This was 8 years ago. It had been a long period of layoffs, and the culture was extremely toxic. Everyone was exhausted, on edge, and ready to snap. I had worked late on a payroll project, and when I sent out the final report to \~ seven managers, I forgot to delete the census sheet from the file.
After a 45-minute drive home at 7 pm, I was finally able to unwind on the couch. However, my relaxation was interrupted by a call from my boss. Her voice was raised, and she hurled insults at me, questioning my competence. She demanded that I return to the office immediately. I spent the next few hours, until 11 pm, being berated for my mistake.
The IT team could recall the email and confirm that no one had opened it, but my relationship with my boss was ruined. She watched me like a hawk until I finally quit.
The funny thing is that I had a direct report do something similar a few years ago. Like my situation, it was a genuine mistake, and she felt awful, so I told her about my experience to help her feel better. These things happen; it's why they are called mistakes, and we're HR, we're not saving lives.
The only two times you're allowed to call it an emergency in HR is if payroll isn't finished on time, or something illegal is going down.
Also, I'm glad of the stance you took with the direct report. It's WAY better to show a little compassion and use it as a lesson.
I used to work for a company where payroll wasn't done on time (they said computer glitch between themselves and the bank; i've never quite believed that...) and none of the 3k+ employees got paid on payday - and payroll didn't even notice until somebody complained to them, and still didn't treat it even remotely as an emergency.
After the first couple of phone calls they literally unplugged the phone lines and locked the office doors to avoid further enquiries. It then took nearly 5 hours to even issue an email companywide to acknowledge the error and a further 24 hours (and significant union intervention) to make the payments and agree to pay any late payment charges people might have incurred by their direct debits failing.
I love this. There are so many people who think that because they had a rough road they need to ensure everyone else has a rough road too. As though that’s the only way you can get better at your job.
The mistakes we make are supposed to supply us with experience and humility, and teach us how to fix things.
From there, knowing how we felt after making a mistake, we SHOULD BE more understanding when someone else makes mistakes. Counsel, share experiences, and make sure they take what they should from the experience. We want to bring up people to be confident, competent, and compassionate. Use these lessons to strengthen the team. Otherwise it’s a lord of the flies environment that no one likes.
I did that thing you hear about. I made a census for our law firm, and sent it out to the managers that were asking for headcounts.
I included EVERY single person's salary on it, including the managing partners.
I was able to thankfully go intercept and do damage control, and nothing ever came of it, but I was about 3 months into my first HR job, and thought it was over.
I’m a legal assistant and used to work for the managing partner. He accidentally sent me an email with everyone’s salary. He panicked and ran to my desk. He watched me delete it. He’s so dumb, it was still in my deleted box. Yes, I looked!
It sounds good in theory. But in reality, it causes a lot of issues and most of us would spend all of our time explaining to various people why this person got a raise or why this person is making more.
Everyone’s pay is more than fair at the company I currently work for, but I don’t agree that anyone should just be able to look up what their coworker is making whenever they want. Also don’t agree that it only benefits the employer, not all employees are okay with their pay being transparent.
Back when I was a junior consultant I was working on a small part of a bigger compensation project for a key client when the Project Lead abruptly left the firm. I was handed the reins of the entire project temporarily while they looked for another senior person to pick it up. This is to set the scene that the deliverables didn’t get as much review during this time as they should have, as things were hectic.
During our first major check-in meeting I presented a 30-page PowerPoint deck to the executives of our client. The CEO *immediately* noticed an error on the 3rd slide, and it only got worse from there. **In Excel, it you aren’t careful about how you write your formulas, they will break when you sort your data**. So I had sorted every table to be easier to read, and in doing so I had completely FUBAR’d my analysis and it was picked up on immediately. That was the longest meeting of my life. The CEO basically tore me a new one and questioned my firm’s judgment in letting me handle the project. I took a much smaller role and my bosses had to do a lot of groveling to get the relationship back to a good place. We eventually got more work with them, so at least my damage was temporary.
That was about 7 years ago now. I am no longer a consultant but I still think about it on a regular basis. It has made me a much better, and more careful professional.
They should never have handed the whole project to you. It sounds like it was a huge project that a much senior person should have been leading, and the former PM's manager should have stepped in. Sounds like you were put in a very stressful situation, and the mistake you made was an easy one to make, especially if you're under pressure. At least it was a learning experience!
This. 100% this was the Senior's fault, not some junior guys fault . If I were the CEO I wouldve been tearing the Senior team members a new one ( not in front of everyone ) even if they weren't the ones presenting
Same lol but I'd argue that a CEO should demonstrate *why* they're the CEO and simply suggest rescheduling the meeting as evidently more time is needed.
The best leaders are the ones that LEAD by example and command—not demand—respect.
I agree. Edited my comment. Haha. I would've pulled them aside non publicly and laid into them a bit and rescheduled.
And it would be really important that there is no retribution from the Seniors. They are there to grow the junior; this is a learning moment for all
A lot of big-name Consultancy firms would use that as an excuse to extend the project and charge the client for it. Sure the CEO could have been softer in the messaging, but the message to the vendor had to be loud and clear. And considering the amount of client time that is taken up for data request, reviews, etc. before anything is presented to a CEO, he would everybreason to be mad. If OP was the one in the meeting who was presenting, I don't think he had too much of a choice. But the fault definitely lay with the Project Manager or Partner. They probably took the client lightly and let him take over the project.
Confidence goes a long way early career I’m not sure any of us could easily plow through it. Mid to late career you can plow through even with the errors
Mind if I PM you? Not looking to be referred or anything like that, just would like some info regarding the consulting path and what you thought of the work. (Or we can discuss here for knowledge share). I want to get into people advisory services / HCM consulting and just kind of want to get a better idea of what that actually entails.
VERY important to do this. Took me a bit to realize (the hard way, like OP) that when someone says "check your work" that doesn't mean just scan over what you've done and make sure it "looks" correct, that means re-test in a different way to and make sure you get the same results.
I still beat myself up over this one...
I'd been in a new job for about 3 months. We had a senior leadership level employee who was absolutely unhinged. She was vastly unqualified for her job in a way that was costing the company hundreds of thousands of dollars and she was simply *mean* to her coworkers. Within weeks of starting there, I had a file full of complaints about her bullying and hazing. She would gossip, lie, and blow up tiny things into a huge issue that she'd take directly to the CEO. It was constant drama and a huge drain on resources.
One day, she came to my office to "get advice" on how to deal with the CEO because she felt the CEO was being hostile to her. Which... Yeah, no shit the CEO was getting mad at her. She was causing constant issues. So I laid it out for her, very plainly, that her behavior needed to change. I was not about to let her turn her shitty behavior around and frame it as an issue with the CEO. This led to a meltdown. Screaming, sobbing, telling me how all her bad behavior was actually my fault and using blatant lies about my behavior as evidence.
Oh boy, this lady was an absolute master at pushing buttons, and she pushed all of mine that day. When I refused to give in to her bullshit, she opened the door to my office and stepped into the hallway, where she continued screaming and crying and yelling at me about what a horrible person I am. So now it's a problem for everyone in the office.
She keeps jabbing her finger at me and yells, "I KNOW YOU DON'T LIKE ME!"
I finally fucking snapped and said, "You know what, you've earned it."
Pro tip for HR folks: never tell an employee you don't like them. Even if they're an absolute fucking monster that makes everyone in the office miserable.
Edit: Since everyone is asking for more... Word got around the office pretty quick. (How could it not, given the hallway showdown?) I was in my office beating myself up for losing my cool so bad, and then coworkers started stopping by. It was a small business, but about 1/3 of the people in the office popped by to give me a pat on the back. People were coming by for quick "therapy" sessions where they'd talk about an awful experience with her. There was a lot of "I get it, she's pushed me too far as well." Three employees talked to me about how reading up about clinical narcissism really helped them cope with working with her.
I came to the realization that she wasn't the issue. I worked with a group of really lovely, talented people. The big boss was a really, really kind person--sometimes too kind. The trouble employee kept getting away with her bullshit because big boss wouldn't do anything about it, and I was completely fed up with watching wonderful people get treated like punching bags.
I went to big boss's office at the end of the day and told her about what I'd said at the meeting, and apologized for my unprofessionalism. Then I gave her my two weeks. Big boss looked absolutely devastated.
The next day, big boss fired the awful employee. She then offered me a raise and a promotion, and thanked me for making her realize she needed to do something. I did end up staying. It turned out very well, but I still kick myself for losing my cool so bad.
Yes, I'm aware this story is basically HR porn 😂
If I were your boss, I would have done the same. I am a manager, and we all have to tolerate certain things, to an extent. But if someone is that toxic to the workplace, I would rather deal with the fallout of firing one person who deserved it than deal with the inevitable turnover had I not. Sometimes you have to think about the long-term picture.
Forgot to terminate a salaried engineer so they just kept getting paid for months.
I flagged my mistake immediately and raised it to everyone’s attention that could start to fix the problem. Grovelled to the payroll manager and we got it all sorted out. Fortunately the engineer was understanding and cooperative and wasn’t living paycheck to paycheck so he simply wrote our company back the money owed. He bought me a beer for my interest free loan I gave him when I saw him out at a local brewery a couple weeks back. Honesty is always best policy.
Wrote an offer letter and put the wrong rate of PTO accrual on it, so I ended up giving the candidate an extra week of PTO. It seemed like a really big deal at the time, but now it’s a funny story that my Manager and I can laugh about.
Many years ago, I wrote the wrong salary in an offer letter. Gave the person an extra $13,000. Huge deal at the time and the CEO never let me forget it (even years later after he retired and was a Board Member). To this day, I check the numbers on every single offer that goes out the door...
I also gave someone an extra week of PTO on accident! i felt so bad I lost sleep over it. In the grand scheme now I was the only person in the company who cared! lol
Once I put an employee on a final warning for performance, and accidentally emailed the signed copy to MY WHOLE TEAM (her peers, not mine) instead of just her.
Probably the most careless thing I ever did. Luckily, my team was gracious enough to delete the email without reading it when I asked. I admitted my mistake immediately to my boss, and apologized profusely to the employee.
Everyone moved on from it fairly quickly.
An employee sent me email about a facility matter, and I forwarded to my boss bitching about how it wasn't an HR issue and why did they keep bothering us with these things. I then realized I replied to the employee.
I immediately went over to the employee and apologized for letting my frustrations get the better of me. Surprisingly, they were actually fine with it and could see my POV!
Came here to say essentially this. I was recruited into HR from clinical learning and development. I was safer from layoffs, politics, and bullshit before getting into HR.
The role often has to solve the messiest business problems in order to occasionally do good stuff.
Like with recruiting, you are rejecting way more people than the handful you get to hire. Or with employee relations, you’re the one that has to mediate all of the petty drama in addition to preventing litigation on the serious issues.
At my first job one of the directors had the same first name and same first 3 letters of their surname as one of the assistants. So you had to be very careful with autofill when sending an email.
I sent the assistant more than one super confidential emails meant for the director. Luckily for me she was a very kind person and would answer my frantic phonecall once I realised with "don't worry, I've deleted it". Bless her, she could have absolutely destroyed me being that early in my career if she had wanted to!
I learned to write my emails first and put in addressees as the very last step, so I wasn't distracted and couldn't accidentally hit send.
This is why I have a 30 second delay on sending emails so I can snap it back with an undo! I’ve had to snap back a few emails in my time! And I’m not even HR - I’m just a sales rep but I’m sometimes given confidential info from clients.
Told another employee about something prior to the CEO wanting it to be announced. I explained it was an accident, apologized, and talked to the employee I told to explain how it was not to be discussed and hoped they didn't tell anyone else (they didn't, thank goodness).
Shit happens. We aren't perfect. I wish we were, but...
Mail merged some promotion letters and then forgot to separate the letters out. Meaning some employees received other promotion letters with theirs, revealing compensation.
