What key challenges are you currently facing in your role?

What key activities are you currently completing in your role?
My biggest priority at the moment is onboarding the newest member of my team in Mongolia. We're also setting up a new entity in Vietnam and so am in the process of moving our local teams over to new local contracts.

What key challenges are you currently facing in your role?
Our Mongolian office is growing the quickest however we have a lack of senior presence out there and very inexperienced management. I completely second Robey's observation - there is a real gap in management skills in general and it's hard to convince a small business to put money into this (even though I believe it would have an incredible impact). In the UK, we've managed to plug this a bit with Apprenticeship levy funds but where we're growing our offices internationally, this is proving a lot harder and it's taking up a huge amount of time in growing ER issues and is really affecting the potential of the local teams. People want to do a good job and to do the right thing but for a small HR team, it's hard to get out of the weeds to pull something wider together (and training is very much not my strength!).

What challenges can you see coming around the corner in the next few months?
Funding. I believe we'll start looking ahead to 2025 and making adjustments to our plans in order to keep momentum going. We've made various cuts over the last 18 months so finances are always top of mind (which also speaks to the current challenges above).

What is keeping you up at night?
How to improve the effectiveness of my team so that I don't feel the pressure is constantly sitting with me.

Thank you for asking Steve!

What key activities are you currently completing in your role?
A rash of recruitment – I work within a department where some tasks are devolved from our central HR, and so for me ‘onboarding’ means not only ensuring contracts/HR records/IT accounts are set up, but also dealing with a lot of queries from higher level incoming staff (relocation, visas, pensions, preparation for teaching in the new academic year, can I have my email account set up early, etc… I find some higher level staff very needy). Setting up contracts for sessional teaching staff. Preparing for the start of the new academic year in October, including inductions.

What key challenges are you currently facing in your role?
With a massive professional staff transformation project going on at my workplace, in order not to be sucked into changes going on in our central HR, and so that my job is not at risk, my line manager has had to change my job title by taking out the “HR” in it. It’s the most ludicrous thing – even more so because departments were told staff dealing with HR work in departments wouldn’t be affected. Goal posts are being moved constantly, and there’s a sense that project managers don’t really know what they’re doing (another example – arranging to meet with all HRBPs as their jobs are likely to change, but at the last minute cancelling the meeting because project managers realised they didn’t know what HRBPs do!).

What challenges can you see coming around the corner in the next few months?
I work with a senior academic colleague on academic staff development (probation, promotion, sabbaticals, mentoring…) and a new staff member is taking over in September. The current one has been a nightmare to work with and I’ll have the challenge of easing someone new into the role (there's a fair amount of managing-up involved). The new person seems super organised, and I get on well with them, so I’m hoping it will go better than the last one.

What is keeping you up at night?
This happens maybe once or twice a week for me. I’ve been looking for other jobs, but don’t seem to be getting anywhere. I’m age is against me – I’ve applied for internal jobs at my company, and have had some interviews, but had no luck and little constructive feedback. I then discover those who got the jobs are always much, much younger than me. Applying for external jobs, especially via agencies, is proving futile (if unsuccessful with one job I rarely hear from the same agency again) and I feel that unconscious bias and ageism may be happening, but how can you prove it? As I have an MA and BA, I’ve deleted “O-levels” from my CV, in case that’s a giveaway that I’m not young! Also, with the “HR” being taken out of my current job title, I worry that this may impact on future applications. I’d hope employers look at the content of applicants’ jobs, but not having “HR” in my title could potentially be an instant turn off. I’ve sought a mentor internally, but senior HR staff don’t seem to want to bother with me. I have to say that I tried a few times via my local CIPD and never heard back. I’m feeling a bit sorry for myself at the moment, and although I’m CIPD qualified, highly capable, feel that still have a lot to give, I’ve become quite disillusioned with HR.

very insightful comment

Rose, sorry to hear you are having a tough time. I have very limited experience of the education world but enough to know it is not for me. Is contracting or interim work a possibility?

