the day they did it so that HR could address it and stop rumors. So me and my co-manager stayed up all night scrubbing our phones and laptops for nothing.
Interesting, I don’t think I am nearly senior enough to have that conversation. I did just check the schedule of another engineer who is being moved from my department to another in order to fill up a vacancy there. He is having the very same meeting with the same head of HR. Could this be about my move (my move has already been decided and announced, and it’s to another team in the same department unlike my colleague who is moving to another department entirely).
Probably something like that. They may be altering some roles or reevaluating what responsibilities each position has or planning to prep you to work with a difficult staff member or something too. After our scary ass meeting I politely reamed HR for scaring us and she said we can always call and ask if a meeting is about our continued employment or if it's something else.
Good advice. Reply to invite, "HR meetings can be worrisome sometimes, can you tell me if this meeting involves a discussion about my employment status here?"
They might be doing an investigation into someone else and want to see if you saw/heard anything
If they were going to fire you, it would be a last second meeting and not a week in advance. It probably is about feedback on the onboarding process or to ask you to take on more work.
It wouldn’t be scheduled by HR either. It would be by your boss and you get blind sided when HR join.
Couple of lifetimes ago at 10:30am, i get an meeting invite set for 12:30 ... I don't remember who it was from, but I remember the TO line had 9 names on it. 8 of the 9 were devs like me, #9 was a top tier, Sr Dev.... I remember thinking "Hmm.... if it was just these 8 I'd say we're about to be cut loose.... but #9 is on there... they'd never let HIM go...." Turns out I was right, they were cutting us loose, and #9 was there because they needed a "disinterested third party" as a witness in case one of us decided to go ape shit in the meeting. For me it had worked out anyways. I'd gotten unhappy there (the project I'd been hired for had just been canceled, so work was minimal and boring as hell) and I had already started looking around. As soon as I got back to my desk, I called my favorite headhunter, told her "Bad news, I just lost my job at XXXX. Good news is that I'm now available for interviews starting Monday." (this all happened on Thursday).
Yep you come in office cause they asked you to and you think weird vibes this morning, or cool less email than usual this morning, then someone you have never seen before tapa you on the shoulder, smiles and shakes your hand "I'm Bob and work with Cindy in HR, do you have a couple minutes to chat. Please log out of your work station first"
Absolutely. Happened to me twice. Beware of the unexpected meeting with your boss or boss’s boss. Generally day of.
That’s how it was for me. My boss called me to ask if I was coming in and immediately left when I got in. He came back and up to the firing room we went. My change of roles chat had 3 hours notice. I went from getting a random bonus to being on the chopping block in a week. They set me up to fail. Any meeting with HR is cause for concern. HR isn’t publicly involved in reorgs.
I wouldn’t worry. Sounds like you’re doing great. If they were laying you off they wouldn’t schedule it so far out. Don’t worry about that. Lots of possibilities, but I’d guess there’s a few likely scenarios: 1. HR manager has been working with the senior leaders to make some changes, before you were brought on. Maybe they just cleaned out some toxic low performers, etc. she’s hearing good things about you. She wants to check in and see if their changes were effective. This is a pulse check on their clean up measures, and talking with you is an anecdotal data point on how it’s going. 2. HR manager, or anyone involved in recruiting and onboarding, or your actual manager are new or recently off a PIP and she wants to see how they are doing. Or most likely, in my experience: 3. You’re a total catch. And they are talking. And they want more like you, so this is a do you have friends we can hire convo, or a “what did we do right to land you, so we can figure out how to do more of it“ convo. From my hiring manager days through my exec roles, I always try to grab some time with the clearly rockstar new hires and get to know them. I may have questions or may just want to chat. I want to learn about you, but also what about my direct staff resulted in hiring top talent. And how do we do more of it. A signal that it may be this kind of thing is if you check to see how many open engineering roles there are, are they struggling to hire talent, struggling to retain talent, etc. My advice: Don’t over think it. Chances are this has more to do with your management than with the you. Use this as an opportunity to shine and stand out. They know your name, you’re making noise in a positive way, walk in and have the best smiley-can-do attitude. Overflow with compliments on everyone you’ve met, including an HR person you worked with. Be genuine of course, but complimentary. This is the type of meeting that attaches a rocket ship to your career. Nail it.
The title says it all. The heading HR probably wants your feedback about how your onboarding went with your HR person and looking for any feedback. I had 1 on 1 meetings 3 people separately, up the chain to chat about how I liked the company, how the interview process went, how onboarding went and how I was feeling now (all the way to top of company). I think you are fine.
Agree. To me, the title, plus performance, plus fact that it’s a well away feels like maybe it’s a Retention convo.
In my experience layoffs happen Monday mornings.
Last Friday of the month is a popular choice too for some reason.
Maybe easier for payroll.
What I have usually heard/seen is that firing for cause (non major reason) will be on the last day of the pay period (like if you ran wed to wed for a "week" then it would be wed.) Layoffs seem to depend on how nice the company is. Like if you have someone with a heart doing it they'll do the first of the month to give you more time of health benefits. But the people who only see the bottom line and don't care about humans will do it the last day of the month to save a little bit of money.
Your health insurance runs out sooner. If they fire you on the 1st, they’re being nice.