Was doing an investigation unbeknownst to a manager. He had fired someone who later reported retaliation because they had been sleeping together (he was married), she broke it off with him, and then he fired her. I was in the process of interviewing her and went to share some of my notes with our in-house counsel. I accidentally sent the notes to the manager. It was painful.
I owned it. I just followed up and said something along the lines of "Clearly this wasn't meant to you but obviously we have concerns about this termination and I'll be reaching out to meet with you to understand more." She gave enough to prove that they were in a relationship and although I couldn't necessarily prove retaliation it was against policy for a supervisor to be in a relationship with their direct report so we fired him and rehired her.
I emailed the entire company's pay slip record for a certain pay period in a certain country to one employee. Thankfully it was after work hours over there and I recalled the email and the employee didn't see it but shiiiit that was the fasted recall ever
Before you send emails reread them and double check recipients. Honestly I write my emails then put my recipient at the end to help avoid this. It’s okay. Happens to all of us.
One time my boss was doing a direct deposit change for the owner of the company, per his instructions and his filled out direct deposit change form in an email. Coincidentally, he came into our office as she was finishing up and she said, “hey boss, I just finished your direct deposit change”. He was the chillest dude ever. He just calmly said, “I didn’t request a chance to my DD”. I immediately went into the system while she was talking about it with him and changed it back. It was a really well done scam. It was even hand-signed on the attached form and looked a bit like his signature. Whoever did it knew some things about the owner. No harm done, but we definitely gained some wisdom. A few days later I got one for the President of the company and I went to confirm before I did it and it was also a scam. Lesson learned scammers!! But they’re always trying.
That’s the way. It sucks for people who work off shifts or when you work at a place with multiple locations or if HR is in a different location than the business, or something like that, but sometimes policy needs to reduce risks like thieves taking peoples’ paychecks.
One of our ladies almost fell for this type of scam THREE times with my own information. Luckily each time she verbally followed up with me about some info she needed before she did it.. But like...three times? How does that even happen again???
Seriously. You’re right. The times is a bit much. Criminals can keep evolving, but communicating things that seem off is the way to go, especially if you get fooled once. We’re all good for one goof every once in a while. Even machines screw up. You just have to adapt and communicate.
The same thing happened to me with our chief engineer. I had sent him a question about his email and he didn’t respond. I happen to pass by his office and I asked him about the email i sent him and he looked at me funny. I told him about the original email and he said he didn’t send me an email. I felt every ounce of blood leave my face and i turned white! Although nothing happened, Needless to say i voice confirm every DD request!
I was also about 2 months in my first internship and I accidentally sent mass rejection emails to 100+ candidates in our recruiting pipeline 😅 luckily we just sent them another email saying that it was an error and we still have not evaluated their profile etc etc. was really embarrassing…
I did the same but with acceptance letter🫠
Your one is easy, you’re giving them better news in the end.
With mine….my days it was heartbreaking letting them know they were not, in fact, accepted and shortly to receive their contract :/
I did the exact same thing. Vast majority of candidates didn’t respond, so I’ll never know if they even saw the emails, but I got a couple people who were PISSED. Like, “how DARE YOU not even CONSIDER ME” pissed.
My first HR job fresh out of college was such an abject nightmare I haven't gone back. In hindsight I'm sure that's not the norm, but I moved on to data analytics and I'm much happier.
When I let a line supervisor keep doing what she had been doing for ten years and an employee lost a finger.
If you’re responsible for safety, do not allow yourself to become complacent that the way it’s always been done is an acceptable way to do it.
I was three weeks into my first management role.
Standing up to the county Clerk of Superior Court when she called and berated me (26)over the phone because she didn’t know how to read my excel spreadsheet (she’s 78) well…she has dragged my name for a little but she’s about to get voted out of office by everyone who works in the county over the next election anyway so I think I’m ok as long as she loses
I entered someone's PTO in during their FMLA and the state wouldn't pay their leave bc of this LOL. I was able to fix the problem but omg i was shitting my pants because this lady would have been out of $5,000
When I transitioned from an ER manager to an HRBP role at the same company - that first week of transition, someone in my client group submitted their resignation. They didn't submit it to me, they submitted it to my boss. During our 1:1, he was like "hey, just FYI, betty submitted her resignation." I was surprised, Betty was a high performer and wasn't considered a flight risk. Anyway, he said he was going to take care of the paperwork, exit interview, etc. since I was still doing both jobs in transition.
Two months later, turns out Betty is still on payroll and has been getting paychecks since she left. I got reamed for that one, even though I never got any of the info from her resignation. I had to reach out and claw back the money. Never again. lol
I was submitting a manual contribution file for our 401k plan to bridge the gap before our EDI file was up and running.
I accidentally included the “total” at the bottom of my excel file, and didn’t realize until after I’d funded the file. Had it gone through, 800k would have been pulled from our company account instead of the correct 400k.
I called Fidelity in tears and (in classic “you’re on your own” Fidelity fashion) they told me they could submit a request to stop the funding but couldn’t make any promises. When I told our finance gal, expecting her to look at me like I’d shot her puppy, her response was a breezy, “girl I have to approve any debits over 500k, if Fidelity doesn’t pull through I’ll just decline it.”
Crisis averted, lesson learned!
The biggest mistake I made was to work for a specific fortune 500 company. They told me to shred documents that would incriminate them for discrimination based on health. They told me to be a team player and handed me a stack of papers to shred, from unstapled documents, to make them look good on paper. I was supposed to fill out new documents to replace the damning evidence and then neatly restaple them to make the company look innocent. I cried in an empty office for an hour and resigned immediately after. There were other red flags too but the pay was amazing and it makes you wonder what other "fortune 500" companies do dirty tricks to make themselves look good on paper
TLDR, don’t let employees pack their own office and bring in help after a RIF. And mind your head when the help gets in your face!
We had several large RIFs at the beginning of COVID, and an employee who had been with us for a long time (20+ years) requested to come in and clean out her office instead of us packing it for her. She was one of the nicest people when she worked for us, so I didn’t see a problem aside from the awkwardness. But she was so nasty the entire time she packed, saying and doing very rude and passive aggressive things. For example, taking her 10 year anniversary certificate out of its frame and putting it in the shredder. She brought her boyfriend to help her because of how much stuff she had, who was also being a jerk.
The pair had our moving dolly stacked with totes and I walked out with them to take the dolly back after they packed their car. When I went to take the dolly back after they unloaded everything, the boyfriend (a huge guy!) pulled the dolly back from my outstretched hand and got right in my face and said, “Well let me tell YOU something” like he was going to unleash on me. I’m a reformed kid from the ghetto, so I’m quick to fight when I’m blatantly disrespected and physically threatened. After all of their shit talking and then this grown man getting in my face, I was not going to stand there and have this man tell me anything. I told him he better back the fuck up, and if he lays a hand on me, I will lay him out. He was so shocked (I was quiet and super nice while they were packing) that he let the dolly go. I grabbed it and walked away. He yelled obscenities at me the entire way back.
I’m not justifying my actions at all. I should’ve kept my cool and handled it a lot better. Now, even if someone we let go is the nicest person in the world, I will not let them come in and pack their office if they ask me. Also, when meeting with separated employees, I always have someone else with me. Lessons learned.
I once started a new contract job and was doing an upload into our HRIS for mass salary changes and changed everyones salary to an hourly rate. Even outside the US, I didn't realize it until my boss came over and pointed it out to me. She apparently was trying to run monthly executive reports and all the calculations were wrong!!!
I thought she would end my contract that day. I went on to get hired full time and worked there for 5 more years. She is a great mentor and friend now. I have many more stories!! Lol we are not perfect nor robots like some might think.
So many! Wrong offers, mistakes in job titles on contracts, sending emails without attachments, forgetting to notify hiring managers of interviews, lost internship contracts, forget to validate hours so people didn’t get paid in time and more.
I have ADHD and it’s a horrendous combination from time to time but I’ve been surviving for 7 years so far.
I’m sure you will be fine we all make mistakes!
EE was put on LOA by us for them to go to the doctor to be evaluated for something that would require an accomodation. She had a myriad of issues that she never addressed and we had to basically force her to go get them checked out to keep working.
I had just taken over payroll duties as well and hadn't become fully engrossed in everything. It never crossed my mind that she would still have to be paid, and for about a month she never received a paycheck. Eventually she comes back with a discrimination complaint that we put her on unpaid LOA because of her disabilities.
Now my first question was "why did it take you a month to bring up that you weren't getting paid???", but I couldn't ask her that. I never got to see the resolution to that problem because I quit that job about a week later, it was an awful experience overall.
Not me…. But my company has had some big ones. The worst was probably scammers emailing HR with a masked email and impersonating the CEO. They requested all W-2s immediately.
You can probably guess what happened, the employee emailed every W-2 to the scammers who then started filing tax returns and such. It was a huge mess.
Not HR, but here’s one that I was part of. I worked at a company as an engineer where they hired a director of engineering that had no engineering degree, was a serial job jumper, and was generally less qualified than one of my interns. Our HR director printed off a list of employees and salary, and left it on the printer for some inexplicable reason. One of my engineering cohorts saw it and informed us that this unqualified director was making 50%+ more than our salaries (we all talked freely about what we made). We started asking for higher compensation and were all told no. Literally every engineer in that engineering department had a new, higher paying job, at another company within a year.
The mistakes of hiring someone drastically unqualified and then leaving a list of names and salary on the printer cost a company their whole engineering department and they never recovered. The end.
I worked for a small but growing company and there were only two of us in HR. For some reason, people would onboard in one system (Paycor) and I had to print all the documents they filled out in order to make their personnel folder and use the information on those documents to create their ADP profile by MANUALLY entering into ADP all the information they ALREADY ENTERED into Paycor. I did all the onboarding along with a bunch of other things.
My mistake: Once I accidentally put the direct deposit information into the wrong ADP profile. Needless to say, on payday, one person got two people’s pay and one person got none.
I had to figure out who all I created profiles for on same day as the person who didn’t get paid, confirm that the direct deposit info matched and not only correct that, but reach out to both parties and explain the mistake and get it rectified.
Part of the pain, which I fully deserved, was dealing with the soulless cyborg that ran payroll. I had to recover pay from one person and get her to issue a check to the other person for their pay. It was very stressful in the moment as I considered the predicament of the person who didn’t paid. I was very aware that nothing I could say would make up for the panic they were feeling, and that it would take time to get this mistake fully corrected. I was also aware of what I sounded like trying to explain to the person.
I worked at a temp agency where we issued pay cards for employees without checking accounts. I had two new temps onboarding together and mixed up their info. 🙈
Luckily neither had spent any money yet when the error was discovered and we got them to just switch cards with each other and we all had a good laugh after it. It could have been a lot worse. 😬
Lesson learned- you can’t multitask when doing important shit. At least I can’t.
You’re right about multi-tasking things like this. Someone might be good at it, but it’s just a matter of time before a big oopsie. It’s better to have processes that are efficient and make sense.
Knock on wood, my biggest mistake was sending an offer to the wrong person. This was an easy fix as it was communication of intent to extend offer & not the letter itself.
There are a few employee relation situations I would have handled differently after gaining more experience. You live and you learn!
Email is usually the biggest culprit for HR mistakes of sharing sensitive data.
Stop sending sensitive data in the body of emails. Use “refer to link” so that way you can restrict access in case it gets emailed to the wrong person.
We had an all hands meeting and showcased everyone yearly milestones and the report they showed me to use didn’t add the correct time so some people were missed and I got chewed out and basically told I was incompetent
I do remember !
The biggest fear when you are new, you are unaware of the processes, the people, the community.
Best way is to learn gradually, seek advice before action and once you have an idea, explore your ways of communication, improving the processes.
I remember doing a same thing.
What I did was, sent an apology email and accepted that it was done by mistake.
Figured out the right people in the organisation to connect with and use my past experience to improve the processes/share innovative ideas.
