After the recent NY Times article that sparked essential discussions within the HR community, I took a beat before responding. Why? I was checking my natural bias as an HR practitioner. I co-founded a company focused on "making HR better." I was hopeful that the article from HR practitioners sharing their challenges would spark constructive dialogue with industry leaders.
Spoiler alert....some people let me down.
There are many reasons why HR practitioners are miserable, including the pace of change, the scale of the change, the changing nature of the role, the lack of personal and professional development, and the difficult nature of some of our work. Still, there is one big reason that HR practitioners are miserable over everything else: It feels like no one cares.
HR and Business leaders and HR tech companies must listen to the diverse experiences and concerns raised by HR professionals. When done well, HR roles focus on designing and delivering an employee experience that encourages high employee performance aligned with business goals. Dismissing the real-life challenges HR practitioners face just trying to do their jobs undermines this core purpose.
I urge HR & Business leaders to take their teams through user experience workshops to understand what specifically in their daily workflow is sabotaging HR engagement. Listen actively. Move beyond skip levels and take a user-centric approach. Sit with a case manager in employee relations, an onboarding specialist, a recruiter, or a central HR call center to understand their daily experience. Hold your technology vendors accountable for delivering value in their roadmaps. Sweat your implementations. By listening to the frontline voices and taking action on little and big things, from changing culture to how long it takes to do a simple task, we can collectively strengthen the HR profession and its impact on the workforce. We can show HR that we care.
Despite the challenges outlined in the article, I remain optimistic about the future of HR. By acknowledging the difficulties and working together to address them, we can truly elevate the role of HR and create workplaces that genuinely prioritize the well-being and growth of *all* employees.
#behuman
#makehrbetter
