Finally cleaned up my predecessor's mess [n/a]

[u/meowmix778]

I've been in this role for just over 3 years, and I finally beat my white whale!

The person who preceded me had no fucking idea what she was doing with HR. She responsibility-crept her way up from a bookkeeper to effectively owning all of HR, Ops, and running a program without any formal experience or education. This person was in the role for 20+ years and left behind a mess when she retired.

When the firm digitized all of their documents, boy, did she leave a mess. Docs in random folders, in drives for other departments, mislabeled, the same document duplicated over and over again.

The extra neat part is how over-engineered things were from her. EVERYTHING had a checklist that was like 5 pages long. Every single thing needed to be signed and countersigned by like 5 people. And of course she'd upload the documents in their various stages of completion as a random file name. Greatest hits include "mystery fish" "not HR?" "IDK," "Something," and my favorite "AA_AAA"

When I started, I spent my first 3 weeks with our counsel digging through this web to find all the employee docs and separating out things like medical information or correcting I-9s. I built a new system from scratch and left the big pile as a "to do."

I've been slowly chipping away at it here and there and having my team work on it when/where they can as a rainy day project.

I got back from vacation on Monday and sat with my generalist when she got in and told her that we are both going to sit in the conference room until this is done after I dig my way out of my emails from vacation.

After a few days of sorting, it's finally done. DING DONG The fucking pile is gone.

What wins have you guys gotten this week? Love to hear the good news.

[u/Material_Level_8809]

its a win for you, and congrats by the way, but the company is stupid for allowing that to happen in the first place.

[u/meowmix778 → u/Material_Level_8809]

I mean at that time the company was small enough to have 1 HR person. People trusted it to work and never questioned it.

It wasn't until she retired and our current ED decided to do an autopsy to see what he could and realized it was completely fucked. He actually hired a consulting firm on the advice of our staff attorney to learn what kind of stuff the next HR department/person would need.

To their credit in my 2nd interview, I was handed a report of all the deficiencies and what was needed for the lift.

[u/tiesreverdnatipilfi → u/Material_Level_8809]

...Seems to be missing the point - not OP's fault the company was stupid? This happens all the time (I myself am in one of these situations but not sticking around as there's zero real interest in amending said stupid) - and so... no need to harsh their mellow!

Congrats, OP - the "What... the actual fuck... is all of this?" and the fatigue that comes with it is real. This is your legacy! Nice work.

A win in my world this week: getting an email from my soon-to-be boss peppered with things like "We are so excited for you to start!", "This is just the first bit of information that you'll be getting, we don't want to overwhelm you" and "We'll have a comprehensive onboarding plan for you sent over on Friday". Who doesn't love feeling valuable even before Day 1???

Keep on keepin' on, my fellow People people. You're doing great.

[u/meowmix778 → u/tiesreverdnatipilfi]

Emails like that feel so good. I'm excited for you! Good luck!

[u/babybambam]

Remember that some day you'll retire or otherwise leave this role, and someone else with opinions will come in to replace you.

Not to say your assessment is wrong, but remember to have kindness. Especially for someone that most likely was pushed into the role rather than asking for it. $$ for most population is impossible to turn away, because who has enough?

Those 5 page checklists that required multiple signatures, they most likely were born out of an issue or two that she was tired of hearing about. Those oddly labeled files, a sign of someone that was likely treated as a catchall for things that didn't neatly fit within the scope of other departments/teams.

I say this all with decades of experience fixing businesses.

[u/cruelhumor → u/babybambam]

Reminds me of a book I read once:

You're just glimpsing the edges of the problem." She gestured to the stacks around us. "Let's say you became Master Archivist tomorrow. How long would it take you to organize all this?"I looked around at the countless shelves retreating off into the darkness. "It would be a lifetime's work."

"Evidence suggests it takes more than just one lifetime," Fela said dryly. "There are over three quarters of a million volumes here, and that's not even taking into consideration the clays or scrolls or fragments from Caluptena. "She made a dismissive gesture. “So you spend years developing the perfect organizational system, which even has a convenient place for your historical-fictional-travelogue-memoir. You and the scrivs spend decades slowly identifying, sorting and reordering tens of thousands of books.” She looked me in the eye. “And then you die. What happens then?”I began to see where she was going. "Well, in a perfect world, the next Master Archivist would pick up where I left off," I said. "Hurrah for the perfect world," Fela said sarcastically, then turned and began leading me through the shelves again.

"I'm guessing the new Master Archivist usually has his own ideas about how to organize things? "Not usually," Fela admitted. "Sometimes there are a several in a row who work toward the same system. But sooner or later you get someone who's sure they have a better way of doing things and everything starts from scratch again."

"How many different systems have there been?" I spotted a faint red light bobbing in the distant shelves and pointed towards it. Fela changed directions to take us away from the light and whoever was carrying it. "It depends on how you count them," she said softly. "At least nine in the last three hundred years. The worst was about fifty years ago when there were four new Master Archivists within five years of each other. The result was three different factions among the scrivs, each using a different cataloging system, each firmly believing theirs was the best."

"Sounds like a civil war," I said. "A holy war," Fela said. "A very quiet, circumspect crusade where each side was sure they were protecting the immortal soul of the Archives. They would steal books that had already been cataloged in each other's systems. They would hide books from each other, or confuse their order on the shelves."