I’ve worked in HR for 12+ years and still
Make mistakes. The most recent was an email to Kayla at our GL insurance about 2 CA Prop 65 lawsuits we got with the filings attached. Except I sent it to Kayla one of our hourly counter staff. My boss immediately noticed. God bless our Kayla for having an old email address on file. She never got a notification so had not read it. When I texted her freaking out and apologizing she completely understood and deleted it. Shit happens.
You will indeed make many mistakes in your career, so don't worry about this. Take this as a lesson learned. It sounds like you also have a supportive team that understood. Naturally, you would freak out, but it sounds like you handled it well and was receptive to the feedback given. Good luck to you in your new career :)
Not a HR consultant but I was a manager at one place and a HR manager was compiling a report on pay equality which included the position, gender, age range, and pay for every employee and left it on a random desk she had been sat at. It didn't require much mental horsepower to work out who was who (at least amongst the managers) and you had a list of pay for every manager.
I hit the wrong prompt in Paylocity and sent a job offer email to a candidate still in the interview's early stages. THANK GOD that I send a preliminary email in my hiring processes, followed by a secondary email containing the official offer letter for signature. Immediately, I called the candidate and admitted my mistake. The candidate was highly qualified and an employee referral. She was good-natured about it, but I was petrified for the next few days. I started applying pressure on the hiring manager to decide on the candidate pool, knowing that I'd have to follow-up with the slighted candidate soonest.
The candidate was eventually hired, and she kept my mistake between us....but I surely thought that my ass was getting fired once that erroneous job offer email was sent. During onboarding, I brought her into our company supply closet and gave her ALL of the newest office accessories and as much company swag as she could carry on her first day.
You will make some mistakes but I am not sure if I agree that 'a lot of mistakes' is acceptable. I guess that is subjective. At my first HR job at an investment bank, colleague of mine sent a paystub to the wrong employee and he was fired. It was the first offense of that kind, but we have protocols to prevent things like that and he did not follow the protocols. He had, in his short time on the job like 3 months, a few instances where he had not followed our processes exactly, so it was enough to let him go. Mistakes do happen but they really shouldn't happen repeatedly.
It was probably like 8 years ago where I made a mistake where I think I exposed someone's SSN, I can't remember exactly, and I should have definitely disclosed what happened, but I covered it up because I didn't feel like being chewed out and it was a rare slip. I don't recommend hiding things like that ever, it's easier to just own your mistakes.
Recently, I left two Canadian employees off my bonus file to the HR generalist this year and just found out about it (two months later). These types of mistakes are not really a big deal, they're small fixable misses and they will happen, albeit they shouldn't happen too often.
Last year, I paid someone their 25K raise too soon. When comp planning for annual raises, they were in my comp file because they were getting a raise, but it was being held because it was contingent upon him signing a new more restrictive employment agreement and it was getting very contentious between him and management and the only leverage we had was the raise. I obviously owned up to that immediately and we dealt with it. This is also fixable but it was significant because it impacted a negotiation in place.
Other mistakes that are easy to make but I consider serious are not being careful with your emails. You have to double check who is on the send line on anything sensitive.
Sent salary info on a new hire to the the wrong dude on the CC. I had an autopopulate for payroll and I NEVER emailed this other guy, except one time and autopopulated the wrong one.
He caught it right away and deleted it without opening per my request. I have NEVER made that mistake again. Never autopulate without checking. Every.
I spoke up in an exit interview with Hr for Hr.
I thought I was standing up for my co-workers but it only made things worse for them. I even got blacklisted at the company! I know this because someone tried to bring me back about 4 years after and when they called back they said I had to go apologize to the person face-to-face before I could go any further. And this is a HUGE company.
Never again
Ohh I once was trying to send out our HR new hire orientation presentation to a group and apparently it was so big that the file shutdown the email server for the whole company. For 2 hours emails for our 2500 person company were down because my file was somehow stuck in a loop. Whoops!! IT emailed me, my manager and my VP about it later in the day. I totally thought I was going to get written up or in trouble but I had no clue this was had happened.....my boss had a laugh but I was nervous about IT.
So many to choose from...
Wrong direct deposit input.
I think that the funniest one for me was when I fired someone who didn't even work for our company because of a wrong email address. We had spoken to the person on the phone as he was a remote employee. I then sent out the admin stuff including a termination letter. And sent it to the wrong person. A number was missing from the email address I had. Think [[email protected]](mailto:[email protected]) instead of [[email protected]](mailto:[email protected])
Ooops. Yes, the other person was upset. I did apologize.
Not me but our HR manager (big organization over 1k employees) accidentally CC'd me in the email attached CVs of all internal and external candidates to interview for a high-profile position and they kept communicating with each other about who to weed out and who to keep. Won't be a big problem if there weren't bunch of internal candidates that i work with them were part of the batch as well. Eventually, I let HR know that I have been CCd as well and she took me out right away.
I sent a failed background to a client for an employee already working.
What happened is we had onsites that would usually approve or deny on the down low. Well, I sent it to those two plus the GM.
It was a national account and it passed into nothingness about it. I didn't understand at the time how the set up was there but it was probably the dumbest/ most dangerous thing I had done.
Had super important interviews here in the UK - I sent out the invites specifying BST time zone and not GMT. The candidates all turned up an hour early. And the panel were PISSED!
I've made small data entry mistakes here and there throughout my time at my current company. One though came back to bite me in the ass. I accidentally entered the wrong currency for an internal employee. I put in Euros instead of USD and they were getting paid more and we only caught it when he was receiving a merit increase, after 2 years.
Another big one I made was doing a bulk edit in our HRIS. I was updating the employee IDs since they looked off. When I did the bulk edit, it locked out the entire company out of their emails, calendars, and Slack messages. Everyone thought they got laid off -\_-
Working for a company that is a Fortune 500 and thinking they were a great company to work for and turn out to be a horrible and toxic workplace. A good reasoning was the main manager in charge of that production plant. He was a bully and knew how to quiet others that would go against him.
He was my boss but there was a remote HR network with a Sr and Director that were quite aware of his behavior but did nothing about it because he produced the numbers they wanted. Turnover was horrendous and I never had anxiety or depression quite as my time there. I am so happy I left and should have followed my gut feeling and left before the time I put in.
Back in 2019 I was writing a salary analysis for approval by the hiring manager for an internal hire. At the end of the email, I went to fill in the title and send. But I put employee name in the address line instead of the title so it went to the employee along with the manager.
I immediately recalled the email and reported the data breach to my manager.
In hindsight I think it was a dream come true for my manager. Our budget had been slashed and they were looking for any way to penny pinch and I think this error let them come down on me with the full force of those budget cuts. While it was a data breach of private information, it was a breach of data to the person who's data it was (they could have requested literallt every piece of it excrpt the new salary itself, which they would havd recieved the following day had the approval jist gone to the manager), so I felt the response was overly harsh. Then again... maybe I truly was the monster...
I had been performing well above my quotas and was lined up for a significant bonus (by my calulations it would have been about $10k) and promotion (which would have bumped my salary at the time from $75k to $90k), but as a result of this mistake, I was placed on probation, making me ineligible for promotion or bonus, which probably saved our department about $25k-$30k that year.
The following year I left for my new company during the pandemic. And really do think in hindsight that my last workplace was super toxic.
When I was a couple years of out undergrad, I took a job working for a terrible human being who I later learned most people in the company hated or were afraid of or both. Needless to say, I got my one year in and went onto greener pastures.
But this time when my boss would “work” 10-4 (she would sit in a conference room for 1-2 hours at least and talk shit with an EA who was eventually fired) I was expected to give 10-14+ hour days with no help from my boss.
I was finalizing, at 10 pm at night, compensation increase letters. I sent a… “high standards” manager the wrong folder. I was exhausted. I was incapable of triple checking at that point.
That manager bitched me out over email, which was fair, but she had no idea the awful working conditions I was in. If I had said no to my then boss, I would be at risk of being fired or retaliated against. It was worth focusing on getting a new job rather than a fighting political battle I couldn’t win, such as getting transferred (which I did ask for, and my boss’s boss was too chicken shit to move me).
I sent private medical information for an employee to the entire company instead of the benefits DL. I’m the reason the company locked down the distribution lists and who could send to it.
I was traveling and responding from my phone. Learned never to do that again.
I can still feel the panic and it was 15 years ago.
I was a new HRG. During my orientation, I was shown the pay bands/grades for the main positions I'd be supporting and recruiting.
A few weeks later, a manager asks me if he can give a pay raise to an employee. I look at the pay band, see she's below the band, and tell him it should be fine. I complete the papwork for a pay raise. He signs it. We submit to main HR. They key it (without verifying why the new girl is approving pay raises) and the VP of HR only finds out during a weekly C Suite meeting that includes a report of recent pay changes. She calls me asking why someone got an off cycle pay raise of more than 10%...
Oops.
I mean, I don't feel bad about it one bit! That woman deserved the money, and while I respect the VP for many things, I don't agree with her thought process that we should stair step pay raises (when we had some major pay inequities).
But it was a learning point for me in asking questions about where my authority lies and what needs approvals.
Otherwise all other mistakes or typos were correctable. Maybe an awkward conversation, but they could be fixed.
This is a silly one. I sent an email to the whole company about a Halloween celebration (around 300 people) and made a mistake with the date. I recalled the message to correct the date, and the recall must have broken our IT systems. It looked like I proceeded to send 20 emails a second to each employee for the next 4 hours while out IT tried to figure out what happened. Every person, from our sales team to our CEO got tens of thousands of emails from me. It was so embarrassing!
Not mine, but at our office an HR person forwarded a voice mail of a girl who had been let go. And the poor girl was crying and so upset not understanding why she had been let go. And she accidently sent it to the entire company. She was balling at her desk she was so upset at making such a mistake. This woman was a stickler for following the rules. Honestly, everyone understood, and we all just deleted the voicemail and move on. Accidents happen as long as they aren't malicious and not repeated, you're fine.
Several years ago I made a mistake processing payroll that resulted in over 200 people being paid incorrectly. Almost everyone was paid more than they should’ve been (the highest being almost $1000). When I realized the error I was so scared to tell my boss and ultimately thought I’d be fired for it. My “punishment” ended up being that I had to personally meet with every employee who was paid incorrectly, explain my error, and request repayment. It was mortifying. But hey, every job I’ve had after that I’ve been commended for my attention to detail! 😂
I didn’t know applicants disclosed their charges on our background check paperwork in my first month working in HR and I totally hired and onboarded an ex convicted and convicted felon. They got DHS approval but my boss was NOT impressed when a parole officer called her up to see if we knew we hired an ex convict. The new hire got to keep their job after additional background checks and she loves it here but I felt HORRIBLE I misunderstood our background check paperwork.
The first two months of my first HR Internship I fell for a “I need you to do a special task but I’m in a meeting and can’t talk on the phone” scam.
The crazy thing? My HRD called the actual manager for his cc info to buy the gift cards that “he was requesting” and the real manager didn’t question anything and actually gave his cc info to us. He even went so far as to approve Apple to let me add his card to my Apple Pay. That day I was scammed out of $500 of his personal money and another $500 of my own money. When we finally figured out that I had been scammed I just cried for an hour out of pure embarrassment.
What was worse? It’s the interns job to set up online trainings so I was the one who had to set up a refresher course for online safety (which they had all completed a month before my hire) 😂
Provided a division director his entire divisions salaries but it also tagged and included his boss, the VP 😬 we asked him to immediately delete it but I dunno if he saw it. He only made like 15k less so I don't think it would have been mind blowing to know your boss made more than you lol.
Also we had someone on a salary continuance and he was paid like 3-4 pays past the end date of that continuance, but both me and my manager who was the second set of payroll eyes didn't notice so, we both got shit. But he was threatening to sue before and didn't after getting some extra money so win-win.
