Category Archives: resilience

Supporting HR Part 6: Emotional Support

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When I Googled “What support does HR need”, Google’s search suggestions were all about what people want and need from HR professionals, rather than what the HR professionals need. I asked HR professionals about the challenges they face and the support they need. To review, here is what I found (in order of importance):

  1. Leadership backing
  2. Emotional & psychological support
  3. Respect for the value HR adds
  4. Strategic focus
  5. Resourcing
  6. Soft skills development
  7. Aligned expectations

This post is part 6 of a seven-part series exploring each of these in turn from 7 (Aligned expectations) through to 1 (Leadership backing). Part 6 of the series is all about emotional & psychological support.

“I’m here for you, who is here for me?”

HR Professionals are often tasked with the job of ensuring the wellbeing and engagement of employees through various programs and initiatives. They are also usually the ones at the frontline when it comes to restructures, dismissals, investigations, performance management which can lead to ‘compassion fatigue”. In addition, HR Professionals are dealing with economic and time pressures, high expectations from the business and having to do more with less. And like professionals in the health and other caring industries, HR often put their emotional and psychological needs last. This puts HR Professionals in danger of increased stress and “emotional burnout”.

 

As one HR professional explains in a response to my survey:

“I think the hard part as a stand alone HR professional is being supportive of others in the workplace but not knowing where to turn for support for yourself.

After a while it can get harder and harder to bounce back with enthusiasm. People often forget that you also have a life” 

 

 

Why it’s important

Performing at optimal levels is as important for HR Professionals as it is for company executives and other leaders, especially during challenging times. That is why HR Professionals need to invest in themselves so they feel supported in a workplace where demands are increasing and resources are diminishing.

To me, if HR feel they have the support they need across all other 6 areas identified through my research (Leadership backing, Respect for the value HR adds, Strategic focus, Resourcing, Soft skills development, and Aligned expectations) their levels of resilience will automatically lift, they will feel less pressure and stress and as a result require less extraneous emotional and psychological support with the exception of one area – dealing with mental health-related issues where referral to a professional psychologist or professional training are the best options. Realistically however, it is likely that HR professionals will continue to experience challenges across the 6 key themes at least in the short-to-medium term and as such will likely benefit form additional emotional and psychological support.

But how? There are three key ways HR Professionas can access Emotional & Psychological Support to help them navigate what is often called the VUCA world:

  1. Build a strong network
  2. Get yourself a coach
  3. Build your resilience

    1. Build a strong network

    Often when we are stressed and overwhelmed with the amount of work that needs to get done, a natural tendency is to isolate ourselves and to suffer in silence. Although such an instinct makes sense to us at the time, it is generally not the most helpful response.

    There is a growing number of studies that point to the importance of social support in managing stress and building resilience. In fact, the “R” in Martin Seligman’s Theory of well-being model (PERMA) refers to relationships and the importance of building and maintaining meaningful connections with others.

    For you, the HR Professional, take the time to build both your formal and informal networks. But don’t wait until you are feeling overwhelmed. Start now so that you can draw on for support when you need it. In chosing your network, make sure you choose people who uplift you and provide much needed positive energy. If you haven’t already joined, AHRI is a great place to start networking with other HR Professionals. But don’t limit yourself! You might also want to consider attending industry forums and meetups, university alumni groups and non-work related groups.

2. Get yourself a coach

Regardless of whether you are a lone HR professional in your organisation or part of a larger HR team, you can benefit from accessing a coach.

According to the Institute of Coaching, benefits of coaching include:

  • Facilitating action towards achieving goals
  • Increase in self-reliance
  • Increased job and life satisfaction
  • Improved ability to contribute effectively the organisation
  • Increased responsibility and accountability for actions and commitments
  • Improved workplace relationships
  • Improved communication skills

 

3. Build your resilience

It is important that you recognize the signs of stress before you get to burnout stage. Some signs that might indicate that you are experiencing stress and that your resilience is being seriously tested include:

  • Inability to focus, forgetfulness
  • Lack of energy, poor sleeping patterns
  • Poor motivation
  • Negative attitude
  • Increased health problems

Burnout:

