In context of Canada, I think HR is given way too much leeway and influence over the organization. For example, I work for a large company and are in a fairly senior role with lots of senior managers and directors reporting to me. The HR assigned to me has 5 years of experience and is less than 30 years old, yet they sit in all career planning meetings and has a say on everyone’s bonus and most of my report are 3 levels above this person. It just occurred to me when they came to me the other day and wanted to discuss one of my reports performance. My report has 4 direct reports who each has a team of 5 to 8 people working under them. So this HR person wanted to discussed performance of someone who was managing a team of 27 people and has 23 years of experience. For clarification this had nothing to do with people issues, it was how the HR thought my report wasn’t really on top of things because they weren’t being very responsive to what HR was asking.