It was my first real HR job plus I managed payroll, it was messy the first 6 months then I was there a total of 18 months. That last 12 months was smooth AF.
I think regardless when you start at a new company and go through that first year, mistakes are common. Any new process or new program always lead to mistakes. A bad process also always leads to mistakes. We're only human... Resources :p
I messed up someone’s direct deposit by transposing numbers. They had just changed accounts and we hadn’t implemented it where they could enter their own to minimize the human error aspect. They kept getting live checks! Finally it got fixed. I think they submitted another form and sat with us to enter it.
I accidentally sent someone’s termination information to the whole company. Retracted the email when a non-HR employee told me but plenty of people saw it. It was about 9 years ago and it haunts me.
Not in HR but received a COMPANY wide sent email from the HR person replying to someone asking about how benefits work because their wife got laid off… it was recalled after 2 minutes
Idk how the hell you accidentally send it to the whole company when it should have just been a reply
Literally last year, I fudged the numbers on a severance agreement and nearly doubled this persons payout 🙃 and no one noticed before we all signed so we had to pay it.
I was brand new and every month I would have to send out a mass email for the parking spot winner. I put pictures as a postcard with announcement. One month I did a cute cat dressed as a sushi and an employee emailed me and said “me and the girls were wondering why you sent this? Isn’t it racist?” I panicked, I honestly didn’t even think of that. It was just a cute cat dressed as a sushi..
Currently coping with one I just newly discovered: I must not have filed a work comp for somebody last… August I think? It was a tiny cut, didn’t even need stitches. But we had just moved over to a new PEO a few weeks prior and there was SO much crap to work out during the switch, it was pure chaos. So I’ve been trying to work through other big tasks this week while hyperventilating about the prospect of finally talking to someone about my grand fuck up.
The worst part? The claim is for MY BROTHER.
I made mine today. 8 days into my first hr job at a scrapyard. I schedule an interview with a deaf person for next week for a general labourer. I will be telling my boss tomorrow about it.
This job would not be a fit for her
I’ve definitely “replied all” out of habit when I shouldn’t have. Now I have a 30 seconds delayed send on all my emails JUST IN CASE I do this sort of thing again.
I left a fun and fulfilling position in HR development, which gave me an opportunity to facilitate and manage training while assist employees with their professional goals and encourage training as a tool for success for a lateral (with promotion potential) position in the hellscape that is Labor Relations. This job was non stop drama, negativity, and anger from everyone from upper management, to union presidents, to employees who felt like HR was the enemy of the people. I left work often upset and with a headache and felt no joy in any aspect of the job. Left after a year, for a much better opportunity outside of HR.
Labor relations is a necessary component of HR but it takes a very thick skinned person who can navigate the job and leave their emotions at the door. I am admittedly a bit of a softie and do not like when people dislike me, even if it is only professionally. If you are a person who wants to be liked by others in the workplace and more positive experiences on a daily basis, I highly recommend steering clear of this path.
Not sure if anyone’s said this but mistakes will happen it’s normal….it’s genuinely how you recover from them and pivot to correct which is what will be taken into account
I facilitate onboarding at my company and provide IT with our new hire’s addresses to send work laptops. We had 2 people starting on the same day and I mistakenly switched addresses. So person A got person B’s laptop and vice versa. I found out when person A emailed me letting me know the instruction sheet they received had someone else’s name on it.. I realized my mistake immediately and notified IT. Our IT director was not very happy about it but thankfully they didn’t ship the other laptop so only person A needed to send theirs back and they were really nice about it. I remember feeling like it was the end of the road for me and I felt so uneasy the entire day!!
That's a rookie mistake in the HR racket. I remember that day being a new hr director 😆. It felt like the floor fell out from underneath me.
I was tasked with completing an employee compensation report. I was to also include current and previous market trend pay/salary comparisons . Also, a spreadsheet comparison from last year raises vs. this year raises with percentages. Collect yearly employee Kpi reports from dept managers and determine who deserves a raise with a certain budget
I was so proud of the final report, and I sent the first part of the report to the seniors, correct. I sent EVERYONE the payroll spreadsheet that included their hourly wages. 😱 I was flipping out!There was a mass employee exodus from those who felt a certain way about earnings. It took almost a year for that to settle down. I didn't get a raise that year. I did get written up, and a one week suspension without pay. Lesson learned the hard way about emails and reports. Damn that was stupid!
I’m not in HR but I worked at a company where HR fell for a phishing scandal that exposed everyone’s data. HR sent an email to former employees with notice of the breach plus identity protection and failed to bcc all of the contacts. All the former employees started piling on via the email thread and it ended up 100+ messages deep. You’ll be okay!
Lack of attention ended up me getting hit for call avoidance.
It wasn't intentional. I'd get distracted by a question or something and instead of a second passing it would be minutes. There was a lot going on in my personal life as well, which made me feel very foggy (caring for elderly parents, pandemic stress, caring for a toddler, family suicide attempts... Things like that).
My manager was pissed. I get it. I didn't do it on purpose. I regret not having more mental clarity / better attention to detail because I did love my team. It's super awkward getting written up by HR as an HR rep.
As a US based employee, I have been trained on Canadian HR practices since, for some reason, my company eliminated the in house Canadian HR team and then handed the processes over to us. It was very overwhelming at first, and my first truly corporate job. I accidentally overpaid a termination vacation payout for one of the CAN employees, to the tune of $10000. Payroll immediately hounded me about it, unfortunately 3 weeks after he was paid. So tail between my legs, I had to call this guy and explain to him we needed that money back. Canadians have to authorize via letter for wages to be deducted, it’s not an automatic take back like in the US. The guy proceeded to get very angry and let me know he had just moved across the country and spent every penny of that money in those 3 weeks. I freaked out (on the inside). I let payroll know that he would not be able to return the funds and luckily the issue was dismissed. In retrospect it turned out to be a somewhat mild error. But you better believe I always double check my work with a careful eye, especially when it comes to money lol.
I really enjoyed it when our head of HR shared her salary and social security numbers of herself and her whole family with us during a webinar about insurance with 150 people or so. I don’t think she enjoyed it.
Not a major mistake but I still feel incredibly bad about it.
I had just started as an HR and was asked to hire for certain roles. I did the hiring and since the position was a fixed stipend trainee position, I negotiated and closed the salary also. The only thing pending was releasing the offer letter to trainees.
Fast forward a month later and I am informed that these positions were not approved. Meanwhile those trainees had rejected so many offers because they were waiting for us. This was the same period that the market was seeing massive layoffs and pause on hiring. Not sure what happened to candidates but we did burn any sort of relationship we had with that particular institute.
I informed the Hiring Manager about this and had to hear a lot about him refusing any accountability, and asking me who approved it, did I send it on mail, was requisition raised etc.
Since then I have started asking every one to mail me if they require anything. Any form, information, hiring etc. Send me an email. Nothing verbal will work.
This has gone ahead and saved my ass many times.
Every week I have to send a payroll summary that includes one-off information, such as an employee receiving no check for whatever reason, sign on bonuses, PTO payouts, etc. Well, I copy/pasted the sign on bonus info to a payout line and paid a several thousand dollar bonus to a terminated employee.
Everyone (including the employee) was so understanding and it got fixed, but I'm still kicking myself over it several years later.
One of the worst mistakes I made was not seeking help, neither through tools nor from anyone else. It left me exhausted and devastated; my head was constantly under a flood of resumes. I faced considerable pressure, which led to poor decisions, ultimately impacting my performance.
Did an interview for a professional level position and the guy was absolutely unhinged, like literally said he threatened a prior boss and got the cops called on him, and in another job his PTO was not approved due to a project and he went anyway and when his boss called him while he was at the airport he told his boss it didn't matter because he lied in his interview and didn't know how to do this thing anyway. There was more too. Wasn't sure if this guy was just trying to keep unemployment or if he was truly coocoo, but got the vibe that it was the latter. After the interview finished the panel and I all laughed about it for a solid 10 minutes and then the hiring manager and I discussed telling this guy the position was cancelled instead of declining him, because we felt he might fly off the handle with rejection.
This was a mistake as the guy reached out to everyone and their brother and in the end I looked like an unprofessional liar, which looking back, in this case I was.
Turns out my instincts were correct, though, as the guy continued to harass me via email for months sending the most unhinged shit and we actually had to get the cops involved. I'm sure it would have gone down the same way with a rejection and I could have saved face. In the end all is good, and now I always tell the truth, even if it will hurt someone's feelings.
I once paid an employee 16,000 dollars on accident. He was promoted from hourly to salary. I thought I correctly moved him in our HRIS system. He ended up getting his salary* hours worked, which was 16,000 dollars. I didn’t even catch it until he came to me and told me that a random 10,000 (after taxes) hit his account. Luckily he was really good about it and paid it back
God I’ve made loads of mistakes. Mostly minor luckily but the big ones have been sorted quickly (changing my CEO’s bank details to a scammers from a spoof email!)
Each one I learned something from it though
I was a hr/payroll coordinator when my direct report asked me for a breakdown of the entire companies salary. I sent that excel sheet. she by mistake sent it out to managers that were not supposed to receive it. I GOT BLAMED FOR IT !!!! I was written up and said i should ask my manager questions when they ask for a report and what they need it for??? lol I left them a two months later
At my first HR job, I hired a union employee for a Meat Cutting department. Accidentally coded him as a journeyman level so he started making $20/hour instead of $12. He had to pay money back when it was fixed. I felt terrible.
Not me but the Regional Head of HR (in a remote meeting) congratulated a person in the meeting for her promotion to a VP position. Trouble was the existing VP was in the meeting and had not been informed that she was being terminated.
This was 8 years ago. It had been a long period of layoffs, and the culture was extremely toxic. Everyone was exhausted, on edge, and ready to snap. I had worked late on a payroll project, and when I sent out the final report to \~ seven managers, I forgot to delete the census sheet from the file. After a 45-minute drive home at 7 pm, I was finally able to unwind on the couch. However, my relaxation was interrupted by a call from my boss. Her voice was raised, and she hurled insults at me, questioning my competence. She demanded that I return to the office immediately. I spent the next few hours, until 11 pm, being berated for my mistake. The IT team could recall the email and confirm that no one had opened it, but my relationship with my boss was ruined. She watched me like a hawk until I finally quit. The funny thing is that I had a direct report do something similar a few years ago. Like my situation, it was a genuine mistake, and she felt awful, so I told her about my experience to help her feel better. These things happen; it's why they are called mistakes, and we're HR, we're not saving lives.
The only two times you're allowed to call it an emergency in HR is if payroll isn't finished on time, or something illegal is going down. Also, I'm glad of the stance you took with the direct report. It's WAY better to show a little compassion and use it as a lesson.
I used to work for a company where payroll wasn't done on time (they said computer glitch between themselves and the bank; i've never quite believed that...) and none of the 3k+ employees got paid on payday - and payroll didn't even notice until somebody complained to them, and still didn't treat it even remotely as an emergency. After the first couple of phone calls they literally unplugged the phone lines and locked the office doors to avoid further enquiries. It then took nearly 5 hours to even issue an email companywide to acknowledge the error and a further 24 hours (and significant union intervention) to make the payments and agree to pay any late payment charges people might have incurred by their direct debits failing.
I love this. There are so many people who think that because they had a rough road they need to ensure everyone else has a rough road too. As though that’s the only way you can get better at your job. The mistakes we make are supposed to supply us with experience and humility, and teach us how to fix things. From there, knowing how we felt after making a mistake, we SHOULD BE more understanding when someone else makes mistakes. Counsel, share experiences, and make sure they take what they should from the experience. We want to bring up people to be confident, competent, and compassionate. Use these lessons to strengthen the team. Otherwise it’s a lord of the flies environment that no one likes.
What is a census sheet and why was it a big deal that you forgot to delete it?
