The elephant in the HR department?

Not a real one, but as good as.... The elephant I’m talking about is stress, overwhelm, burnout.

Here’s an example from a recent post on the dilemmas section of an HR jobs board:

"I have never been under more pressure at work. I’m an HR manager of a small firm. Two of my team members were made redundant last year so my team has been reduced from 7 to 5. I’m working all hours from 6am to 8pm at night and my boss is unsympathetic. She thinks I should be lucky to have a job, I’m at breaking point and struggling to maintain the morale of my team, what can I do?"

Perhaps one cause is the type of personalities who are attracted to working in HR, particularly operational roles.  They want to help, are empathetic, maybe take on too much in order to please the people they provide a service to.

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Editor's Welcome

 

Hello! I'm a great believer in the power of stories, whether they be folk tales, novels, films or TV dramas.
 
They have a wonderful ability to get complex moral or social issues over to us in a palatable, easy-to-understand way and can provide many lessons if only we care to look just a little bit below the surface.
 
But they can also act as a fun starting point for discussion and debate on rather more serious topics that are all too often brushed under the carpet and ignored.
 

Hence our decision to start up a Review slot on the site to look at those everyday stories that are all around us from an HR perspective.

Although we've been publishing book reviews (take a look at our Book Club list of suggested possible non-fiction works for evaluation here) for some time, you may also have noticed that we've been running a weekly home page blog on The Apprentice courtesy of The Chemistry Group for a while now.

And Pauline Wood, managing director at specialist retail headhunter, court & spark consulting, was likewise kind enough to write our first film review on the Headhunters movie.

But the big question is, why don't you give it a go yourself? There's a world of choice out there and I, like the rest of the community, would love to hear your thoughts and insights.

So next time you watch a movie, see a TV drama or read a novel that you think has an HR message worth sharing, send your review to me at cath.everett@siftmedia.co.uk or post it directly to our blogs section at www.hrzone.co.uk/blogs.

So get critiquing and look forward to hearing from you very soon.....

Cath Everett
HRZone Editor 
 
 
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