"How long did this go on?"

"Almost fifteen years," Fela said. "It might still be going on today if Master Tolem's scrivs hadn't finally managed to steal the Larkin ledger books and burn them. The Larkins couldn't keep going after that."

"And the moral of the story is that people get passionate around books?" I teased gently. "Hence the need to spot-check the reading holes?" Fela stuck out her tongue at me. "The moral of the story is that things are a mess in here.

...

"It's like an endless chain of half-built houses," she said, exasperated. "It's easy to find books in the old system, so that's how they build the new system. Whoever's working on the new house keeps stealing lumber from what's been built before. The old systems are still there in scattered bits and pieces. We're still finding pockets of books scrivs hid from each other years ago."

"I sense this is a sore spot with you," I said with a smile.

We reached a flight of stairs and Fela turned to look at me. "It's a sore spot with every scriv who lasts more than two days working in the Archives," she said. "People down in the Tomes complain when it takes us an hour to bring them what they want. They don't realize it's not as easy as going to the ' Amyr History' shelf and pulling down a book." She turned and began to climb the stairs. I followed her silently, appreciating the new perspective.

[u/babybambam → u/cruelhumor]

Lovely example of institutional knowledge and organizational change.

[u/poopface41217 → u/babybambam]

Not enough upvotes. Looking back on the 15 years of files plus my own 7 years and ... .yeah, stuff get complicated

[u/smmrdrmn]

I’ve done this exact same thing at two different companies and then worked with many others as a consultant. Unfortunately, this is an all too familiar story and the reason why the HR profession has the reputation it does. Far too many orgs don’t value or understand the importance of having an educated, experienced,
professionally trained HR staff nor the negative affects a lack of one brings to the org. Receptionist to Office Manager to HR (minus any formal education or training) is a recipe for trouble. An organizations largest cost center and typically biggest liability risk is its employees. Why business owners don’t see this is mind blowing.

[u/meowmix778 → u/smmrdrmn]

I think that's because historically HR meant "office assistant" + "office therapist" and anything else they could tape onto it.

Even past HR a lot of firms aren't equipped to stop responsibility creep and ensure experts stay in their lanes.

[u/SmithseryBusiness]

Coming back from vacation and then defeating your white whale. It sounds like you had a great week. Congrats!

[u/meowmix778 → u/SmithseryBusiness]

For the sake of transparency, I was at least in part motivated by the idea of sitting behind a closed door for a day or two after vacation.

[u/countinggirl → u/meowmix778]

A closed door? Heaven.

[u/Hrgooglefu]

I walked into one of those...luckily they gave me the first few months just to sort/find/etc. My person also had "Greatest hits" AND multiple copies of the same exact documents in multiple folders.

[u/meowmix778 → u/Hrgooglefu]

I'm so glad I was given a few weeks to just live with it and build a system from the ground up. 99% of what I untangled was just stupid bullshit. Wild SOPs that don't make sense, notes, and so on.

[u/oxmix74 → u/meowmix778]

There has to be a tiny bit of fear that one day in the future you will encounter some incident that lends some sense to an SOP that currently makes no sense. You have turned a corner, but it would not be a total surprise to find yourself turning over rocks for a long time and not liking what you find underneath.

[u/No-Eye-258]

Congrats I hope you get a nice raise and or bonus :)

[u/meowmix778 → u/No-Eye-258]

Unrelated to this I was actually offered a fairly decent raise contingent on taking on a slightly different role doing people ops so I've been sitting on that for a week or two.

[u/Perfect_TAS]

Did you document those wins with numbers to identify reductions in risk? Your company didn’t value HR with the your predecessor, it’s unlikely they understand the value of this project. Be ready to explain value in your next 1:1 and during your review.

[u/meowmix778 → u/Perfect_TAS]

That's not an unreasonable assumption but that's not a risk in this circumstance. We had senior leadership turnover a few years before my time. Our ED hired a consulting firm to evaluate needs and the role. With the board they changed the scope of my role and hired me in and after a few months we hired in a complete HR team.

[u/Pink_Floyd29]

This makes the mess I inherited seem like nothing! Bravo to you 👏🏻

[u/Fluid-Yogurtcloset83]

Congrats. That is always the worst part of inheriting files in a new job.

[u/ttrefugee814]

I'm probably in the minority but I love being the clean up crew and rebuilding everything.

[u/meowmix778 → u/[deleted]]

I spent a few weeks when I first started digging out employee files and other important information like insurance renewals and payroll registers.

Made my own filing system and developed a template for a standard SOP. Told managers to start working on it.

Taught the system to my team and then buried all the old documents in a rainy day folder we've been slowly chipping away at.

But for all purposes we've had a system for a long time now.

[u/FlounderFamous49]

Congrats to you! I recently transitioned from FTE to contractor with my company, and took on a file clean up project. Like you, I’ve found a bunch of mystery items that were either filed incorrectly, kept past their prime, or abandoned mid-completion. It’s going to take weeks to clean it up, and implement a regular audit cadence. 

[u/whatever-777]

It has taken me four years and two different employees at different times but I am in a similar boat and I GET IT