Why HR Is Still Being Pulled into Everything (and How to Fix It)

Stephanie Latarewicz SHRM-SCP, SPHR, GBA and founder of Reel HR, LLC brings over a decade of real-world HR leadership experience to the world of talent acquisition and workforce development.

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Despite decades of progress, HR continues to function as the organizational catch-all.

I saw this clearly several years ago when I was pulled into a meeting about a stalled quality initiative. The issue wasn’t employee relations, policy, or compliance. It was a broken approval process and unclear ownership. Still, the question landed squarely on me: “Can you help us fix this?”

It wasn’t asked because it was truly an HR issue, it was asked because no one else clearly owned it.

That moment isn’t unique; it’s a pattern many HR leaders recognize immediately. When processes break, priorities blur, or leadership gaps emerge, HR becomes the default place to send the problem. Not because HR owns it, but because HR is perceived as the safest place to catch it.

Despite all the progress our function has made, HR is still being pulled into everything.

In many organizations, HR absorbs work that no one else clearly owns. That includes:

• Broken workflows
• Unclear escalation paths
• Stalled decisions
• Leadership gaps
• Cultural issues without an obvious home

HR becomes the fixer, the translator, the mediator, and the escalation point, often late in the process, when frustration is already high. Over time, this creates a quiet but costly pattern. HR spends significant time in reaction mode, untangling issues it didn’t create and can’t fully control, and leaders grow accustomed to routing ambiguity to HR. HR’s capacity to focus on strategic work erodes, while expectations continue to rise.

Over the past decade industry reporting has consistently noted the expansion of HR’s role beyond traditional people operations, positioning HR as a default owner for organizational issues that lack clear accountability.

This isn’t a matter of HR lacking boundaries or confidence. The real issue runs deeper.

It’s tempting to frame this as a boundary issue. HR needs to say no more, HR needs to push back harder, HR needs to protect its time. But that framing misses the point.

HR is being pulled into everything because ownership across the organization is unclear. When responsibility is scattered, accountability defaults to the function designed to handle people, process, and risk. In the absence of clear ownership, HR becomes the default. Not because HR wants control, but because HR is one of the few functions trusted to step in when things get messy.

This dynamic persists not because of bad intent, but because organizations often design for speed and flexibility without defining ownership clearly enough to sustain it.

HR didn’t become the catch-all overnight.

Historically, HR stepped in to help keep the business moving and that willingness led to trust, and over time, expectation. Leaders came to rely on HR as the pressure-release valve for unresolved issues. Managers learned that escalating to HR was often faster than navigating unclear systems. And HR, committed to supporting the organization, continued to absorb the work.

The problem is that what starts as support can quietly turn into substitution. Instead of enabling ownership, HR begins carrying it. And the cost of that shift is significant.

The Cost of Being the Default

For HR, the cost shows up as:

• Reactive work crowding out strategic priorities
• Credibility risk when fixes don’t stick
• Exhaustion from solving problems without authority

For the organization, the cost is less visible but just as damaging:

• Issues resurface instead of resolving
• Leaders avoid owning messy decisions
• Accountability remains ambiguous

Over time, HR becomes associated with friction instead of clarity. Not because HR failed, but because the system placed responsibility where it didn’t belong.

The solution isn’t for HR to disengage, and it isn’t for HR to simply say no. The shift required is more intentional than that. HR’s role isn’t to absorb what’s unclear, HR’s role is to make ownership visible.

That means helping the organization distinguish between:

• What HR truly owns
• What HR supports
• And what belongs elsewhere entirely

This is where design matters.

Resetting this pattern doesn’t require confrontation or withdrawal, it requires clarity and consistency.

Practical steps HR can take include:

• Clarifying ownership early. Asking, “Who owns this?” before engaging deeply in the work.
• Defining HR’s role explicitly. Naming when HR advises, facilitates, or owns, and when it doesn’t.
• Using intake criteria. Evaluating requests through a simple filter instead of absorbing them reflexively.
• Redirecting with purpose. Guiding work to the right owner while remaining a partner, not a blocker.
• Making escalation paths visible. Helping leaders and managers understand where issues should go before they reach HR.

This isn’t about pushing work away; it’s about placing it where it belongs.

When ownership is clear, HR doesn’t disappear from the conversation, it shows up more effectively.

This mindset shift is most sustainable when supported by structure.

An HR Ownership Reset gives HR teams a practical framework to move from reactive intake to intentional engagement. It helps clarify what truly belongs in HR, how to triage requests effectively, and how to reset expectations without damaging trust.

At its core, the reset answers one essential question: Is HR being asked to solve this, or to help the right owner solve it?

When that distinction is clear, HR’s time, credibility, and impact expand.

HR doesn’t add value by being involved in everything. HR adds value by ensuring everything has an owner.

As organizations move deeper into 2026, the most effective HR teams won’t be the ones carrying the most work. They’ll be the ones designing systems that don’t require HR to catch everything that falls through the cracks.

The goal was never for HR to be the safety net.

The goal was for the organization to stand on its own, with HR as a strategic architect, not the default solution.

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