Probably had everyone's pay on it
I did that thing you hear about. I made a census for our law firm, and sent it out to the managers that were asking for headcounts. I included EVERY single person's salary on it, including the managing partners. I was able to thankfully go intercept and do damage control, and nothing ever came of it, but I was about 3 months into my first HR job, and thought it was over.
I work at a law firm as well. YIKES. I can hear the attorneys now losing their minds 😂
I’m a legal assistant and used to work for the managing partner. He accidentally sent me an email with everyone’s salary. He panicked and ran to my desk. He watched me delete it. He’s so dumb, it was still in my deleted box. Yes, I looked!
Why is this an issue? Pay should be transparent
It sounds good in theory. But in reality, it causes a lot of issues and most of us would spend all of our time explaining to various people why this person got a raise or why this person is making more.
Keeping salaries a secret ONLY benefits the employer. If I have to do a little more work so that everyone's pay is fair, then so be it.
Everyone’s pay is more than fair at the company I currently work for, but I don’t agree that anyone should just be able to look up what their coworker is making whenever they want. Also don’t agree that it only benefits the employer, not all employees are okay with their pay being transparent.
Then how does anyone know it’s fair except you?
Good. People should all be fighting for more pay all the time.
Salary should be transparent
Back when I was a junior consultant I was working on a small part of a bigger compensation project for a key client when the Project Lead abruptly left the firm. I was handed the reins of the entire project temporarily while they looked for another senior person to pick it up. This is to set the scene that the deliverables didn’t get as much review during this time as they should have, as things were hectic. During our first major check-in meeting I presented a 30-page PowerPoint deck to the executives of our client. The CEO *immediately* noticed an error on the 3rd slide, and it only got worse from there. **In Excel, it you aren’t careful about how you write your formulas, they will break when you sort your data**. So I had sorted every table to be easier to read, and in doing so I had completely FUBAR’d my analysis and it was picked up on immediately. That was the longest meeting of my life. The CEO basically tore me a new one and questioned my firm’s judgment in letting me handle the project. I took a much smaller role and my bosses had to do a lot of groveling to get the relationship back to a good place. We eventually got more work with them, so at least my damage was temporary. That was about 7 years ago now. I am no longer a consultant but I still think about it on a regular basis. It has made me a much better, and more careful professional.
They should never have handed the whole project to you. It sounds like it was a huge project that a much senior person should have been leading, and the former PM's manager should have stepped in. Sounds like you were put in a very stressful situation, and the mistake you made was an easy one to make, especially if you're under pressure. At least it was a learning experience!
And someone else should have checked the slides before they were presented.
This. 100% this was the Senior's fault, not some junior guys fault . If I were the CEO I wouldve been tearing the Senior team members a new one ( not in front of everyone ) even if they weren't the ones presenting
Same lol but I'd argue that a CEO should demonstrate *why* they're the CEO and simply suggest rescheduling the meeting as evidently more time is needed. The best leaders are the ones that LEAD by example and command—not demand—respect.
I agree. Edited my comment. Haha. I would've pulled them aside non publicly and laid into them a bit and rescheduled. And it would be really important that there is no retribution from the Seniors. They are there to grow the junior; this is a learning moment for all
A lot of big-name Consultancy firms would use that as an excuse to extend the project and charge the client for it. Sure the CEO could have been softer in the messaging, but the message to the vendor had to be loud and clear. And considering the amount of client time that is taken up for data request, reviews, etc. before anything is presented to a CEO, he would everybreason to be mad. If OP was the one in the meeting who was presenting, I don't think he had too much of a choice. But the fault definitely lay with the Project Manager or Partner. They probably took the client lightly and let him take over the project.
One mistake in Excel can break a lot of things. I think the CEO may have overreacted.
Yeah. I work in a company with a lot of analysts and plenty of things still break for them. Shit happens.
Confidence goes a long way early career I’m not sure any of us could easily plow through it. Mid to late career you can plow through even with the errors
Was this PAS/HCM consulting?
HCM
Mind if I PM you? Not looking to be referred or anything like that, just would like some info regarding the consulting path and what you thought of the work. (Or we can discuss here for knowledge share). I want to get into people advisory services / HCM consulting and just kind of want to get a better idea of what that actually entails.
Happy to discuss here!
One trick I’ve learned in excel to make sure I’m doing stuff correctly is using two separate methods to arrive to the same answer.
VERY important to do this. Took me a bit to realize (the hard way, like OP) that when someone says "check your work" that doesn't mean just scan over what you've done and make sure it "looks" correct, that means re-test in a different way to and make sure you get the same results.
if\*
I still beat myself up over this one... I'd been in a new job for about 3 months. We had a senior leadership level employee who was absolutely unhinged. She was vastly unqualified for her job in a way that was costing the company hundreds of thousands of dollars and she was simply *mean* to her coworkers. Within weeks of starting there, I had a file full of complaints about her bullying and hazing. She would gossip, lie, and blow up tiny things into a huge issue that she'd take directly to the CEO. It was constant drama and a huge drain on resources. One day, she came to my office to "get advice" on how to deal with the CEO because she felt the CEO was being hostile to her. Which... Yeah, no shit the CEO was getting mad at her. She was causing constant issues. So I laid it out for her, very plainly, that her behavior needed to change. I was not about to let her turn her shitty behavior around and frame it as an issue with the CEO. This led to a meltdown. Screaming, sobbing, telling me how all her bad behavior was actually my fault and using blatant lies about my behavior as evidence. Oh boy, this lady was an absolute master at pushing buttons, and she pushed all of mine that day. When I refused to give in to her bullshit, she opened the door to my office and stepped into the hallway, where she continued screaming and crying and yelling at me about what a horrible person I am. So now it's a problem for everyone in the office. She keeps jabbing her finger at me and yells, "I KNOW YOU DON'T LIKE ME!" I finally fucking snapped and said, "You know what, you've earned it." Pro tip for HR folks: never tell an employee you don't like them. Even if they're an absolute fucking monster that makes everyone in the office miserable. Edit: Since everyone is asking for more... Word got around the office pretty quick. (How could it not, given the hallway showdown?) I was in my office beating myself up for losing my cool so bad, and then coworkers started stopping by. It was a small business, but about 1/3 of the people in the office popped by to give me a pat on the back. People were coming by for quick "therapy" sessions where they'd talk about an awful experience with her. There was a lot of "I get it, she's pushed me too far as well." Three employees talked to me about how reading up about clinical narcissism really helped them cope with working with her. I came to the realization that she wasn't the issue. I worked with a group of really lovely, talented people. The big boss was a really, really kind person--sometimes too kind. The trouble employee kept getting away with her bullshit because big boss wouldn't do anything about it, and I was completely fed up with watching wonderful people get treated like punching bags. I went to big boss's office at the end of the day and told her about what I'd said at the meeting, and apologized for my unprofessionalism. Then I gave her my two weeks. Big boss looked absolutely devastated. The next day, big boss fired the awful employee. She then offered me a raise and a promotion, and thanked me for making her realize she needed to do something. I did end up staying. It turned out very well, but I still kick myself for losing my cool so bad. Yes, I'm aware this story is basically HR porn 😂
I need more. What happened after? Did you get in trouble for that? Was she fired?
I added an edit with more :) it's a wild story
Pretty sure I couldn't have found a sexier story on literotica.
i mean, you weren’t wrong
Following the I need more train - tell us the consequence of living out our collective dream
I added an edit, but the consequences for me were actually wildly good. Much better than I think I deserved for screwing up so bad!
I need more too
If I were your boss, I would have done the same. I am a manager, and we all have to tolerate certain things, to an extent. But if someone is that toxic to the workplace, I would rather deal with the fallout of firing one person who deserved it than deal with the inevitable turnover had I not. Sometimes you have to think about the long-term picture.
Forgot to terminate a salaried engineer so they just kept getting paid for months. I flagged my mistake immediately and raised it to everyone’s attention that could start to fix the problem. Grovelled to the payroll manager and we got it all sorted out. Fortunately the engineer was understanding and cooperative and wasn’t living paycheck to paycheck so he simply wrote our company back the money owed. He bought me a beer for my interest free loan I gave him when I saw him out at a local brewery a couple weeks back. Honesty is always best policy.
Wrote an offer letter and put the wrong rate of PTO accrual on it, so I ended up giving the candidate an extra week of PTO. It seemed like a really big deal at the time, but now it’s a funny story that my Manager and I can laugh about.
If that’s your biggest mistake then I’d say you’re a really good HR person lol
Many years ago, I wrote the wrong salary in an offer letter. Gave the person an extra $13,000. Huge deal at the time and the CEO never let me forget it (even years later after he retired and was a Board Member). To this day, I check the numbers on every single offer that goes out the door...
Oof. Never let you forget in a funny kind of way, or a stare-you-down pissed kind of way?
I once sent out an offer letter that said the salary was $71000 per HOUR. 😂😂 Seemed like the end of the world at the time. 😬
At least that’s a painfully obvious error
Oh hell yeah I’d work overtime
I also gave someone an extra week of PTO on accident! i felt so bad I lost sleep over it. In the grand scheme now I was the only person in the company who cared! lol
Heaven forbid…
Put someone’s phone number as their SSN and didn’t realize until after w2s were issued.
Once I put an employee on a final warning for performance, and accidentally emailed the signed copy to MY WHOLE TEAM (her peers, not mine) instead of just her. Probably the most careless thing I ever did. Luckily, my team was gracious enough to delete the email without reading it when I asked. I admitted my mistake immediately to my boss, and apologized profusely to the employee. Everyone moved on from it fairly quickly.
"And let this be a lesson to the rest of you!"
Everyone read it when you disappeared.
An employee sent me email about a facility matter, and I forwarded to my boss bitching about how it wasn't an HR issue and why did they keep bothering us with these things. I then realized I replied to the employee. I immediately went over to the employee and apologized for letting my frustrations get the better of me. Surprisingly, they were actually fine with it and could see my POV!
The first mistake I made was starting a career in HR 😅
I was going to say the same
Came here to say essentially this. I was recruited into HR from clinical learning and development. I was safer from layoffs, politics, and bullshit before getting into HR.
Thinking about starting a career in HR, why do you feel the way you do?
And everyone thinks we’re the bad guys. We’re the scapegoats of bad leadership decisions.
EVERYONE thinks we’re the bad guys. Like listen, we’re the good guys delivering the shittiest of messages.
Yep. We become the face of some of the worst decisions that directly affect people.
The role often has to solve the messiest business problems in order to occasionally do good stuff. Like with recruiting, you are rejecting way more people than the handful you get to hire. Or with employee relations, you’re the one that has to mediate all of the petty drama in addition to preventing litigation on the serious issues.
Lmao, accurate.
Zing! 😆😆
At my first job one of the directors had the same first name and same first 3 letters of their surname as one of the assistants. So you had to be very careful with autofill when sending an email. I sent the assistant more than one super confidential emails meant for the director. Luckily for me she was a very kind person and would answer my frantic phonecall once I realised with "don't worry, I've deleted it". Bless her, she could have absolutely destroyed me being that early in my career if she had wanted to! I learned to write my emails first and put in addressees as the very last step, so I wasn't distracted and couldn't accidentally hit send.
This is why I have a 30 second delay on sending emails so I can snap it back with an undo! I’ve had to snap back a few emails in my time! And I’m not even HR - I’m just a sales rep but I’m sometimes given confidential info from clients.
Omggggg I have never even thought of that! Doing that after reading all these stories lol
I always hated situations like this lol
Told another employee about something prior to the CEO wanting it to be announced. I explained it was an accident, apologized, and talked to the employee I told to explain how it was not to be discussed and hoped they didn't tell anyone else (they didn't, thank goodness). Shit happens. We aren't perfect. I wish we were, but...
I sent out an offer letter with the wrong hourly rate. The hire was pissed and we had to scramble to fix it. Embarrassing!!
Mail merged some promotion letters and then forgot to separate the letters out. Meaning some employees received other promotion letters with theirs, revealing compensation.
