64% of employees find performance reviews a waste of time, and 66% report dissatisfaction with them, even when they’re part of routine HR practices. Other HR methods, like basing someone’s wage on “professional image,” can perpetuate racial and weight bias. Our experts explore this troubling topic and how to restore humanity to the workforce.

Make Managers Invite Dissent First

No one treats an open door policy as an actual invitation. We are roughly 60 people, fully remote and mostly in India, so the door is a Slack handle that stays green all day. People send the concern sideways to a peer first, watch how it lands, then decide whether to say it upward. The practice reads as care from inside the room and as a trap from where the employee sits, because speaking up puts your name on a record you never get to see. We swapped ours for something duller. Managers bring 2 or 3 decisions they already made to the team and ask what is wrong with them. The cost of starting sits with the person who has more power.

You can tell how this is going by whether anyone brings up pay. What is a policy worth if it only works when nobody needs it?

Abhijeet Katiyar, HR Business Partner, Qubit Capital

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Make Recognition Personal and Specific

The one that quietly does the most damage is copy-paste recognition. The mail-merged service certificate, the same mug handed to everyone at five years, the “thanks for your service” with no name and no specifics. It tells people they are a headcount, not a person, and employees read it instantly.

Replace it with recognition that proves someone paid attention. Name the person, name the exact thing they did, and have it come from a manager who was there, not from a system. A short, specific, handwritten line next to even a small gift beats an expensive generic award every time. The cost barely moves. What changes is whether the person feels seen. Recognition only works when it could not have been sent to anyone else.

Vincent Nero CRP, VP General Manager, Successories

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Diagnose Systems, Not Employee Resilience

HR is typically tasked with rolling out employee wellness initiatives that sound humanizing, yet feel anything but. The issue is the gap between intent and impact — just because an employer means well in providing free meditation apps, resilience training, an EAP for three covered sessions, or 10,000 step challenges, doesn’t mean that’s how an employee actually experiences the offering.

HR’s focus on symptom management needs to be replaced with HR as organizational diagnostician. When we treat burnout and turnover as solvable with perks, we’re dehumanizing employees by insinuating that they’re the problem. If they could just be more resilient, they wouldn’t feel poorly to begin with. The individual-solution framing is an easier one, because it doesn’t require the time and money it takes to examine systems at scale.

Our nervous systems pick up on incongruence even if we don’t consciously name the gap. The fix, then, is to begin investigating the patterns showing up in employee wellness and workforce stability, and trace the relational dynamics backward to find where these teachings actually sparked.

Ashley Gibson MEd, NCC, LRC, Psychotherapist & Organizational Strategist, Meaning in Practice

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Replace Passive Enrollment With Guided Education

A common HR practice that dehumanizes employees is relying on passive, one-way enrollment communications that leave people to interpret dense plan materials on their own. That approach treats employees like accounts rather than individuals with questions and real concerns. Replace it with direct employee education and prioritized in-person meetings, or structured virtual sessions when necessary, where benefits are explained in plain terms and questions are welcomed. At JS Benefits Group we shifted from passive materials to guided enrollment sessions using real examples and clear framing to simplify choices and restore clarity for employees.

Jennifer Schaefer MBA, CLU, CHFC, RHU, REBC, SHRM-SCP, Founder & CEO, JS Benefits Group

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Pair Hiring Automation With Human Review

One common HR practice that unintentionally dehumanizes employees is sole reliance on automated screening tools that filter resumes or score video interviews without meaningful human review. Those systems remove context and block opportunities for applicants to explain nontraditional career paths or accommodation needs. Employers should replace sole automation with a human-in-the-loop process where flagged decisions are reviewed by trained people and where clear accommodation procedures are available. This preserves efficiency while restoring judgment, transparency, and accountability in hiring decisions.

Ed Hones, Attorney At Law, Hones Law Employment Lawyers PLLC

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Replace Annual Ratings With Growth Conversations

One HR practice I believe can unintentionally dehumanize employees is the annual performance rating. Reducing a year of work, learning, mistakes, collaboration, and changing responsibilities to a number like 3.5 out of 5 often tells us very little. I’ve seen people spend more energy debating the rating than discussing what would actually help them grow.

I prefer frequent, short growth conversations instead. Talk about what went well, where someone got stuck, what support they need, and what they want to take on next. Keep compensation decisions structured separately where possible. When feedback becomes an ongoing conversation rather than an annual judgment, people tend to be more open and managers get a much clearer picture of performance.

Vikrant Bhalodia, Head of Marketing & People Ops, WeblineIndia

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Reserve Human Contact for High-Stakes Hiring

In some ways, HR has become too comfortable hiding behind process. And AI has made that even easier. We can automate the email, automate the screening, automate the scheduling, automate the rejection—and suddenly we’ve created a very efficient way to make people feel like they’re dealing with nobody.

The worst offender, in my view, is automated candidate communication at the moments when a human conversation actually matters. I’m not against automation. If you’re sending a scheduling link, by all means, automate it. But when someone has invested weeks interviewing for a role, or they’ve made it to the final round, a generic email saying “we’ve decided to pursue other candidates” is a pretty miserable way to treat people.

What should replace it is human contact at the points that carry emotional or professional weight. It doesn’t have to be a 45-minute conversation. Sometimes it’s a five-minute phone call from the recruiter or hiring manager explaining the decision and, where appropriate, offering a little useful feedback.

Recruiting is ultimately about people’s careers and livelihoods. We can use technology to remove the administrative work, but we shouldn’t use it to remove the human responsibility that comes with making decisions about someone’s career.

Ben Lamarche, General Manager, Lock Search Group

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Ask Stay Questions Before Employees Leave

The one I would replace is the exit interview as it is usually run. We ask people why they are leaving at the only moment when the answer cannot change anything, we file the notes, and the same reasons appear again a year later. For the person leaving it can feel like a formality performed on them rather than a conversation with them, which is a poor last impression to leave.

What I would put in its place is the same conversation while people are still here. Ask what would make them think about leaving, what part of the job they would change, and what would keep them, then act visibly on a small number of the answers. It is a less comfortable question for a manager to ask, and it is far more useful than the version asked on the way out. Exit interviews tell you what you have lost. The earlier conversation is the one that lets you do something about it.

Sarah Gray, HR Director, Cintra

About Humane HR Perspectives

Our round-up series “Humane HR Perspectives” examines the fundamentals of humanising human resources (HR) from the perspectives of top authorities within and relevant to the industry. Q&A sessions with founders, CEOs, HR professionals, business leaders, and other significant players who are influencing the direction of HR are included in every edition.

Throughout the employee life cycle, we address a wide range of subjects in this series, including recruitment and selection, onboarding, training and development, performance management, employee engagement, pay and benefits, and more. We also go over important topics like compliance, change management in the workplace, morale and welfare, workplace communications, and diversity and inclusion.

The “Humane HR Perspectives” series offers insightful advice and practical examples to help develop a more encouraging, productive, and successful workplace—whether you’re an HR professional, a business leader, or just someone who is enthusiastic about creating a great work environment. Join us as we explore the approaches, difficulties, and triumphs that characterise HR humanisation and acquire unique access to the knowledge and experiences of individuals spearheading the movement.

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