“Physical or emotional exhaustion,

especially as a result of long-term stress or dissipation.”

thefreedictionary

In order for us to best manage the stressors that life throws at us, it helps to develop protective behaviours and strategies that give us more capacity to cope when things do get hairy. There are many techniques to choose from – the important thing is that the techniques you choose resonate with you and that you can fit them into your life and daily routines. Once again, reflecting on Seligman’s PERMA model, strategies might include:

  • Positive Emotion – take an optimistic view of the past, present, and future from a positive perspective by reframing your thoughts.
  • Engagement – identify your strengths and find fulfilling work that utilises those strengths.
  • Relationships – we are social animals that thrive on connection and as such relationships and social connections are one of the most important aspects of life. Phoning a friend, asking for help, or joining a group are all useful relationship strategies.
  • Meaning – identify your core values and what gives you a sense of purpose.
  • Accomplishment – make realistic goals that are achievable and that give you a sense of satisfaction.

Remember, the first step is to acknowledge that you are not a superhero and that you too need support. To recap, suggestions on getting that support include:

  1. Build a strong network
  2. Get a coach
  3. Build Resilience

By accessing the emotional and psychological support you need to be your best self, you will be rewarded with increased productivity, feeling higher levels of engagement and a lot more job satisfaction.

About Shift Consulting

As a Workplace Psychologist I want to support HR in the workplace because I believe that real change happens where the people are. And none of us can do it alone.

If you want to know more about shifting mindsets through coaching or groupwork, check out my website www.shiftconsulting.com.au or get in touch via email, phone or on LinkedIn.

If you are interested in receiving my follow-up newsletters, click here to get on my mailing list for your HR Support Insights newsletters. Also, if you find you have similar support needs highlighted in this article, I am also offering a 20-minute quasi-coaching session on how you might get the support you need. Obligation free.

small shift – Big Change

The Results are in: What Support Does HR Need and Want?

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Last month I Googled “What support does HR need” and was not especially surprised by what I found.

Google’s search suggestions were all about what people want and need from HR professionals. What customers want, what employees want. But what about the HR professionals? I decided to find out more by going directly to HR professionals. I asked them about the challenges they face and the support they need.

Key Themes

Figure 2: Thematic Interdependencies

Figure 1: Key Themes

Here is what I found… Overall, the key themes that emerged from HR professionals across a range of industries (see Figure 1) included first and foremost a desire for the backing and support from leadership within their organisations, emotional and psychological support in what is often a stressful and ambiguous role, and respect for the value HR can and does add to the business.

My interpretation of the other 4 key themes (strategic focus, limited resources, soft skill development and aligned expectations) is that they are irrevocably intertwined with the other three key themes of leadership backing, emotional & psychological support, and respect for value-add. Let me explain (for a diagrammatic explanation see Figure 2 below).

  • If HR has leadership backing and is respected for the value they can add to an organisation, they are likely to be included in and expected to contribute to discussions around strategy (rather than being seen as an ‘order taker’.
  • Similarly, with leadership backing and respect for their value-add, HR is more likely to have access to the resources (time, financial, headcount).
  • Having sufficient resources to manage operational HR functions efficiently gives HR the capacity to take a more strategic focus.
  • Leadership backing is also likely to influence the respect others in the organisation have for the value HR adds and vice versa. That is, if HR is seen to be respected within and outside of the organisation, leaders are more likely to back HR when needed.
  • ‘Soft skills’ development such as communicating with influence, having difficult conversations, and time management, also requires adequate resourcing.
  • Increased capability in ‘soft skills’ should help build credibility and thereby increase the likelihood of leadership backing and respect for HR’s ability to add value.
  • Strong ‘soft skills’ will likely positively impact HR’s ability to access the resources they need, be viewed as strategic member of the leadership team, and ensure that expectations (both at the leadership and employee levels) about the role of HR are aligned.
  • Where expectations about the role of HR are aligned between HR, the leadership team and the business overall, respect and leadership backing will likely follow because open and robust conversations happen when there is respect and trust.
  • Adequate resourcing is more likely to follow where there is an alignment of expectations.
  • If expectations of the role HR plays is clear, then HR is able to more effectively contribute meaningfully to the strategic direction of the organisation.