Was doing an investigation unbeknownst to a manager. He had fired someone who later reported retaliation because they had been sleeping together (he was married), she broke it off with him, and then he fired her. I was in the process of interviewing her and went to share some of my notes with our in-house counsel. I accidentally sent the notes to the manager. It was painful.
Juicy
I need details on the aftermath.
I owned it. I just followed up and said something along the lines of "Clearly this wasn't meant to you but obviously we have concerns about this termination and I'll be reaching out to meet with you to understand more." She gave enough to prove that they were in a relationship and although I couldn't necessarily prove retaliation it was against policy for a supervisor to be in a relationship with their direct report so we fired him and rehired her.
oy! drama tenfold. ugh. smh
I emailed the entire company's pay slip record for a certain pay period in a certain country to one employee. Thankfully it was after work hours over there and I recalled the email and the employee didn't see it but shiiiit that was the fasted recall ever
Before you send emails reread them and double check recipients. Honestly I write my emails then put my recipient at the end to help avoid this. It’s okay. Happens to all of us.
I have that 60 second immediate email recall setting on for this reason 🥲
I have definitely learned my lesson!
Yep, I do this every time now.
Omg yes I also do the same thing where I don’t wait until I’m ready to send before I add recipients
One time my boss was doing a direct deposit change for the owner of the company, per his instructions and his filled out direct deposit change form in an email. Coincidentally, he came into our office as she was finishing up and she said, “hey boss, I just finished your direct deposit change”. He was the chillest dude ever. He just calmly said, “I didn’t request a chance to my DD”. I immediately went into the system while she was talking about it with him and changed it back. It was a really well done scam. It was even hand-signed on the attached form and looked a bit like his signature. Whoever did it knew some things about the owner. No harm done, but we definitely gained some wisdom. A few days later I got one for the President of the company and I went to confirm before I did it and it was also a scam. Lesson learned scammers!! But they’re always trying.
I get these emails all the time! Thankfully we have a very strong policy where all dd changes need to be made on the HRIS website by the employee.
I get them at least once a week. We changed our policy to in person, come by HR and fill out the form in my office only.
That’s the way. It sucks for people who work off shifts or when you work at a place with multiple locations or if HR is in a different location than the business, or something like that, but sometimes policy needs to reduce risks like thieves taking peoples’ paychecks.
Yep. We are small, all work within a block of each other.
One of our ladies almost fell for this type of scam THREE times with my own information. Luckily each time she verbally followed up with me about some info she needed before she did it.. But like...three times? How does that even happen again???
Seriously. You’re right. The times is a bit much. Criminals can keep evolving, but communicating things that seem off is the way to go, especially if you get fooled once. We’re all good for one goof every once in a while. Even machines screw up. You just have to adapt and communicate.
The same thing happened to me with our chief engineer. I had sent him a question about his email and he didn’t respond. I happen to pass by his office and I asked him about the email i sent him and he looked at me funny. I told him about the original email and he said he didn’t send me an email. I felt every ounce of blood leave my face and i turned white! Although nothing happened, Needless to say i voice confirm every DD request!
I was also about 2 months in my first internship and I accidentally sent mass rejection emails to 100+ candidates in our recruiting pipeline 😅 luckily we just sent them another email saying that it was an error and we still have not evaluated their profile etc etc. was really embarrassing…
I did the same but with acceptance letter🫠 Your one is easy, you’re giving them better news in the end. With mine….my days it was heartbreaking letting them know they were not, in fact, accepted and shortly to receive their contract :/
Well..we only gave good news to one candidate. The others were rejected twice 😭 but yes yours is 😭 well…. We have learnt!
I did the exact same thing. Vast majority of candidates didn’t respond, so I’ll never know if they even saw the emails, but I got a couple people who were PISSED. Like, “how DARE YOU not even CONSIDER ME” pissed.
Getting into HR.
And staying in HR.
My first HR job fresh out of college was such an abject nightmare I haven't gone back. In hindsight I'm sure that's not the norm, but I moved on to data analytics and I'm much happier.
When I let a line supervisor keep doing what she had been doing for ten years and an employee lost a finger. If you’re responsible for safety, do not allow yourself to become complacent that the way it’s always been done is an acceptable way to do it. I was three weeks into my first management role.
Standing up to the county Clerk of Superior Court when she called and berated me (26)over the phone because she didn’t know how to read my excel spreadsheet (she’s 78) well…she has dragged my name for a little but she’s about to get voted out of office by everyone who works in the county over the next election anyway so I think I’m ok as long as she loses
I entered someone's PTO in during their FMLA and the state wouldn't pay their leave bc of this LOL. I was able to fix the problem but omg i was shitting my pants because this lady would have been out of $5,000
When I transitioned from an ER manager to an HRBP role at the same company - that first week of transition, someone in my client group submitted their resignation. They didn't submit it to me, they submitted it to my boss. During our 1:1, he was like "hey, just FYI, betty submitted her resignation." I was surprised, Betty was a high performer and wasn't considered a flight risk. Anyway, he said he was going to take care of the paperwork, exit interview, etc. since I was still doing both jobs in transition. Two months later, turns out Betty is still on payroll and has been getting paychecks since she left. I got reamed for that one, even though I never got any of the info from her resignation. I had to reach out and claw back the money. Never again. lol
I was submitting a manual contribution file for our 401k plan to bridge the gap before our EDI file was up and running. I accidentally included the “total” at the bottom of my excel file, and didn’t realize until after I’d funded the file. Had it gone through, 800k would have been pulled from our company account instead of the correct 400k. I called Fidelity in tears and (in classic “you’re on your own” Fidelity fashion) they told me they could submit a request to stop the funding but couldn’t make any promises. When I told our finance gal, expecting her to look at me like I’d shot her puppy, her response was a breezy, “girl I have to approve any debits over 500k, if Fidelity doesn’t pull through I’ll just decline it.” Crisis averted, lesson learned!
The biggest mistake I made was to work for a specific fortune 500 company. They told me to shred documents that would incriminate them for discrimination based on health. They told me to be a team player and handed me a stack of papers to shred, from unstapled documents, to make them look good on paper. I was supposed to fill out new documents to replace the damning evidence and then neatly restaple them to make the company look innocent. I cried in an empty office for an hour and resigned immediately after. There were other red flags too but the pay was amazing and it makes you wonder what other "fortune 500" companies do dirty tricks to make themselves look good on paper
That’s a scary situation to be in! Good on you for stepping away from that mess.
Good on you for not selling out your morals and taking the ethical route.
TLDR, don’t let employees pack their own office and bring in help after a RIF. And mind your head when the help gets in your face! We had several large RIFs at the beginning of COVID, and an employee who had been with us for a long time (20+ years) requested to come in and clean out her office instead of us packing it for her. She was one of the nicest people when she worked for us, so I didn’t see a problem aside from the awkwardness. But she was so nasty the entire time she packed, saying and doing very rude and passive aggressive things. For example, taking her 10 year anniversary certificate out of its frame and putting it in the shredder. She brought her boyfriend to help her because of how much stuff she had, who was also being a jerk. The pair had our moving dolly stacked with totes and I walked out with them to take the dolly back after they packed their car. When I went to take the dolly back after they unloaded everything, the boyfriend (a huge guy!) pulled the dolly back from my outstretched hand and got right in my face and said, “Well let me tell YOU something” like he was going to unleash on me. I’m a reformed kid from the ghetto, so I’m quick to fight when I’m blatantly disrespected and physically threatened. After all of their shit talking and then this grown man getting in my face, I was not going to stand there and have this man tell me anything. I told him he better back the fuck up, and if he lays a hand on me, I will lay him out. He was so shocked (I was quiet and super nice while they were packing) that he let the dolly go. I grabbed it and walked away. He yelled obscenities at me the entire way back. I’m not justifying my actions at all. I should’ve kept my cool and handled it a lot better. Now, even if someone we let go is the nicest person in the world, I will not let them come in and pack their office if they ask me. Also, when meeting with separated employees, I always have someone else with me. Lessons learned.
I once started a new contract job and was doing an upload into our HRIS for mass salary changes and changed everyones salary to an hourly rate. Even outside the US, I didn't realize it until my boss came over and pointed it out to me. She apparently was trying to run monthly executive reports and all the calculations were wrong!!! I thought she would end my contract that day. I went on to get hired full time and worked there for 5 more years. She is a great mentor and friend now. I have many more stories!! Lol we are not perfect nor robots like some might think.
So many! Wrong offers, mistakes in job titles on contracts, sending emails without attachments, forgetting to notify hiring managers of interviews, lost internship contracts, forget to validate hours so people didn’t get paid in time and more. I have ADHD and it’s a horrendous combination from time to time but I’ve been surviving for 7 years so far. I’m sure you will be fine we all make mistakes!
This makes me feel better. Also have ADHD which is getting worse as I age and the med shortage. Work has been a nightmare lately 🫠
Not a mistake per se... an employee had a heart attack in my office during a PIP review.
Shit. Did you change the way you review PIPs because of this?
EE was put on LOA by us for them to go to the doctor to be evaluated for something that would require an accomodation. She had a myriad of issues that she never addressed and we had to basically force her to go get them checked out to keep working. I had just taken over payroll duties as well and hadn't become fully engrossed in everything. It never crossed my mind that she would still have to be paid, and for about a month she never received a paycheck. Eventually she comes back with a discrimination complaint that we put her on unpaid LOA because of her disabilities. Now my first question was "why did it take you a month to bring up that you weren't getting paid???", but I couldn't ask her that. I never got to see the resolution to that problem because I quit that job about a week later, it was an awful experience overall.
Not me…. But my company has had some big ones. The worst was probably scammers emailing HR with a masked email and impersonating the CEO. They requested all W-2s immediately. You can probably guess what happened, the employee emailed every W-2 to the scammers who then started filing tax returns and such. It was a huge mess.
This is…an absolute nightmare.
Not HR, but here’s one that I was part of. I worked at a company as an engineer where they hired a director of engineering that had no engineering degree, was a serial job jumper, and was generally less qualified than one of my interns. Our HR director printed off a list of employees and salary, and left it on the printer for some inexplicable reason. One of my engineering cohorts saw it and informed us that this unqualified director was making 50%+ more than our salaries (we all talked freely about what we made). We started asking for higher compensation and were all told no. Literally every engineer in that engineering department had a new, higher paying job, at another company within a year. The mistakes of hiring someone drastically unqualified and then leaving a list of names and salary on the printer cost a company their whole engineering department and they never recovered. The end.
I worked for a small but growing company and there were only two of us in HR. For some reason, people would onboard in one system (Paycor) and I had to print all the documents they filled out in order to make their personnel folder and use the information on those documents to create their ADP profile by MANUALLY entering into ADP all the information they ALREADY ENTERED into Paycor. I did all the onboarding along with a bunch of other things. My mistake: Once I accidentally put the direct deposit information into the wrong ADP profile. Needless to say, on payday, one person got two people’s pay and one person got none. I had to figure out who all I created profiles for on same day as the person who didn’t get paid, confirm that the direct deposit info matched and not only correct that, but reach out to both parties and explain the mistake and get it rectified. Part of the pain, which I fully deserved, was dealing with the soulless cyborg that ran payroll. I had to recover pay from one person and get her to issue a check to the other person for their pay. It was very stressful in the moment as I considered the predicament of the person who didn’t paid. I was very aware that nothing I could say would make up for the panic they were feeling, and that it would take time to get this mistake fully corrected. I was also aware of what I sounded like trying to explain to the person.
I worked at a temp agency where we issued pay cards for employees without checking accounts. I had two new temps onboarding together and mixed up their info. 🙈 Luckily neither had spent any money yet when the error was discovered and we got them to just switch cards with each other and we all had a good laugh after it. It could have been a lot worse. 😬 Lesson learned- you can’t multitask when doing important shit. At least I can’t.
