My partner works in HR, and from what I've heard about her stories from her job, this is nowhere near true. Anecdotal evidence, though.

There is a lot of paperwork that needs to be done. If everyone could follow simple, written and documented directions that have actual pictures about how to fill the form you have to fill, you could have a lot less HR people.

But majority of employees are not able to. They have to remind them dozens of times and chase people who didn't do it unless personally threatened. They have to constantly answer questions that are very well documented. They have to parse out information that finances should be able to access, but they need it directly copied from the systems.

It sounds like hell of a job, that would've been so much easier if people were able to follow simple instructions. And the kind of people that can't follow a step-by-step guide that had 5 notifications about needing to be done in a Slack channel won't do it if some AI is telling them to.

From what I've heard, she is just managing disasters that could be a legal problem, always chasing people who don't care about their annoying beraucracy that could cause a lot of trouble.

I have a lot more respect for HR after seeing it from the other side.

True, but I still think there would be plenty for HR to be mediating in terms of employee-to-employee relationships. However, it's a big ask for HR to stop being a "cover your ass" department that is otherwise dedicated to making sure things like sexual harassment and hostile workplace environments don't impact the company itself despite existing in the company all the same. Because that too is a large function of HR.