Right Roles...WRONG PEOPLE! Inept HR Leadership - Human Resources BNP Paribas Employee Review

1.0
25 Aug 2023
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

If you are interested in a career in the Financial Services Industry, BNP Paribas could be a great place to learn and grow in your career.

Cons

If you are a Human Resources professional, proceed with caution! The HR Department has the right roles but the wrong people in these roles. BNP Paribas is a big proponent of employee mobility—however, insufficient due diligence results in the wrong people mobilizing into other roles—this is catastrophic when these individuals are in leadership roles. All skills are not transferable. Like other professions, Human Resources and its extended branches, from payroll, benefits, recruiting, and compensation, are specialized skills. A stellar performer/decision-maker in one business unit or role does not make a stellar performer/decision-maker for another business unit or role. A company is only as great as its Leaders. There are some great Leaders at BNP Paribas. A Team is only as great as its Leaders—this is where Human Resources is severely lacking. I am an active employee of BNP Paribas. I have been an HR professional for close to twenty years. I've seen it all! For the first time in my career, I filed an EEOC complaint against my employer based on the practices I've witnessed in Human Resources. If promoting the unqualified is going to be the continued practice—it absolutely should not be, but if it is—mandatory leadership coaching should be required when individuals transition into these roles. Human Resources touches every stage of an employee's career cycle. When Human Resources cannot lead by example because of the ineptness of its Leaders, you cannot expect others within the organization to rise to the call of Leadership.

Explore other reviews about BNP Paribas

5.0
28 May 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

love working here been here 4 years

Cons

return to office policy is tough

1.0
8 May 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

The only good thing about this place were the Nespresso machines.

Cons

I rarely leave reviews, but future job seekers deserve fair warning. From day one, it was clear that micromanagement was a core operating principle here; not a quirk, but a feature. Managers routinely hovered over routine tasks, demanded pointless status updates multiple times a day, constantly changed directives, took credit for my work, and treated experienced professionals like they couldn't be trusted to send an email unsupervised. Any sense of autonomy was purely cosmetic. The culture was equally poisonous. Gossip wasn't background noise; it was practically a department function. Colleagues regularly spoke poorly of one another behind closed doors, cliques formed and hardened fast, and if you weren't part of the right group, you felt it. Unkind doesn't begin to cover it. Basic professionalism and common decency were in short supply. Management set the tone for all of it. Leaders who should have modeled integrity instead participated in the drama, played favorites openly, and addressed conflict with either complete avoidance or outright retaliation. HR was not a resource — it was a shield for bad behavior at the top. I left for my own sanity. The turnover rate here should tell you everything. Life is too short and your career too important to spend either in an environment like this one.

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