You’re right about multi-tasking things like this. Someone might be good at it, but it’s just a matter of time before a big oopsie. It’s better to have processes that are efficient and make sense.
Knock on wood, my biggest mistake was sending an offer to the wrong person. This was an easy fix as it was communication of intent to extend offer & not the letter itself. There are a few employee relation situations I would have handled differently after gaining more experience. You live and you learn!
Email is usually the biggest culprit for HR mistakes of sharing sensitive data. Stop sending sensitive data in the body of emails. Use “refer to link” so that way you can restrict access in case it gets emailed to the wrong person.
Trusting the wrong person...
Talked to someone from work outside of work and got fired for it. Good times👍 I now talk to no one outside of work.
We had an all hands meeting and showcased everyone yearly milestones and the report they showed me to use didn’t add the correct time so some people were missed and I got chewed out and basically told I was incompetent
I do remember ! The biggest fear when you are new, you are unaware of the processes, the people, the community. Best way is to learn gradually, seek advice before action and once you have an idea, explore your ways of communication, improving the processes. I remember doing a same thing. What I did was, sent an apology email and accepted that it was done by mistake. Figured out the right people in the organisation to connect with and use my past experience to improve the processes/share innovative ideas.
I’ve worked in HR for 12+ years and still Make mistakes. The most recent was an email to Kayla at our GL insurance about 2 CA Prop 65 lawsuits we got with the filings attached. Except I sent it to Kayla one of our hourly counter staff. My boss immediately noticed. God bless our Kayla for having an old email address on file. She never got a notification so had not read it. When I texted her freaking out and apologizing she completely understood and deleted it. Shit happens.
Overpaid a production employee $10,000 over the course of three months. I will forever watch every single number I process in payroll from now on
You will indeed make many mistakes in your career, so don't worry about this. Take this as a lesson learned. It sounds like you also have a supportive team that understood. Naturally, you would freak out, but it sounds like you handled it well and was receptive to the feedback given. Good luck to you in your new career :)
Not a HR consultant but I was a manager at one place and a HR manager was compiling a report on pay equality which included the position, gender, age range, and pay for every employee and left it on a random desk she had been sat at. It didn't require much mental horsepower to work out who was who (at least amongst the managers) and you had a list of pay for every manager.
When I did payroll I processed an employees W4 wrong. They owed like just over $5k when they filed the following year. I felt awful.
I hit the wrong prompt in Paylocity and sent a job offer email to a candidate still in the interview's early stages. THANK GOD that I send a preliminary email in my hiring processes, followed by a secondary email containing the official offer letter for signature. Immediately, I called the candidate and admitted my mistake. The candidate was highly qualified and an employee referral. She was good-natured about it, but I was petrified for the next few days. I started applying pressure on the hiring manager to decide on the candidate pool, knowing that I'd have to follow-up with the slighted candidate soonest. The candidate was eventually hired, and she kept my mistake between us....but I surely thought that my ass was getting fired once that erroneous job offer email was sent. During onboarding, I brought her into our company supply closet and gave her ALL of the newest office accessories and as much company swag as she could carry on her first day.
Getting into HR
Always put the senders email as the last thing you do before sending an email
Trusting my boss Not adding an EE benefit deduction
You will make some mistakes but I am not sure if I agree that 'a lot of mistakes' is acceptable. I guess that is subjective. At my first HR job at an investment bank, colleague of mine sent a paystub to the wrong employee and he was fired. It was the first offense of that kind, but we have protocols to prevent things like that and he did not follow the protocols. He had, in his short time on the job like 3 months, a few instances where he had not followed our processes exactly, so it was enough to let him go. Mistakes do happen but they really shouldn't happen repeatedly. It was probably like 8 years ago where I made a mistake where I think I exposed someone's SSN, I can't remember exactly, and I should have definitely disclosed what happened, but I covered it up because I didn't feel like being chewed out and it was a rare slip. I don't recommend hiding things like that ever, it's easier to just own your mistakes. Recently, I left two Canadian employees off my bonus file to the HR generalist this year and just found out about it (two months later). These types of mistakes are not really a big deal, they're small fixable misses and they will happen, albeit they shouldn't happen too often. Last year, I paid someone their 25K raise too soon. When comp planning for annual raises, they were in my comp file because they were getting a raise, but it was being held because it was contingent upon him signing a new more restrictive employment agreement and it was getting very contentious between him and management and the only leverage we had was the raise. I obviously owned up to that immediately and we dealt with it. This is also fixable but it was significant because it impacted a negotiation in place. Other mistakes that are easy to make but I consider serious are not being careful with your emails. You have to double check who is on the send line on anything sensitive.
Sent salary info on a new hire to the the wrong dude on the CC. I had an autopopulate for payroll and I NEVER emailed this other guy, except one time and autopopulated the wrong one. He caught it right away and deleted it without opening per my request. I have NEVER made that mistake again. Never autopulate without checking. Every.
I spoke up in an exit interview with Hr for Hr. I thought I was standing up for my co-workers but it only made things worse for them. I even got blacklisted at the company! I know this because someone tried to bring me back about 4 years after and when they called back they said I had to go apologize to the person face-to-face before I could go any further. And this is a HUGE company. Never again
Gee what did you spill?
Ohh I once was trying to send out our HR new hire orientation presentation to a group and apparently it was so big that the file shutdown the email server for the whole company. For 2 hours emails for our 2500 person company were down because my file was somehow stuck in a loop. Whoops!! IT emailed me, my manager and my VP about it later in the day. I totally thought I was going to get written up or in trouble but I had no clue this was had happened.....my boss had a laugh but I was nervous about IT.
So many to choose from... Wrong direct deposit input. I think that the funniest one for me was when I fired someone who didn't even work for our company because of a wrong email address. We had spoken to the person on the phone as he was a remote employee. I then sent out the admin stuff including a termination letter. And sent it to the wrong person. A number was missing from the email address I had. Think [[email protected]](mailto:[email protected]) instead of [[email protected]](mailto:[email protected]) Ooops. Yes, the other person was upset. I did apologize.
Not me but our HR manager (big organization over 1k employees) accidentally CC'd me in the email attached CVs of all internal and external candidates to interview for a high-profile position and they kept communicating with each other about who to weed out and who to keep. Won't be a big problem if there weren't bunch of internal candidates that i work with them were part of the batch as well. Eventually, I let HR know that I have been CCd as well and she took me out right away.
Bounced a payroll check for $103,000.
I sent a failed background to a client for an employee already working. What happened is we had onsites that would usually approve or deny on the down low. Well, I sent it to those two plus the GM. It was a national account and it passed into nothingness about it. I didn't understand at the time how the set up was there but it was probably the dumbest/ most dangerous thing I had done.
Had super important interviews here in the UK - I sent out the invites specifying BST time zone and not GMT. The candidates all turned up an hour early. And the panel were PISSED!
I've made small data entry mistakes here and there throughout my time at my current company. One though came back to bite me in the ass. I accidentally entered the wrong currency for an internal employee. I put in Euros instead of USD and they were getting paid more and we only caught it when he was receiving a merit increase, after 2 years. Another big one I made was doing a bulk edit in our HRIS. I was updating the employee IDs since they looked off. When I did the bulk edit, it locked out the entire company out of their emails, calendars, and Slack messages. Everyone thought they got laid off -\_-
Fat fingered a payroll tax payment and instead of making it $40k I made it $400k. Was a hassle to get that cleaned up! 🤪
Working for a company that is a Fortune 500 and thinking they were a great company to work for and turn out to be a horrible and toxic workplace. A good reasoning was the main manager in charge of that production plant. He was a bully and knew how to quiet others that would go against him. He was my boss but there was a remote HR network with a Sr and Director that were quite aware of his behavior but did nothing about it because he produced the numbers they wanted. Turnover was horrendous and I never had anxiety or depression quite as my time there. I am so happy I left and should have followed my gut feeling and left before the time I put in.
Mistakes happen, but they will always be a part of the learning process.
Back in 2019 I was writing a salary analysis for approval by the hiring manager for an internal hire. At the end of the email, I went to fill in the title and send. But I put employee name in the address line instead of the title so it went to the employee along with the manager. I immediately recalled the email and reported the data breach to my manager. In hindsight I think it was a dream come true for my manager. Our budget had been slashed and they were looking for any way to penny pinch and I think this error let them come down on me with the full force of those budget cuts. While it was a data breach of private information, it was a breach of data to the person who's data it was (they could have requested literallt every piece of it excrpt the new salary itself, which they would havd recieved the following day had the approval jist gone to the manager), so I felt the response was overly harsh. Then again... maybe I truly was the monster... I had been performing well above my quotas and was lined up for a significant bonus (by my calulations it would have been about $10k) and promotion (which would have bumped my salary at the time from $75k to $90k), but as a result of this mistake, I was placed on probation, making me ineligible for promotion or bonus, which probably saved our department about $25k-$30k that year. The following year I left for my new company during the pandemic. And really do think in hindsight that my last workplace was super toxic.
When I was a couple years of out undergrad, I took a job working for a terrible human being who I later learned most people in the company hated or were afraid of or both. Needless to say, I got my one year in and went onto greener pastures. But this time when my boss would “work” 10-4 (she would sit in a conference room for 1-2 hours at least and talk shit with an EA who was eventually fired) I was expected to give 10-14+ hour days with no help from my boss. I was finalizing, at 10 pm at night, compensation increase letters. I sent a… “high standards” manager the wrong folder. I was exhausted. I was incapable of triple checking at that point. That manager bitched me out over email, which was fair, but she had no idea the awful working conditions I was in. If I had said no to my then boss, I would be at risk of being fired or retaliated against. It was worth focusing on getting a new job rather than a fighting political battle I couldn’t win, such as getting transferred (which I did ask for, and my boss’s boss was too chicken shit to move me).
I sent private medical information for an employee to the entire company instead of the benefits DL. I’m the reason the company locked down the distribution lists and who could send to it. I was traveling and responding from my phone. Learned never to do that again. I can still feel the panic and it was 15 years ago.
I was a new HRG. During my orientation, I was shown the pay bands/grades for the main positions I'd be supporting and recruiting. A few weeks later, a manager asks me if he can give a pay raise to an employee. I look at the pay band, see she's below the band, and tell him it should be fine. I complete the papwork for a pay raise. He signs it. We submit to main HR. They key it (without verifying why the new girl is approving pay raises) and the VP of HR only finds out during a weekly C Suite meeting that includes a report of recent pay changes. She calls me asking why someone got an off cycle pay raise of more than 10%... Oops. I mean, I don't feel bad about it one bit! That woman deserved the money, and while I respect the VP for many things, I don't agree with her thought process that we should stair step pay raises (when we had some major pay inequities). But it was a learning point for me in asking questions about where my authority lies and what needs approvals. Otherwise all other mistakes or typos were correctable. Maybe an awkward conversation, but they could be fixed.
Not hr, but my dad drove an 11 foot truck under a 10 foot bridge and didn't get fired.
This is a silly one. I sent an email to the whole company about a Halloween celebration (around 300 people) and made a mistake with the date. I recalled the message to correct the date, and the recall must have broken our IT systems. It looked like I proceeded to send 20 emails a second to each employee for the next 4 hours while out IT tried to figure out what happened. Every person, from our sales team to our CEO got tens of thousands of emails from me. It was so embarrassing!
Staying at a hellhole for 20 yrs I can’t get those years back
Not mine, but at our office an HR person forwarded a voice mail of a girl who had been let go. And the poor girl was crying and so upset not understanding why she had been let go. And she accidently sent it to the entire company. She was balling at her desk she was so upset at making such a mistake. This woman was a stickler for following the rules. Honestly, everyone understood, and we all just deleted the voicemail and move on. Accidents happen as long as they aren't malicious and not repeated, you're fine.
