Mission Manageable: Overcoming the Growing HR Challenges

In the past five years, being in HR has gotten a whole lot tougher. From navigating the Great Resignation to dealing with global health crises and geopolitical tensions, HR professionals are tackling challenges they’ve never faced before. It’s no surprise that stress is through the roof, leaving many HR leaders feeling completely overwhelmed.

But there’s hope. 

By getting to the heart of key issues like burnout among HR professionals, organizational health, and the increasing demand for mental health support, leaders can start rebuilding trust and boosting engagement in their teams. In this post, I’ll explore why HR has gotten more complex and share some practical strategies to effectively navigate these challenges.

What’s Prompting HR Stress?

Stress in HR is not just from external pressures like economic uncertainty or geopolitical tensions, but also internal struggles. 

Employees are dealing with mental health challenges and high expectations from their organizations, leading to disillusionment with HR’s ability to support their needs. In contrast, 

HR staff constantly feel that they are in thankless roles.  

McKinsey’s leaders and talent expert, Bryan Hancock mentions a certain research that reports that 35% of HR leaders surveyed felt that their management team does not care about their mental health. 

This disconnect has deepened the sense of burnout within HR teams. While mental health and short-term disability support programs and policies are at an all-time high, there’s a paradox here — the state of affairs in the domain of employee-employer trust and engagement is at an all-time low.

Sadly, the satisfaction scores are the lowest in HR  in most organizations. The reasons could be many but most evidently:

• There’s a perpetual friction that HR has to handle. Balancing organizational interests with employee care can be a daunting task, and often, employee care takes the backseat. Considering these are volatile times when companies are trying to recalibrate after years of growth and disruption, this balancing act becomes even more far-fetched.
• Plus, there’s the thought process that the interests of the company and employees don’t usually align, adding to the pressure and stress.

Navigating the Tension & HR Stress

Often, the reason behind the stress is that even with a great organizational structure and intent, HR is just there for execution instead of being a thought partner. As partners, HR executives and colleagues must be engaged early during change management, whether strategic or operational. The earlier HR is involved, the better it is for the organization.

While HR must work to get a seat at the table, HR  leaders must focus on finding and using their voice. Take the case of capability building. A lot of onus is on HR vis-a-vis the rest of the organization. However, people’s leadership should be a joint effort and not just the responsibility of HR.

Lastly, empowering the workforce to be problem solvers can help take off a lot of stress from the HR department. Training, surveys, and information gathering, for example, especially on employee engagement or well-being is such a common thing in the workplace today. However, such information is a waste if it is not used productively. The analysis of the information must be passed or shared back, like a feedback loop. So, organizations can move away from the typical annual employee engagement surveys and instead have a fire-fighting unit, like an agile team, or include a few HR staff members. This team should be empowered to get input data (pulsing) within minutes or seconds and then sit on this data for another 1-2 days to make data-driven decisions. This is more real-time and effective than the traditional surveys related to productivity, engagement or satisfaction levels.

Leveraging Technology to Improve HR Efficiency

The potential of technology, particularly AI and automation, to alleviate the administrative burden on HR is enormous. By automating repetitive tasks, HR professionals can dedicate more time to strategic and impactful work such as enhancing organizational culture or improving employee engagement. The hope is that technology can free up HR to focus on the human element even in self-serve tools so that HR can help individual colleagues, build relationships, partner with business leaders, and solve complex people issues.

HR Leaders: Here’s How to Start Easing Off the Stress For Your Team

• Step back and analyze the root cause of team stress. If the area is too complicated and needs expertise, form a small group that can handle it tactically.
• Building trust with non-HR teams and stakeholders is crucial. Take on the role of being a counselor or a thought partner when people come to you with their problems, especially business leaders. That’s the easiest route to build trust. By being there when these people are vulnerable most, you make the most of the magical moments.
• Promote this thought partnership at scale across the board.

But, be prepared to be thrown under the bus by a business leader in meetings, even when you have worked hard to build trust-based relationships. Use data as your friend in such cases to drive collective engagement and build a unified voice.  Also, you need to work on building the internal support system within HR. 

Infusing Joy & Excitement into HR

HOW is the question?

Many HR leaders are the funniest and most outgoing in their personal lives. But when it comes to their workplace, they are so bogged down by compliance tasks that they are forced to put on a mask. 

But it doesn’t need to be that way. People can be authentic in the department only when they look at problem-solving with excitement and bring spontaneity into their work. Friday office fun days are fine but to make daily work exciting and engaging, there has to be a lot of mutual respect all around, in the department specifically and overall in the organization. You don’t always have to do HR-related work. Sometimes, it can be other cooler topics to discuss and brainstorm upon.

To Summarize: Practical Steps for Leaders to Overcome HR Challenges

1. Prioritize Trust and Communication: Start by engaging with employees and leadership early, especially when it comes to change management. Building trust takes time and consistent effort. Make sure HR is part of discussions on strategic changes from the very beginning to ensure alignment.
2. Create Specialized, Agile Teams: To manage overwhelming workloads, HR leaders should look into creating smaller, specialized teams that focus on complex issues. This allows HR professionals to dive deeper into certain areas and reduce the burnout caused by juggling too many responsibilities.
3. Focus on Employee Well-being: With employee mental health at an all-time low but awareness at an all-time high, HR must invest in programs that truly help employees. Set realistic expectations about what can be provided, ensuring both the organization and employees feel supported.
4. Use Technology Wisely: While automation and AI can ease administrative burdens, HR should focus on how to use technology to enhance the human aspects of the job, from coaching to problem-solving. Technology should support HR’s mission, not replace it.
5. Foster Joy and Engagement in the Workplace: HR should lead by example. By engaging authentically with employees and fostering a culture of joy and collaboration, HR leaders can reinvigorate morale across the organization. People perform better in environments where they feel valued and respected.

My Take: Use HR Technology to help you reach there. The combo of the right technology and smart people can do wonders, especially when dealing with people’s issues. 
Schedule a strategy call with us to address HR Tech end-to-end.