(PR in) HR Pulse | HR News Round-up: 16th August 2024
Photo by Roman Kraft on Unsplash
HR are struggling to retain their own team members - Why?
According to global data collected by LinkedIn, HR professionals have a turnover rate of 15%. Compared to the average 11%, this is the highest turnover rate for any job function worldwide.
A report from Workvivo has shown high staff turnover rates, with 98% of HR professionals experiencing burnout over the course of 6 months. Given HR’s role in the workplace, the irony is not lost on us.
Still suffering the aftermath of the pandemic, HR leaders are abundantly aware that the last few years have been incredibly challenging, with more than half of HR professionals struggling to prioritise new tasks as well as receiving more requests from employees for support than they did pre-covid.
Brad Bell, professor of strategic human resources and director of the Center for Advanced Human Resource Studies at Cornell University, looks back at what HR departments have had to endure over the past few years, including:
“shift(ing) operations remote and then managing the process of safely bringing employees back to the office. Soon after, many had to navigate transitioning to hybrid work, the Great Resignation, “quiet quitting,” a rise in employee activism around various societal issues and a swath of layoffs as the state of the economy came into question”.
The team caring for the rest of the employees are often the first to be impacted. There are, however, measures that can help reduce burnout and high turnovers. These include using technology to lend assistance, institute blackout days for meetings, and interestingly, encouraging employees to interview elsewhere.
Read the full article and the burnout reducing methods in their entirety on HR Executive.
Does laziness exist? Apparently not
Psychology Professor, Devon Price, has witnessed all forms of procrastination, missed assignments and no-shows, and truly believes laziness does not exist.
As a social psychologist, he believes
“situational constraints typically predict behaviour far better than personality, intelligence, or other individual-level traits.”
When Price sees students missing deadlines and failing classes or people failing in other aspects of their life (such as work), he questions what situational factors are holding them back from success, for instance what needs are not being met or what barriers are there that aren’t being seen.
Writer and activist, Kim Longhofer, explains it’s helpful “to respond to a person’s ineffective behaviour with curiosity rather than judgment.”
Using homeless people as an example, judging them for their habits or purchases (such as alcohol or tobacco) is
“utter folly. When you’re homeless it’s hard to rest easy. In that chronically uncomfortable, over-stimulating context, needing a drink or some cigarettes makes f***ing sense.”
Few people who haven’t been homeless understand and think this way, so when they don’t understand a person’s context, it’s easy to impose expectations and judgement of people’s behaviour.
Price makes the valid point,
“If a person’s behaviour doesn’t make sense to you, it is because you are missing a part of their context.” And with this in mind, it’s a fact that can be applied to all kinds of behaviours, often mistaken for failure.
He urges people to look for what is holding the procrastinator back, how they can help them. This might be with planning tools to help divide big jobs into smaller tasks, or to help with time management, or potentially therapy or creating safe spaces.
“Needing or benefiting from such things doesn’t make a person lazy. It just means they have needs. The more we embrace that, the more we can help people thrive.”
PR Coverage - can it be guaranteed?
Ensuring brands get bang for their buck is essential, especially to a decision maker with their eye on investment.
With this is mind, some PR agencies guarantee coverage to their clients.
With journalists choosing to prioritise what they want to feature, and with no control over this process, PR’s need to provide the right information at the right time to earn media coverage.
So, can coverage be guaranteed? And if it can, should it be trusted to be high quality?