Favoritism within Human Resources

I am in the HR department and experiencing favoritism. The other two people in my department chit chat for an hour at a time about personal topics. They go out to each lunch with the HR manager at least 3 times a week and I am never invited. I see them walking out laughing together. And now I recently discovered both of these people will be getting a larger bonus than I because they are ranked higher in performance and criticallity to the business function. One person is an event planner/facility person. How can her job be more critical to the organization than Learning, Development and Performance management. It is very blatant since others have made comments to me about "not belonging to the sorority". And supposedly no one in the company received a raise last year. I also discovered both of them did. Like the article says, there is nothing you can do about it. Especially when I work in HR and there is no one to go to.

Response from Carl: This is an interesting one since as you mention at the end of your submission, typically people go to their human resources department to report favoritism but what do you do when you're in HR and you're the one experiencing the short end of the stick?

I guess the first thing I'd do is speak with my manager regarding the grievances you mention above and ask them about the issues that affect you personally ie. not getting a raise, bonus, the ranking of your position as not being as critical as the others. I'd be careful about bringing up the issue of them going to lunch and being chummy since at the end of the day, they can go out for lunch and hang out with whoever they like although you'd like to think that your manager wouldn't be playing favorites because of how they feel about people outside the office.

If that doesn't work, there is always the option of going to the next level of management to get an answer but again, you have to be careful with how you proceed given that your manager will no doubt find out about it and could perceive this in negative terms. In that regard, I'd speak with your manager first.

Carl