Who provides HR for HR?

Has 2020 been the tough­est year ever for human resources pro­fes­sion­als? Many experts think it has, with the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic pre­sent­ing threats to both employ­ees’ job secu­ri­ty and well­be­ing, as well as dri­ving major organ­i­sa­tion­al change with very lit­tle time to pre­pare.

In a peri­od when remote work­ing has become nor­mal and neg­a­tive­ly impact­ed the phys­i­cal and men­tal health of the teams they look after, the key ques­tion is: who is tak­ing care of the car­ers to pre­vent HR burnout?

The dan­gers are very real, as a sur­vey for VMware sug­gests. Of the 950 HR direc­tors in the Europe, Mid­dle East and Africa region sur­veyed, 51 per cent wor­ried rela­tion­ships with their team and oth­er col­leagues would suf­fer as a result of remote work­ing. A third admit­ted they felt more of a need to be online out­side their nor­mal work­ing hours, while 28 per cent report­ed stress lev­els had increased as a result of this new pat­tern.

Research from HR con­sul­tan­cy LHH in UK and Ire­land was even stark­er, show­ing 93 per cent of HR deci­sion-mak­ers feel more pres­sure than ever before.

Lau­ra Welsh, head of HR at LHH, says: “HR pro­fes­sion­als are being looked to by anx­ious employ­ees and lead­er­ship teams dur­ing this dif­fi­cult time, and are hav­ing to take part in deci­sions that require emo­tion­al intel­li­gence, resilience and empa­thy. If HR pro­fes­sion­als don’t look after them­selves, it can have an adverse impact on their abil­i­ty to make these deci­sions. They should apply their own oxy­gen mask first.”

Sug­gest­ing reg­u­lar check-ups and one-to-ones, as well as being strict with bound­aries, Welsh says these things are vital to “cre­at­ing a safe space to express your feel­ings and dis­cuss any issues that arise”.

Long-term HR management to avoid burnout

For many, this may be eas­i­er said than done. Charles Alberts, head of health man­age­ment at glob­al pro­fes­sion­al ser­vices firm Aon, believes human resources needs to look out­side itself for the answer to HR burnout.

“There are var­i­ous rea­sons for this, not least the stress we place our­selves under in recog­nis­ing the sig­nif­i­cance and impact of our work on oth­ers and an expand­ing remit to pro­vide greater sup­port to peo­ple in the busi­ness.”

Alberts describes it as “vic­ar­i­ous stress”. “When we lis­ten to oth­ers and how they are feel­ing, such as stressed, anx­ious, depressed, we run the risk of tak­ing those feel­ings on our­selves and feel­ing over­whelmed.

“We may not take action to look after our­selves because we per­ceive what we’re going through to be not quite as bad as those whom we have sup­port­ed.”

Super­vi­sion is one answer, sim­i­lar to that received by coun­sel­lors and psy­chother­a­pists. “We don’t cur­rent­ly adopt this prac­tice as stan­dard for HR, line man­agers or men­tal health first aiders but, giv­en the chang­ing nature of these roles and increased emo­tion­al demands, we would be miss­ing an oppor­tu­ni­ty not to adopt super­vi­sion prin­ci­ples that are com­mon prac­tice in clin­i­cal set­tings,” he says.

Clin­i­cal psy­chol­o­gist Dr Nick Tay­lor, co-founder of Unmind, agrees. He says: “It’s cru­cial we sup­port HR pro­fes­sion­als or the pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and well­be­ing of the organ­i­sa­tion could suf­fer. Organ­i­sa­tions must embrace tech­nol­o­gy, invest­ing in men­tal health plat­forms and tools that allow HR teams to learn about their own men­tal health proac­tive­ly.

“It’s impor­tant to ensure they too have an acces­si­ble and non-judg­men­tal place to turn if they need sup­port, so they can con­tin­ue to deliv­er sup­port for the work­force.”

“It’s impor­tant to ensure they too have an acces­si­ble and non-judg­men­tal place to turn if they need sup­port, so they can con­tin­ue to deliv­er sup­port for the work­force.”

Working environments must consider employees’ feelings

Accord­ing to Cul­ture Amp’s HR for HR sur­vey of more than 1,000 HR pro­fes­sion­als in June, just 34 per cent of respon­dents felt able to switch off from work to make time for rest and only 43 per cent felt their lev­els of stress were man­age­able.

This could be why Peter Ryd­ing, founder of the HRD PathFind­er Club for senior HR pro­fes­sion­als, says he has seen an increase in HR direc­tors seek­ing exter­nal net­works, coach­es or men­tors to dis­cuss pro­fes­sion­al or well­be­ing issues.

Oth­er mea­sures include the chief exec­u­tive or C‑suite offer­ing HR pro­fes­sion­als unpaid leave or greater lev­els of flex­i­ble work­ing to com­bat burnout, along­side bet­ter access to employ­ee assis­tance pro­grammes. Addi­tion­al­ly, the chance to out­source work and rede­ploy staff from oth­er parts of the busi­ness to assist tem­porar­i­ly or per­ma­nent­ly could help reduce strain.

But it is cul­ti­vat­ing a pos­i­tive cul­ture around men­tal health from the top down that will ulti­mate­ly open up chan­nels of check-in and com­mu­ni­ca­tion so HR teams can sig­nal if they are strug­gling.

Char­tered psy­chol­o­gist Lucin­da Car­ney, founder of Actus, a vir­tu­al HR soft­ware plat­form, says: “HR pro­fes­sion­als have been thrown in at the deep end, enter­ing unchart­ed ter­ri­to­ry almost overnight, and often with­out train­ing. It has been HR who have had to keep teams togeth­er, ensur­ing the cogs are still turn­ing in organ­i­sa­tions, while deal­ing with ever-chang­ing busi­ness chal­lenges and employ­ee leg­is­la­tion. This sort of bur­den has begun to take its toll.”

HR con­sul­tant Les­ley Richards, head of the Char­tered Insti­tute of Per­son­nel and Devel­op­ment in Wales, firm­ly agrees, but sug­gests such sore­ly need­ed change is appear­ing slow­ly over the hori­zon.

“In non-COVID times, the ques­tion of who pro­vides HR sup­port for HR peo­ple is a long-avoid­ed issue,” she says. “But col­leagues are now reg­u­lar­ly ask­ing after each oth­er’s well­be­ing. More com­pas­sion­ate and under­stand­ing lead­er­ship, sup­port­ed by cam­paigns such as #bekind or #hrto­geth­er, will be a lega­cy of the pan­dem­ic.”