My old company switched from a real HR person to a phone tree and the difference is wild
Two years back you could walk down to Carol's office on the third floor and get a straight answer in ten minutes. Now it's a 1-800 number and a ticket system, and I've been waiting nine days to find out if my new guys qualify for the tuition thing. Is this just how it goes once a company hits a certain size, or did yours actually keep the humans?
Man, I feel this. What worked for me was finding one person in HR who actually answers their email and just going straight to them every time, skip the ticket system completely. I figured out who handles tuition stuff at my place and now I cc her on everything, and stuff gets done in a day or two. The phone tree never gets better, you just gotta find the human hiding behind it.