I run a regular HR Happy Hour where some of my fabulous HR peers and I chat through what is going on in the world, sharing our experiences and advice, asking questions and generally supporting each other.
Our session this week was really interesting as we stumbled into an area around reputation and appreciation of HR as a profession – spoiler alert – it wasn’t great.
What I found fascinating was the stories of people being told to get out of HR as no one likes people in HR, the level of general HR bashing they’d had to listen to and how it was a genuine surprise when they were thanked for their work by the leadership team.
Let’s face it – we all have an opinion on HR. Whether you think they make us fill in too many forms or don’t fill our vacancies quick enough, or maybe they’ve helped you return to work after illness or given you an incredible onboarding experience – we all have an opinion.
Now the poor reputation of HR is nothing new. But surely after what we’ve all been through, we can maybe be a little bit more supportive of a group of individuals and in small businesses – often one person, who has the responsibility of the whole organisation in terms of HR matters?
HR had no choice but to be highly adaptable during the pandemic. People teams had to react quickly to the shift to remote work and had to quickly put strategies in place to ensure remote working did not intensify work-related stress or burnout. Add in furlough, job retention schemes, sick with covid, sick with long covid, hybrid working, covid safe environments and the pingdemic – it’s been a lot. The HR professionals have had to endure a steep learning curve, a huge amount of difficult conversations and are regularly seen as the party pooper.
Whether you’ve been working your little bottom off, have been on furlough on and off throughout the year or have been made redundant, the likelihood is you’ve been interacting with your HR team a fair amount.
Now I have HUGE love for HR professionals. For me these are the people in businesses that support employees; they look at their development and their welfare amongst a huge host of other things and are the people that root for the good of the individuals in the team – they’re my kind of people.
Do that many people really still have such a low opinion of HR as a profession? And if so, why?
CultureAmp did some research into this and found that there was a 45% decrease in HR professionals feeling supported by the other people at work when they needed it compared to last year. Meaning now, just 55% feel supported – nearly half of respondents are focusing on supporting the whole organisation yet they don’t have the support they need as individuals. The findings were part of a global study that surveyed 4,841 people between June 2020 and March 2021 so this isn’t a local issue.
What this has meant though is that just 39 per cent of UK HR professionals in the first quarter of this year agreed they were equipped to balance the competing requirements of their role right now.
More than two-thirds (69%) of UK respondents felt unable to bounce back quickly from setbacks, 10 percentage points higher than the global figure. Depression has doubled in adults over the course of the pandemic. For those companies that don’t yet have Mental Health First Aiders, that’s a lot more people that HR are trying to support (by the way, HR aren’t immune to depression).
I know how hard it has been for HR Professionals over the last 18 months. Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m not suggesting they’ve had it harder – I’m very aware that everyone has had an extremely unique experience of this pandemic but, but… I do think that in many organisations, the learning curve that the HR teams have had to go on has not been fully understood or appreciated.
So if you are in HR, I would like to say thank you.
If you are not in HR, please go and thank the HR person in your organisation.