Hi Anka,

The point you raised concerning "job design to prevent stress in the first place" and "tinkering around the edges" are themes that I frequently encounter in my work.

If you give a highly competent worker too much work, eventually they will become overwhelmed, become stressed and make mistakes. A key issue that organisations fail to focus on isn sustainable workloads.

It is possible to identify metrics to track that would highlight when a person's workload is unsustainable and it's disappointing that organisations do not do so. Maybe certain organisation's don't want to know...

Hi Anka
Is your handbook a word / PDF or is it part of your HRIS "company corner"?
I hear the challenge of keeping staff.

Hi Matthew I've been standalone HR too. It can be a lot!!
Happy to chat about it. I'm most active on LI. www.linkedin.com/.../

Rose, I also became somewhat disillusioned with HR, I left it once as I got what I'd probably now considered burned out. If you want to connect with me on LinkedIn, drop me a message and I'll see how I can help. I no longer have years that I did my degree or masters on my CV! www.linkedin.com/.../

Hello Robey,

I was really interested to read your perspective about managers. The same thing is happening where I work (higher education), I do an amount of coaching/managing-up of non-HR staff, which I partly expect if the issues are technical, but I've come across so many incidents of...ineptitude is the only word I can describe it, where fairly high-level managers seem clueless about how to perform basic tasks. Is this a symptom of people moving very early after graduating with a degree straight into middle-management without really understanding the work environment, i.e., not having the opportunity to start at the bottom and learn the ropes properly? I hasten to say though that this is not meant as a sweeping generalisation, it's not always the case, but very much depends on the person. It seems crazy when there are is so much training and support available these days. What I also notice though is that some managers are almost not allowed to manage - there's a lot of micro-managing by very high-level staff, so effectively dumbing down lower-levels of management, or over-inflating what will actually be expected of them.

There does also seem a terrible culture now for constantly talking about things (this is endemic), constantly strategizing, but not always doing anything. The word 'strategy' should be banned (!) - I hear it so often in my work place, but I don't think people really understand what it is, other than it sounds important so we must to do it. A lot of us just roll our eyes when we hear it and head for the hills before getting drawn in.

Interestingly, the curriculum for law degrees in the UK has radically changed in the past few years after an in depth review of feedback from universities by the Bar Standards Board and Solicitors Regulatory Authority. I understand the review was done because the legal profession was finding new graduates were often simply not able to adjust well to the working environment, which hadn't necessarily been an issue in years gone by. Some of our modules are now workshop based so that students have to work with each other much more. We've also noticed a significant drop in attendance, some inability to concentrate with the traditional hour-long lectures, so changes have been made in how we teach - more 'bite-size'. The BSB/SRA review led to other changes as well, such as the EU Law module becoming optional rather than mandatory after Brexit, so there were market/legal factors as well.

But I sometimes wonder when, why, how this inability to manage happened? Is it to do with how children are brought up, how they're taught in schools, society...?

Interesting questions, I never stop to ask myself or reflect on my work.

What key activities are you currently completing in your role?
Policy and benefit changes and redundancies sadly.

What key challenges are you currently facing in your role?
Redundancies and not having my input heard, it's completely demotivating. i'm expected to only be a 'yes' person.

What challenges can you see coming around the corner in the next few months?
Day one rights, I find new employees tend to show their true colours after probation periods, and you would normally have up to two years of employment to iron out bad habits or dismiss, but now they're taking that away so it will be a long process to dismiss any one who is mediocre to poor performing.

What is keeping you up at night?
Whether it's risky to change companies now after having built up trust and confidence here which allows me the flexibility I need for working full time and having a child. I have also built up a good salary package after being with the company for so long, but I feel held back with them not wanting to embrace anything new.

Pros and Cons in every position I guess, and better the devil you know perhaps.