Start nurturing your HR team, establish HR for HR today, so they can full-heartedly, proactively nurture the rest of the organization.
With a 0,5-2 HR professionals to 100 employees ratio, it’s pretty difficult to dedicate a full-time HR Professional to cover HR for HR in smaller companies. Even in HR teams, where it exists, it’s usually merged with other responsibilities, which sometimes takes the main focus away from the HR team. Yet, your HR team is also in need of having someone to nurture them, support their professional and personal challenges without being judged in their knowledge and expertise.
Why HR for HR is essential for your HR team?
1) HR Supervision: In most people focused professions, clinical supervision is a standard practice. Having a senior professional discussing your projects, challenges and joy is a must in counseling, psychotherapy and other mental health professionals. Why not in HR? In the last three years, the walls between personal and work life have faded, leaving HR Managers and Business Partners facing very personal aspects of their employees’ lives, physical and mental health. HR teams are dealing with some of the most conflicting topics in businesses, yet, there is very limited support which is 100% dedicated towards them.
2) The Caretaker needs help too to stay happy! We wrote about HR Burnout being on the Rise in 2022. Based on our experience working with HR professionals around the globe, dealing with life or death related questions throughout the pandemic, HR teams are beyond burnout. It affects not only the seasoned professionals, with 10-15-20+ years experience, but we see a rising trend in early career professionals, 1-2 years into HR, already questioning their career choice, since they feel completely drained and exhausted by Fridays. How do you think it would change if there would be an HR for HR professional they could turn to?
3) Career Management for HR: The classic employee, direct manager and HR manager triangle leaves HR team members short with one less advocate vs. all other employees of the company. No matter how amazing, nurturing the HR Leader is, it’s difficult to wear two hats at the same time: a neutral supporter, whose main goal is to facilitate the process of professional growth and the role of the manager, who has to to ensure objectives and key results are done within a time frame. Establishing HR for HR for your organization will help you focus on one thing (besides many): being a great leader.
4) The Chief People Officer needs an HR Business Partner too! This is going to be a bit personal. When I became the CPO of a 1000+ team members company with a 35+ HR team, I desperately needed someone to discuss HR organizational questions and a fresh set of eyes to bounce off some (many) ideas I have had on how to rebuild, rebrand and reimagine the HR team in the organization. Appointing a team member to become HR for HR was one of the best decisions of my life. I just wished I started it sooner as the immediate impact was very visible in the organization and on my mental health :).
5) HR Recruitment: especially in the hypergrowth stage of a scale-up or at any large organization, open HR roles tend to be the less critical positions for the business to focus on. Yet, an overworked and understaffed HR team will show the same disengagement signs as any other employees in the company: absenteeism, lack of creativity, withdrawal and missed deadlines. Your HR for HR will ensure, open HR roles receive as much love as any other position in the company.
Providing amazing Employee Experience in companies is a must in today’s employee driven market. Tech companies hiring software developers and engineers paved the way for nurturing and caring for the employees, since hiring and keeping them is one of the most challenging projects one can take on. Since the great resignation started, traditionally easier positions, like HR, take longer time to fill. Start nurturing your HR team, so they can full-heartedly, proactively nurture the rest of the organization.