Emotional and Psychological Support

Photo by Andrew Seaman on Unsplash

Finally, the second most cited area for support for HR was the need for emotional and psychological support including development of resilience. This is not all that surprising if we view the other 6 support themes that my research highlighted through the lens of Martin Seligman’s Theory of well-being model (PERMA):

 

Positive Emotion – lack of perceived support and respect from the leadership team and others in the organisation is likely to result in feeling negative emotions.

Engagement – doing work that is not aligned with one’s strengths or desires and having a lack of resources and/or skills to do one’s best work is likely to result in disengagement and frustration.

Relationship – lack of perceived support and respect from the leadership team and others in the organisation is likely to result in feeling disconnected from others, especially as a sole HR professional in an organisation.

Meaning & Purpose – not being included in strategy development of an organisation nor valued for its contributions can leave HR professionals feeling that they do not have a core purpose within an organisation.

Accomplishment – it is difficult to achieve and maintain a sense of accomplishment if you feel overstretched due to under-resourcing, that the goals you need to achieve are unrealistic and when you don’t feel you have the skills you need to achieve those goals.

To my mind, if HR feel they have the support they need across all other 6 themes, their levels of resilience will automatically lift, they will feel less pressure and stress and as a result require less extraneous emotional and psychological support with the exception of one area – dealing with other people’s (or their own) mental health-related issues where referral to a professional psychologist or professional training are the best options. Realistically however, it is likely that HR professionals will continue to experience challenges across the 6 key themes at least in the short-to-medium term and as such will likely benefit form additional emotional and psychological support.

So, what now?

While my sample size was relatively small, it nevertheless gives us an insight into key themes for where HR professionals are feeling the pressure and in what specific areas they would like support in order to be part of their organisation’s success.

After collating results and summarising outcomes, I want to offer some suggestions on what HR could do to get the support they need across all 7 themes. I have started by reflecting on Stephen Covey’s circle of influence (which suggests we focus on the things that we can do something about).

What can you do to get the support you need?

So, what might HR professionals do to build the support they need? Here’s a snapshot of my initial thoughts which I will be expanding upon in subsequent follow-up posts:

Photo by Noah Buscher on Unsplash

Leadership Backing – take a ‘customer insights’ approach and ask questions, lots of questions (about what your leaders want) and listen, then tailor your messages accordingly; identify a champion – someone influential in the organisation that ‘gets it’; have a vision and communicate it with passion and influence.

Emotional & Psychological Support – join HR networks; get a coach; use stress management and resilience building strategies to enhance wellbeing and effectively manage change.

Respect for the value HR adds – firstly be clear in yourself about what value HR adds to your business, then market your HR services and initiatives to show how they meet organisational goals and targets; use metrics – show how HR initiatives reduce costs, increase revenues; articulate clearly value add in language business leaders understand.

Strategic Focus – develop a people strategy that clearly links in with corporate strategy; make long and short-term goals; free up time for strategy development.

Limited Resources – look at your time management strategies; delegate; innovate.

‘Soft Skills’ Development – access training and development for yourself; consider getting a coach outside of the organisation; ask for feedback.

Aligned Expectations – ask questions and listen.

If you are a HR professional who feels like you are drowning in a sea of other people’s issues then it’s time to focus on the goals of strategy, culture, and engagement which you can clearly see in the distance. Don’t be dragged back down into the murky depths of other people’s problems.

Remember, whilst you might not have direct control over the backing of your leadership team or the respect for the value HR adds to a business, you DOhave control to change your approach and to reach out and get the support you need…be it coaching support, training and development, or peer support.

Changing your mindset and the business’ mindset about the role HR plays is no easy task. And it’s even more difficult if you try to do it on your own.

If you are interested in receiving my follow-up newsletters, click here to get on my mailing list for your HR Support Insights newsletters. Also, if you find you have similar support needs highlighted in this article, I am also offering a 20 minute quasi-coaching session on how you might get the support you need. Obligation free.

Why am I doing this?

As a Workplace Psychologist I want to support HR in the workplace because I believe that this is where real change happens – where the people are. And none of us can do it alone.

