Employees in most professions have been known to break up the workday by checking social media from time to time—and we won’t tell your bosses, but we know HR professionals are no exception. So, it’s not surprising that there are HR-based meme accounts that boast hundreds of thousands of followers across multiple platforms.
Jamie Jackson has been running @humorous_resources and @horrendous_hr on Instagram (and also TikTok, Facebook, and Twitter) for years. The self-proclaimed chief meme officer makes us laugh when we wanna cry, and reminds employees and HR colleagues alike that we’re not polished and buttoned-up 24/7.
“It was important to me that when I created Humorous Resources to really have it be more about the people,” she said. “They’re relatable, and everyone can be like, ‘Oh my God, I remember that time when…’ or ‘Oh, god, that just happened last week with Phil in accounting.’”
Jackson, an HR manager at a Nashville healthcare startup, started the Humorous Resources account in 2020 during the early months of the Covid-19 pandemic.
“Here I am, an HR department of one over four nonprofit clinics, right in the throes of the pandemic, and I truly felt like I was losing it. I needed a creative outlet, and I had always made memes on my personal, private page, and I had two separate friends within the same week, say, ‘You should make a page,’” Jackson recalled. “I truly did not expect it to take off.”
Now, Jackson is posting daily to her 288,000 followers on Humorous Resources’s Instagram and also spearheading Horrendous HR, where she reads wild HR-related stories submitted anonymously. Jackson also runs an account called @millennial_misery. Reminder: She’s also a full-time HR manager, sometimes clocking 15-hour days.
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It’s important to Jackson to curate the HR meme page, interact with its followers (who she prefers to call “friends”), and reply to DMs because sometimes it can be a “lonely profession.”
Jackson says she has been an HR department of one a number of times during her career, with few colleagues around to understand the work she puts in. The meme account was a way to create a space for HR people to bond with other HR people, especially on the hard days.
“Even if you’re terminating someone for cause, it still sucks, and I don’t want to do it. It’s the worst part about my job,” she said. “But you can get on Humorous Resources and have a giggle and just feel a little bit better about the day.”
It was also important to Jackson to showcase her personality and remind HR and non-HR colleagues alike that people people are people, and some of them are rather funny.
“I’ve always been hung up on the fact that HR is scary and unapproachable because I know that I’m not scary or unapproachable,” she said. “I think I’ve always gone out of my way to make sure, even if I’m in the smallest role…I want to be approachable because that’s the whole point.”
Jackson recalled a former colleague who was blown away after witnessing her drinking a beer outside of work, simply because she worked in HR.
“I’m 100% me, 100% of the time, and that’s why I think I’m successful right now in my career,” she said. “I think that’s why [the meme accounts are] successful because I’m literally posting what I think is funny…If it hits, it hits; if it doesn’t, it doesn’t.”