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How are you all doing?

Steve Bridger

The tweet below prompted me to ask this question. You are so busy. You may be feeling undervalued.  

It has been two years since Samantha asked this question, which generated a wonderfully open and supportive conversation days before the first lockdown.

 Are any other HR people feeling a bit lonely in all this :( 

So much has happened since then and while in some ways the pandemic accelerated a pre-exisiting direction of travel with regards remote working and technology, so much was new - not least 'furlough', which we were all talking about here. But there have also been deep structural changes and challenges - for example, in recruitment and retention. Now many of you are considering how you can support employees through the cost-of-living crisis. 

Amid all this, we need to look after ourselves and support one another - our peers. 

So... how are you doing?

  _

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  • I think the last few years have been a steep learning curve - literally, given I used the month I was on furlough leave to complete 70% of my Level 5 assignments! There was a lot of pressure throughout the pandemic to give the right answers, immediately, but with no more information than our employees had.

    My company has been extremely supportive of me, and therefore I have been able to be supportive of our employees. We’re a small family-run company, and despite our largest ever turnover of staff (generally overwhelmingly positive reasons for leaving), we’ve maintained our caring culture and have employed some fabulous new people despite the pressures of the recruitment market at the moment.

    I would agree that it seems some of our people feel more fragile, nervous, anxious and in need of support - which is tiring for all concerned. I do feel like we reach a point where we have been as supportive as is possible, but the infrastructure around mental health in the community is fairly broken, and therefore further external support is difficult for our employees to access.

    One of our current issues is the wider societal conversation about WFH. Reading the millions of articles on it makes it feel that working from home is now a basic human right, no matter your role - but half of our employees are customer-facing and therefore don’t have the option of working from home. So that is a point of tension, which can sometimes make for difficult conversations.

    Thanks for the thread Steve - it’s always nice to be asked “how’s things?”! Perhaps some of us feel like we’ve stopped asking our colleagues the same question, for fear of the answer…?
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  • I think the last few years have been a steep learning curve - literally, given I used the month I was on furlough leave to complete 70% of my Level 5 assignments! There was a lot of pressure throughout the pandemic to give the right answers, immediately, but with no more information than our employees had.

    My company has been extremely supportive of me, and therefore I have been able to be supportive of our employees. We’re a small family-run company, and despite our largest ever turnover of staff (generally overwhelmingly positive reasons for leaving), we’ve maintained our caring culture and have employed some fabulous new people despite the pressures of the recruitment market at the moment.

    I would agree that it seems some of our people feel more fragile, nervous, anxious and in need of support - which is tiring for all concerned. I do feel like we reach a point where we have been as supportive as is possible, but the infrastructure around mental health in the community is fairly broken, and therefore further external support is difficult for our employees to access.

    One of our current issues is the wider societal conversation about WFH. Reading the millions of articles on it makes it feel that working from home is now a basic human right, no matter your role - but half of our employees are customer-facing and therefore don’t have the option of working from home. So that is a point of tension, which can sometimes make for difficult conversations.

    Thanks for the thread Steve - it’s always nice to be asked “how’s things?”! Perhaps some of us feel like we’ve stopped asking our colleagues the same question, for fear of the answer…?
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