If you want to know more about shifting mindsets through coaching or groupwork, check out my website www.shiftconsulting.com.au or feel free to get in touch via email, phone or reach out to me on LinkedIn.

Small Shift – Big Change

Photo by Alex on Unsplash

What do emotions and brushing your teeth have in common?

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When considering sharing my beliefs about the importance of emotional and psychological resilience and wellbeing I could not have said it better than Guy Winch in this TED Talk.  Instead of reinventing the wheel I share with you here a brief summary of the talk if you don’t have time to watch the video (17:25 minutes) or you can see an even shorter video summary here on my youtube channel.

Guy Winch, a fellow Psychologist, talks about the importance of practicing “emotional hygiene”. That is, taking care of our emotional and psychological selves with the same care we take to look after our physical selves.

Not a ‘real doctor’

Photo by jesse orrico on Unsplash

When Guy became a psychologist, he began to notice how much more we value the body than we do the mind. He shares an anecdote which demonstrates that we all know how to maintain our physical health and how to practice dental hygiene from a young age. Yet we know very little about maintaining our psychological health. He asks: Why is our physical health so much more important to us than our psychological health when, like physical injuries, psychological injuries can get worse if we ignore them.

Loneliness

Loneliness creates a deep psychological wound that distorts our thinking. It makes us believe that those around us care much less than they actually do and makes us afraid to reach out. Research on loneliness tells us that:

  • chronic loneliness increases your likelihood of an early death by 14 percent
  • loneliness causes high blood pressure and high cholesterol
  • loneliness suppresses the functioning of your immune system, making you vulnerable to illnesses and diseases
  • scientists have concluded that chronic loneliness poses as significant a risk for long-term health and longevity as cigarette smoking

Failure

If our mind tries to convince us that we cannot do something and we believe it, we begin to feel helpless and stop trying too soon or won’t try at all. Which reinforces the belief that we cannot succeed. And once we become convinced of something, it’s very difficult to change our mind.

So whilst it might be natural to feel demoralized after a failure. we cannot allow ourselves to become convinced that we cannot succeed. We have to fight feelings of helplessness, gain control over the situation, breaking the cycle of negativity before it begins.

Rejection and Self-Esteem

Rejection is extremely painful. And it is often our negative self-talk that makes things worse for us. Our minds and our feelings are not the trustworthy friends we thought they were. Imagine if a friend said to you “you’re not good enough”, “you’re ugly”, “no one likes you”? And yet that’s how many of us talk to ourselves, especially after a rejection. We start thinking about our faults and our shortcomings. And it’s interesting that we do because our self-esteem is already hurting.

Numerous studies have shown us that when our self-esteem is lower:

  • we are more vulnerable to stress and anxiety
  • failures and rejections hurt more
  • it takes longer to recover from rejection

So, when we feel rejected, the first thing we should be doing is to revive our self-esteem and treat ourselves with the same compassion we would expect from a good friend.

Rumination

The trick is to catch our unhealthy psychological habits and change them. And one of unhealthiest and most common habit is rumination (repetitively going over a thought or a problem without completion).

Ruminating about upsetting events can easily become a (bad) habit. Spending too much time focused on upsetting and negative thoughts puts ourselves at significant risk for developing clinical depression, alcoholism, eating disorders, and cardiovascular disease.

Whilst he urge to ruminate can be a difficult habit to stop, even a two-minute distraction is enough to break the urge to ruminate at that moment. So, any time you have a worrying, upsetting, or negative thought, try to force yourself to concentrate on something else until the urge passes.

Negative Thinking

By taking action when you’re lonely, by changing your responses to failure, by protecting your self-esteem, and stopping rumination in its tracks we can not only heal our psychological wounds but build emotional resilience.

 

Think about this: a hundred years ago people began practicing personal hygiene, and life expectancy rates rose by over 50 percent in a matter of decades. How much could our quality of life rise if we all began practicing emotional hygiene?

 

If you want to know more about ensuring psychological safety in the workplace by developing resilience and wellbeing check out my website www.shiftconsulting.com.au or feel free to get in touch via email, phone or reach out to me on LinkedIn.

Small Shift – Big Change