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The difficulties of lack of support/ lack of teamworking when working in a department

Dear all,

First of all, thank you for reading my post.

I wanted to seek some advices from my situation at the moment in my workplace. i work in a global company where the HQ is not located in the UK. For our HR department, we have one HR manager, who is based in the UK, she reports to HR senior management in the UK, the HR senior management is the head of HR. We also have a immigration manager who I 'report' to, also based in the UK, basically for supporting anything to do with employee's visa, my immigration manager's manager is in the HQ. This means in the UK we have four people - myself, HR head, HR manager and immigration manager, this also means technically I have 'four managers' to support, on the top of the hectic schedules that we have, this is because my role is 50, 50 and its a challenging role. Both HR and immigration managers that I report to are incredibly busy in their own, I am not going to deny that, on the top of this, everyone is working from home due to COVID19 and therefore less efficiencies in interactions - this is inevitable. What I find annoying is that because they support me less( I do expect some support from the managers), and because they get busy on their own, often in the team meeting( between us four), I get questions from the HR head on information which we have built as a team, there were topics such as leaves data which I have spent a lot of time on, were not being able to be understood by her,( she is not a data-driven person), when she questions in the team meeting, I do hope both managers can stand up, however, they have relied on me on the answer,  this should be teamworking and I don't see that. This has been quite angry for me recently for the lower scores in KPIs from both managers when they do not even have much of the exposures of the efforts I have been demonstrated( despite I have explained).

So my question is, what do I do to obtain more support from them, to have a backup and to improve the teamwork ( its not under my power to improve the teamwork), technically someone as a HR head should do this to pull the team together, but I don't see her doing that. Basically, everyone acts in a self-interest, for example, HR manager because I do not report to her, not taking this extremely seriously.

Any advices will be greatly appreciated! Have a nice day!

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  • Hi

    You have had a number of issues with personal relationships and support / interaction over the past year and I am sorry these are continuing.

    Is this discussion about one of the four?
    www.cipd.co.uk/.../working-with-a-quick-tempered-colleague---tips

    And did you take any of the suggestions about managing upwards and presenting data in an easy format offered here (as some of issues seem to be same)?
    www.cipd.co.uk/.../343294

    At this juncture I would arrange a meeting my my "official" manager and discuss the challenges with them and how you feel. But go with practical suggestions of what you would realistically like to see change...Agree with them an action plan
  • In reply to Keith:

    hi Keith, thanks for your observations and support, yes it is a challenging role, harder than I thought I joined the company, however, not saying I will quit... yet :). The relationship between myself and my reporting has been somewhat improved, and also the improved between our department and the recruitment department (even though they are tough). Thanks for your tips, I will take them onbroad. If, the company does not have the bigger pictures, I shall not waste time.
  • In reply to Keith:

    I think also the issues arise because of the mixed department. we have HR and immigration
  • It may sound obvious, but a weekly team meeting to go through key points is crucial. It can be issues that crossover between your areas, or you raising some pain points you are dealing with. If you can assist with someone else's pain point or vice versa it goes a long way to building teamwork. 30 mins, once a week. Agree a basic format and stick to it. Rome was not built in a day and all that.
  • In reply to Colin Coole:

    Hi Colin. We do have team meetings often with two managers who do ‘conflict’ sometimes. I think for me in order to play as a team player , cannot confront when I don’t have enough communication from one of them, esp during the meetings!