Hi Paula

Firstly, I hope I have got your name right and I apologise if not.

It does sound as if work is not much fun for you at the moment. My preferred way of coping with pressure is to address the source of the pressure and I think there are some things you could take a look at in your situation.

There are several things that stand out to me from your post, particularly that you are under pressure from your HR seniors. People can put up with a lot if there is a feeling of esprit de corps and everyone being in it together. It can even be energising. But it is hard to hold onto your emotional resilience if your team is not united. Is there any way you can get some better communication going? Could you put together some hard data on the way the work of your department has changed? For example, time taken to process one right to work process now compared to the length of time taken pre-covid, how much longer induction takes etc. I would quantify as much as you can and put the hard data in front of your seniors along with some suggestions for how to help the situation and a request for their input. I would try to make this a reciprocal process and find out if they are coming under pressure themselves, which I suspect they are. It might be that if you work together and if you and your team have more insight into the demands being made of them, you might be able to make everyone's lives easier.

Line managers not cooperating with you is another area that where it should be possible to see if you can make some changes. Again, I would start off with gathering data. Start keeping a log of delays caused by non-cooperation. See if you can quantify the effect on the processes you handle for the organisation, e.g. does this translate into a delay for line managers achieving their objectives? Does it slow up people coming on board? I don't know the management structure you are working in or the culture of your organisation so I don't know whether it would be appropriate for you to speak to the managers directly, or put this to your management to make the intervention for you, or for you or your management to work with the managers' managers.

It sounds as if stress levels are high generally within your organisation and people are not treating each other as supportive colleagues. If this is the case, I would try to keep in mind that you are dealing with people under pressure and get across to them in as many ways as possible that you are going to do your best to make sure that your team supports them, but you need their help to do this.

Finally, I would see if you can make a financial case for automation. You can look at this in terms of money saved but also in terms of removing drags on performance.

In reply to Elizabeth Divver:

Hello Elizabeth! Thank you so much for your ideas and comments. This has been extremely helpful, I will get a chance to speak to my managers about this. Perhaps there will be a improvement. Fingers crossed! Remote home working does lead some issues unfortunately.