Recent comprehensive research by Perkbox revealed that human resource professionals in the UK have the most stressful professions- outranking other industries such as healthcare, IT, retail and legal.
The study analyzed over 16,000 respondents from more than 50 British cities to gather data about their respective professions.
The worrying study unveiled that a whopping 79% of HR professionals are more likely to be stressed out from their jobs. Legal workers came in a close second with over 63% affected while 54% of retail, catering and leisure workers experienced work-related anxiety.
The study also revealed that female employees were more overstressed (79%) than their male counterparts. Subsequently, 10% of the interviewed candidates commented that their level of stress in “unimaginable”.
So what brought about such a drastic level of stress among HR personnel?
HR’s are the connecting link between the employees of the organization and the organization itself. So when these very people are facing workplace-related stress, something very wrong must have been going down.
It’s essentially an incredibly hard job. In the daily day to day of a normal HR, they are required to keep up with an almost outrageous level of multitasking.
Discussions of a constant stream of issues, problem-solving, ensuring that all workers are having a comfortable job, recruiting, onboarding are only the initial issues that they deal with on a daily basis. It’s no surprise that HRs are struggling with increasing levels of stress.
Additionally, there are a few other factors that come into play.
Lack Of Mental Health Initiatives
With a lot of recent emphasis on mental health, employees are susceptible to the negative stress-inducing environment. HRs are no exception to this. Coupled with the fact that other employees can turn to their HR when bridled with workplace issues, but that same HR has nobody to confide upon to.
While companies of today are very much focused on the mental health of their employees, few are concerned about the mental health of those taking on the initiative.
HR professionals are by no means exempt from the situation where mental health is the primary cause of sick-leave for almost 22% of UK organisations. Ignoring their own mental wellbeing could be particularly dangerous for HR professionals because of the high level of stress that they have to endure on a day to day basis.
Accumulating Workload
In no secret that HRs of today are overworked and overstressed. According to research by CIPD, almost 62% of HR professionals claim that their workload is unmanageable. Similarly, 43% of those surveyed said that their organisation’s management contributed to their woes.
A recent CIPD survey recently found that only 32% of organisations train managers to support staff with poor mental health. Team managers mostly try to defer their work to HR when faced with a range of management issues such as mental health, diversity and inclusion dilemmas, office politics and many more.
In regard to this, HR must get accustomed to drawing boundaries at work. The link between high-stress levels and high workloads can not be denied anymore.
Lack Of Appreciation
Feeling appreciated is a basic human need. Without any type of recognition in place, HR professionals are likely to feel that the work they are doing is of no value. This very lack of appreciation leads to disengagement and the feeling of “going through the motions” rather than working for an internal reward or passion.
It’s extremely crucial that HR receives much more recognition and support for the intensely people-facing and problem-solving work it does, she added. This results in the downgrading of the HR’s own mental wellbeing which in turn makes their performance suffer.
Wrapping It Up
Limiting stress among HR professionals is essential to the success of a company. Thus it’s important to realize the negative effect on the company that an HR burnout can induce. I
It’s high time we start normalizing that stress is an everyday part of the job and that being an HR is no piece of cake.