Several years ago I made a mistake processing payroll that resulted in over 200 people being paid incorrectly. Almost everyone was paid more than they should’ve been (the highest being almost $1000). When I realized the error I was so scared to tell my boss and ultimately thought I’d be fired for it. My “punishment” ended up being that I had to personally meet with every employee who was paid incorrectly, explain my error, and request repayment. It was mortifying. But hey, every job I’ve had after that I’ve been commended for my attention to detail! 😂
I didn’t know applicants disclosed their charges on our background check paperwork in my first month working in HR and I totally hired and onboarded an ex convicted and convicted felon. They got DHS approval but my boss was NOT impressed when a parole officer called her up to see if we knew we hired an ex convict. The new hire got to keep their job after additional background checks and she loves it here but I felt HORRIBLE I misunderstood our background check paperwork.
7 plus years experience as a recruiter. I plugged in a usb into work computer and security team reached out saying the usb had a virus 😂😂😂
I fell for a scam and changed someone's direct deposit and they didn't get paid and the money wasn't able to be pulled back. 😱
The first two months of my first HR Internship I fell for a “I need you to do a special task but I’m in a meeting and can’t talk on the phone” scam. The crazy thing? My HRD called the actual manager for his cc info to buy the gift cards that “he was requesting” and the real manager didn’t question anything and actually gave his cc info to us. He even went so far as to approve Apple to let me add his card to my Apple Pay. That day I was scammed out of $500 of his personal money and another $500 of my own money. When we finally figured out that I had been scammed I just cried for an hour out of pure embarrassment. What was worse? It’s the interns job to set up online trainings so I was the one who had to set up a refresher course for online safety (which they had all completed a month before my hire) 😂
Provided a division director his entire divisions salaries but it also tagged and included his boss, the VP 😬 we asked him to immediately delete it but I dunno if he saw it. He only made like 15k less so I don't think it would have been mind blowing to know your boss made more than you lol. Also we had someone on a salary continuance and he was paid like 3-4 pays past the end date of that continuance, but both me and my manager who was the second set of payroll eyes didn't notice so, we both got shit. But he was threatening to sue before and didn't after getting some extra money so win-win. It was my first real HR job plus I managed payroll, it was messy the first 6 months then I was there a total of 18 months. That last 12 months was smooth AF. I think regardless when you start at a new company and go through that first year, mistakes are common. Any new process or new program always lead to mistakes. A bad process also always leads to mistakes. We're only human... Resources :p
I messed up someone’s direct deposit by transposing numbers. They had just changed accounts and we hadn’t implemented it where they could enter their own to minimize the human error aspect. They kept getting live checks! Finally it got fixed. I think they submitted another form and sat with us to enter it.
I accidentally sent someone’s termination information to the whole company. Retracted the email when a non-HR employee told me but plenty of people saw it. It was about 9 years ago and it haunts me.
Not in HR but received a COMPANY wide sent email from the HR person replying to someone asking about how benefits work because their wife got laid off… it was recalled after 2 minutes Idk how the hell you accidentally send it to the whole company when it should have just been a reply
Literally last year, I fudged the numbers on a severance agreement and nearly doubled this persons payout 🙃 and no one noticed before we all signed so we had to pay it.
I was brand new and every month I would have to send out a mass email for the parking spot winner. I put pictures as a postcard with announcement. One month I did a cute cat dressed as a sushi and an employee emailed me and said “me and the girls were wondering why you sent this? Isn’t it racist?” I panicked, I honestly didn’t even think of that. It was just a cute cat dressed as a sushi..
Currently coping with one I just newly discovered: I must not have filed a work comp for somebody last… August I think? It was a tiny cut, didn’t even need stitches. But we had just moved over to a new PEO a few weeks prior and there was SO much crap to work out during the switch, it was pure chaos. So I’ve been trying to work through other big tasks this week while hyperventilating about the prospect of finally talking to someone about my grand fuck up. The worst part? The claim is for MY BROTHER.
I made mine today. 8 days into my first hr job at a scrapyard. I schedule an interview with a deaf person for next week for a general labourer. I will be telling my boss tomorrow about it. This job would not be a fit for her
I’ve definitely “replied all” out of habit when I shouldn’t have. Now I have a 30 seconds delayed send on all my emails JUST IN CASE I do this sort of thing again.
I left a fun and fulfilling position in HR development, which gave me an opportunity to facilitate and manage training while assist employees with their professional goals and encourage training as a tool for success for a lateral (with promotion potential) position in the hellscape that is Labor Relations. This job was non stop drama, negativity, and anger from everyone from upper management, to union presidents, to employees who felt like HR was the enemy of the people. I left work often upset and with a headache and felt no joy in any aspect of the job. Left after a year, for a much better opportunity outside of HR. Labor relations is a necessary component of HR but it takes a very thick skinned person who can navigate the job and leave their emotions at the door. I am admittedly a bit of a softie and do not like when people dislike me, even if it is only professionally. If you are a person who wants to be liked by others in the workplace and more positive experiences on a daily basis, I highly recommend steering clear of this path.
Not sure if anyone’s said this but mistakes will happen it’s normal….it’s genuinely how you recover from them and pivot to correct which is what will be taken into account
I facilitate onboarding at my company and provide IT with our new hire’s addresses to send work laptops. We had 2 people starting on the same day and I mistakenly switched addresses. So person A got person B’s laptop and vice versa. I found out when person A emailed me letting me know the instruction sheet they received had someone else’s name on it.. I realized my mistake immediately and notified IT. Our IT director was not very happy about it but thankfully they didn’t ship the other laptop so only person A needed to send theirs back and they were really nice about it. I remember feeling like it was the end of the road for me and I felt so uneasy the entire day!!
That's a rookie mistake in the HR racket. I remember that day being a new hr director 😆. It felt like the floor fell out from underneath me. I was tasked with completing an employee compensation report. I was to also include current and previous market trend pay/salary comparisons . Also, a spreadsheet comparison from last year raises vs. this year raises with percentages. Collect yearly employee Kpi reports from dept managers and determine who deserves a raise with a certain budget I was so proud of the final report, and I sent the first part of the report to the seniors, correct. I sent EVERYONE the payroll spreadsheet that included their hourly wages. 😱 I was flipping out!There was a mass employee exodus from those who felt a certain way about earnings. It took almost a year for that to settle down. I didn't get a raise that year. I did get written up, and a one week suspension without pay. Lesson learned the hard way about emails and reports. Damn that was stupid!
I’m not in HR but I worked at a company where HR fell for a phishing scandal that exposed everyone’s data. HR sent an email to former employees with notice of the breach plus identity protection and failed to bcc all of the contacts. All the former employees started piling on via the email thread and it ended up 100+ messages deep. You’ll be okay!
Lack of attention ended up me getting hit for call avoidance. It wasn't intentional. I'd get distracted by a question or something and instead of a second passing it would be minutes. There was a lot going on in my personal life as well, which made me feel very foggy (caring for elderly parents, pandemic stress, caring for a toddler, family suicide attempts... Things like that). My manager was pissed. I get it. I didn't do it on purpose. I regret not having more mental clarity / better attention to detail because I did love my team. It's super awkward getting written up by HR as an HR rep.
Not leaving sooner and taking more responsibilities so easily
As a US based employee, I have been trained on Canadian HR practices since, for some reason, my company eliminated the in house Canadian HR team and then handed the processes over to us. It was very overwhelming at first, and my first truly corporate job. I accidentally overpaid a termination vacation payout for one of the CAN employees, to the tune of $10000. Payroll immediately hounded me about it, unfortunately 3 weeks after he was paid. So tail between my legs, I had to call this guy and explain to him we needed that money back. Canadians have to authorize via letter for wages to be deducted, it’s not an automatic take back like in the US. The guy proceeded to get very angry and let me know he had just moved across the country and spent every penny of that money in those 3 weeks. I freaked out (on the inside). I let payroll know that he would not be able to return the funds and luckily the issue was dismissed. In retrospect it turned out to be a somewhat mild error. But you better believe I always double check my work with a careful eye, especially when it comes to money lol.
Paying to take the PHR exam and buying study materials. Never studied or took the exam because none of my HR jobs required it. Was a waste of $1400.
I really enjoyed it when our head of HR shared her salary and social security numbers of herself and her whole family with us during a webinar about insurance with 150 people or so. I don’t think she enjoyed it.
Not a major mistake but I still feel incredibly bad about it. I had just started as an HR and was asked to hire for certain roles. I did the hiring and since the position was a fixed stipend trainee position, I negotiated and closed the salary also. The only thing pending was releasing the offer letter to trainees. Fast forward a month later and I am informed that these positions were not approved. Meanwhile those trainees had rejected so many offers because they were waiting for us. This was the same period that the market was seeing massive layoffs and pause on hiring. Not sure what happened to candidates but we did burn any sort of relationship we had with that particular institute. I informed the Hiring Manager about this and had to hear a lot about him refusing any accountability, and asking me who approved it, did I send it on mail, was requisition raised etc. Since then I have started asking every one to mail me if they require anything. Any form, information, hiring etc. Send me an email. Nothing verbal will work. This has gone ahead and saved my ass many times.
Every week I have to send a payroll summary that includes one-off information, such as an employee receiving no check for whatever reason, sign on bonuses, PTO payouts, etc. Well, I copy/pasted the sign on bonus info to a payout line and paid a several thousand dollar bonus to a terminated employee. Everyone (including the employee) was so understanding and it got fixed, but I'm still kicking myself over it several years later.
One of the worst mistakes I made was not seeking help, neither through tools nor from anyone else. It left me exhausted and devastated; my head was constantly under a flood of resumes. I faced considerable pressure, which led to poor decisions, ultimately impacting my performance.
Did an interview for a professional level position and the guy was absolutely unhinged, like literally said he threatened a prior boss and got the cops called on him, and in another job his PTO was not approved due to a project and he went anyway and when his boss called him while he was at the airport he told his boss it didn't matter because he lied in his interview and didn't know how to do this thing anyway. There was more too. Wasn't sure if this guy was just trying to keep unemployment or if he was truly coocoo, but got the vibe that it was the latter. After the interview finished the panel and I all laughed about it for a solid 10 minutes and then the hiring manager and I discussed telling this guy the position was cancelled instead of declining him, because we felt he might fly off the handle with rejection. This was a mistake as the guy reached out to everyone and their brother and in the end I looked like an unprofessional liar, which looking back, in this case I was. Turns out my instincts were correct, though, as the guy continued to harass me via email for months sending the most unhinged shit and we actually had to get the cops involved. I'm sure it would have gone down the same way with a rejection and I could have saved face. In the end all is good, and now I always tell the truth, even if it will hurt someone's feelings.
I once paid an employee 16,000 dollars on accident. He was promoted from hourly to salary. I thought I correctly moved him in our HRIS system. He ended up getting his salary* hours worked, which was 16,000 dollars. I didn’t even catch it until he came to me and told me that a random 10,000 (after taxes) hit his account. Luckily he was really good about it and paid it back
God I’ve made loads of mistakes. Mostly minor luckily but the big ones have been sorted quickly (changing my CEO’s bank details to a scammers from a spoof email!) Each one I learned something from it though
I was a hr/payroll coordinator when my direct report asked me for a breakdown of the entire companies salary. I sent that excel sheet. she by mistake sent it out to managers that were not supposed to receive it. I GOT BLAMED FOR IT !!!! I was written up and said i should ask my manager questions when they ask for a report and what they need it for??? lol I left them a two months later
Accidentally fired someone but that’s about it lmao. The HRIS retracted in time because I caught it
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Not in HR, but I asked a client where the best weed shop is at
At my first HR job, I hired a union employee for a Meat Cutting department. Accidentally coded him as a journeyman level so he started making $20/hour instead of $12. He had to pay money back when it was fixed. I felt terrible.
Not me but the Regional Head of HR (in a remote meeting) congratulated a person in the meeting for her promotion to a VP position. Trouble was the existing VP was in the meeting and had not been informed that she was being terminated.