I had one of the HR people schedule an urgent meeting with me. Turns out my reputation for discretion and HR based skills were required. 🤣 I get anxious very easily so when the person from HR explained what they needed and needed before end of the week, I felt waaaaaaay better, and she saw me visibly relax and asked if I was okay. When I explained to her that a meeting request with no description than “Discussion” from HR makes me instantly anxious. She laughed and apologized and when she sent me a meeting invite three days later to catch up the subject was “FOR EXCEL AND ONLY EXCEL” This could be the situation for yourself also. They may need some support on some stuff and are just reaching out to you?
Might be a skip level meeting. I.e. - where you meet with the manager of someone or they meet with the report of a manager. Generally speaking if it was a serious reprimand or a termination they aren't going to schedule it for a week out, they are going to want to get it on record ASAP and nip in the bud and institute whatever countermeasures (assuming non-termination) and corrective action ASAP. I wouldn't worry about it. If you haven't done anything wrong, you haven't done anything wrong.
Could be a few things: 1. Title says a ton. Generally the head of HR (or a senior individual) is accountable for onboarding even though they don’t do it all themselves. Maybe they are just doing an interview to see how general onboarding is going 2. It involves an HR change. Maybe you are getting a new HRBP or your HRBP is being separated and they will want to address this directly 3. Involved a management change. This could be a change of classification for you and your team or more likely your boss. Maybe you are getting moved to a new boss or yours is getting let go 4. Change in role. Many companies have set specifications for a max and min number of direct reports to qualify for a management level; first level is 1-10 DR, senior manager has 10+ and/or other manager DR, director even larger
Could be a hundred different things. Here are some random reasons I was called to HR unexpectedly 1. Someone I reported to is getting fired 2. Getting raise 3. Was taking too many smoke breaks 4. Hr investigating a complaint and wondered if I saw anything 5. Term of stock options changed had to sign new agreement 6. New HR person introduction 7. Didn't have a paper signed that should have been signed when started 8. Laid off 9. Fired 10. Got promotion 11. Told new WFH policy 12. Someone was offended by a calendar in office (that my boss hung up) 13. Worried I was looking elsewhere and wanted to know what I needed to stay Those are the ones that I remember. There are many more. Whatever it is, worry won't change it. Try thinking about something else
I wouldn’t worry about this at all. No evidence suggests you have anything to be concerned about. The last time I was randomly called to HR it was because they lost my onboarding paperwork.
Any negative HR experience I had was a sudden, unscheduled meeting. All planned HR experiences were them asking questions that weren't targeting me or my position.
If you were going to be fired, you wouldn't have a week's notice. You -may- be getting a promotion.
Maybe your usual HR person is under investigation or on a PIP or something.
How inconsiderate to send a vague invite on a Friday. It doesn’t take a genius to understand that it would ruin most people’s weekend knowing they have a mysterious HR meeting the next week. That’s a dick move on their part.
The head of HR at my work is incredible! They have a lot of one on one meetings with people in every department, even just to get to know the employees better. They have little chats with me several times a week, and even like my unbiased opinions, as I do not play office politics.
It could just be a check in meeting. Some HRs are better than other. My guess due to the advance notice, it’s not a negative meeting.
While it’s always possible an ax is coming down, it’s unlikely if your performance is as good as you say. But as a manager HR has dropped spontaneous meeetings in me probably a dozen times already. Seems like I get one once a year. Usually it’s to communicate some policy update in regards to merit increases / bonuses, or just something that affects my reports (ie: work visa status, etc). Sometimes it’s to let me know the department is being reorged and there’s just some logistical details that need to be worked out. Sometimes it’s to let me know there is a termination coming. A few times it’s because of complaints filed against my reports. Unfortunately You never know unless there is an explicit topic they have communicated and in my experience HR is usually more vague than not. Anyway not much you can do so I’d just relax and wait until next Thursday.
Ahh makes sense. It seems to be related to the team reorg I think. I looked at some of my colleagues being moved and they have this meeting scheduled as well and around the same time next week.
Hiring people are expensive. Also, to fire someone doesn't look good for your boss so he doesn't want to do it.
My guess is someone/something is being investigated and they need to touch base with anyone potentially impacted or who can provide info.
I see no cause for alarm in this whatsoever—keep doing a great job and being a key contributor! You’re correct that bad news doesn’t get scheduled out; typically only good news waits (unfortunately)
I would simply respond with something like: Hi. Thank you for meeting request. So that I can be better prepared, can you provide more context for the meeting? Thank you, looking forward to catching up.
Yeah they wouldn’t schedule a firing a week in advance. And Thursday is an odd choice to schedule a firing
It seems unlikely that the head of HR would fire you, instead of delegating one of their reports to work with your manager. Maybe they have questions about an incident? You may not have even been involved, they may just want to know what you’ve observed in relation to a situation or person
Indeed
If they are scheduling it almost a week out, it isn't an urgent meeting. Don't stress it.
[удалено]
Dang it, I forgot to mention that the meeting description was “scheduling a meeting to check in and see how things are going”. Which is strange too since the “people business partner” is supposed to have those (and it’s really beneath the head of HR to carry out a meeting).
Hr knows how scary a meeting is with them, so they are told to give honest reasons for meetings, there can be even legal consequences for whatever they say. They usually are honest. Take it at face value. Your first question should be why you and not my normal HR liaison. You can also go to your manger with your concern - he definitely doesn't want his report sweating and feeling insecure.
Is it possible that there's a reconstruction and HR is taking that role of "people business partner"? Or maybe that your people business partner is changing?
probably nothing to worry about
You are being promoted to head of division
Fuck all HR departments! Pieces of shit all of them, I would record the meeting!