I’ve ditched HR to free my company from the social-justice police

“I want to be the first company without HR.”

It was just a throwaway comment I made this month at a conference called Freedom Fest — but the audience went wild, and the line went viral in an Instagram post with over 5 million views.

“They produce nothing,” I continued. “They monitor our words. They tell us what we can and cannot say.

“They inhibit creativity. It’s bad for business.”

At my own start-up — XX-XY Athletics, the only brand standing up for the protection of women’s sports — I’ll be damned if I’m going to let the ladies of “The View” run around policing my employees’ conversations.

We started with no Human Resources department a year ago, and we’ll continue with no HR as we grow.

My statement touched a nerve because anyone who has worked in corporate America has been subjected to the censorious “Head Girl” rule-making emanating from HR departments.

And they are tired of it.

When I started my business career in the early 1990s, HR was responsible for recruiting, benefits and payroll — that was it.

As I moved up the ladder and found myself in executive meetings, the HR leader weighed in last on key business decisions, if at all.

Thirty years on, HR leaders are calling themselves “Chief Human Resources Officers,” and they proclaim their power with reckless and off-topic abandon.

HR departments today are packed with Tracy Flicks, the way-too-eager high schooler played by Reese Witherspoon in the movie “Election.”

Flick is the archetypal “Head Girl,” a term derived from the British school system and its tight hierarchy of internal discipline — ambitious and officious with little actual skill or intellect.

Hand-raisers like these are not selected to lead for intelligence or ability, but for conscientiousness and a willingness to uphold “the rules.”

That was fine when HR had no power.

But now, after yearning for a seat at the table, HR’s midwit elites have found a way to exert increasing influence in the corporate environment — leveraging social-justice buzzwords to accrue power and (what else?) make more rules.

In the 2020s, HR asserts its newly found clout with tyrannical zeal.

When I interviewed in 2023 for a CEO job at an $8 billion retailer, I made it all the way to the end of the corporate leadership receiving line, successfully fielding queries on my business acumen and brand-building accomplishments.

My last interview was with the HR representative on the board. Her first question: “Will you apologize for what you’ve done?”

What I’d “done” was advocate for opening public schools during the COVID pandemic. By 2023 I’d been proven right.

That didn’t matter to the HR lady. I’d violated her tightly enforced script.

I didn’t apologize, and I didn’t get the job.

Over the last two decades, HR has gone from operational support to Operation Head Girl Hall Monitor.

They force-feed trainings about acceptable language; they make “merit” out to be racist; and they set hiring criteria based on risk avoidance rather than excellence.

But hiring people who don’t offend anyone won’t result in employees who take initiative and make things.

Am I being sexist in calling them Head Girls? In 2023, 76% of HR managers in the United States were female.

The shoe fits. (And yes, men can be Head Girl types, too.)

British academic Bruce Charlton explains the Head Girl “can never be a creative genius because she does what other people want by the standard they most value.”

That’s why the Head Girls of HR made everyone add pronouns to their email signatures starting around 2020: Social standards. Not because it drove the business.

No, these time-suckers shift focus away from the business.

Front-of-house employees — builders, makers and service providers — must spend a significant amount of time thinking about the words they use rather than their actual jobs.

Critics of my viral comment pushed back at me: “You need HR to avoid unnecessary risk!” they chorused.

Right. That’s the fear HR leverages to maintain its unearned influence.

Risk avoidance means hiring mediocre people with no opinions who never offend anyone.

Those hires won’t take my one-year-old start-up to big-brand status.

I want big thinkers with creative minds. Sometimes these folks are disruptive.

But there are no new products or breakthrough marketing campaigns without them.

My company is a walking, talking HR violation. We “misgender” all day long.

In fact, speaking truth (as I call it) is required to work here.

We’re not in school anymore. We don’t need a persnickety Miss Manners etiquette-enforcer telling us to be nice.

I’ll continue to go it alone without HR. I’ll assume the so-called risk so I can lead in my own voice.

And I’ll succeed, or fail, on my own terms.

Jennifer Sey is founder and CEO of XX-XY Athletics.