5 of the Biggest HR Struggles (and how to mitigate them)

The HR department in every business is likely to deal with important, challenging, and even stressful situations on a near-daily basis. With this in mind, here are some of the biggest HR struggles, and how you can alleviate the problem.

1. Providing adequate wellbeing support

In 2021 alone, days off for sickness or injury resulted in 149.3 million lost working days – that’s over 4 days for every worker. With this in mind, it is important to support the physical and mental wellbeing of employees in your organisation, not only because it is morally right, but because it makes business sense, too.

In some instances, employees might come back to work before they are fully recovered from their illness, which can make it worse in the long run. In order to better support employees during these times, you might consider offering wellbeing benefits like private medical insurance, group income protection, critical illness cover, and paid sick leave.

2. Promoting diversity in the organisation

Diversity and equality in the workplace are absolutely essential, and it remains one of the most crucial issues in HR. Many people prefer to work for a company that promotes diversity, but it also serves to diversify the skillsets available to you within the organisation.

That said, it can be difficult to ascertain just how effective your efforts to promote diversity are, and how they correlate with the goals of the wider teams. The key here is to set clear, measurable, cross-departmental goals so that you can ensure you are delivering the required results.

3. Adapting to changing needs

When it comes to business, change is inevitable. It is up to HR to ensure that employees and resources can adapt to these changes – be it a change in environment, business needs, or customer needs. However, for many, change can be a source of great anxiety, which can be a challenge for HR to mitigate.

As HR is largely in charge of measuring and managing morale and happiness within the business, it is important to give employees as much advance warning as possible as to any upcoming changes, and give them the information and tools they need to effectively adapt.

4. Attracting (and retaining) top talent

Implementing the necessary changes to better attract and retain talent won’t happen overnight, which can add an extra layer of struggle to this HR task. With this in mind, it can help to have a clear understanding of the talent you are hoping to attract, which will help you to target the right people, at the right time, in the right place.

5. Encouraging employees to upskill

Fostering a culture of continuous learning can seem like a double-edged sword. If you don’t offer progression or training opportunities, you can lose employees – however, you might also worry that if you do, employees will take these newly-learned skills elsewhere.

Therefore, you mind find it is best to approach each employee’s needs on a case-by-case basis, ascertaining what their long-term goals are (both within the company and after), and give them the support and opportunities to progress towards that goal.

And there you have it – just 5 of the biggest struggles that HR might face, and tips on how to make these situations that little bit easier.