Help! Drained by my HR job

[hodgeypodgey]

Sorry, long post!

I work in HR in a big public sector org and having time away due to mat leave has just reinforced that I really dont enjoy it and it’s getting me down.

I got into the career 6 years ago , started in an admin role and now an HR advisor. Just about to complete the qualification once I’m back to work.

Things I like:
my colleagues
delivering the training courses - not really done this before
The variety of the work, am not stuck in one office 9-5, I attend meetings in different places/meet different people
Its challenging, there’s so many questions that can get asked and it’s not always a straight forward answer

Things I dislike:
I don’t feel any reward, I work so hard, there is a high volume of work for what I get paid and yet I feel completely unappreciated. I don’t need to be everyone’s friend but I want to feel like what I do makes a positive difference and I don’t feel that. My day to day is employee relations so disciplinaries, grievances, sicknesses. Staff (understandably) are suspicious of me and don’t see me as support, managers seem to find me interfering (eg want to do something like discipline straight away and I’ll advise getting more info first) they want advice when situations are bad (often they have caused this by not managing well causing their staff to be pissed off) then use me as the scapegoat when trying to fix things might not be popular, their get out clause is saying, HR said I have to.
The culture at my org is to support staff and we put so much effort into training managers, to have empathy, understanding, and communication etc yet they continually do their own thing and staff don’t see that side of HR
The drama of it all. It’s so depressing. I would describe myself as quite a chilled person with few dramas in terms of friends/family relationships. I’m pretty calm so if something bothers me I’ll tackle it and talk it through. Some of the things we get involved in are ridiculous, a lot of childish behaviour, people think I can waive a magic wand and fix it and I can’t. It is relentless and detracts from staff who are genuinely in need of support.
The sicknesses, it’s really sad hearing how poorly people are, and it’s really hard where people aren’t going to get better and we have to dismiss. Most of my time is taken up with reviewing sickness levels, meeting poorly staff, discussing how to support back to work
The pace, the work is relentless, there is so much to do and I feel frustrated as I can’t give proper time and attention to important things as I would like. It makes me feel stressed and that I cant do a good job

I thought I was thick skinned but actually I think I’m too sensitive a person to work in HR. I got into it as I wanted to help people but I don’t feel I do.

I’d love to hear some career ideas or from anyone who has made the transition from HR to another field?

Thanks for reading!

Most of my time is taken up with reviewing sickness levels, meeting poorly staff, discussing how to support back to work

This seems like you are helping people? Do you ever have successful returns to work? Or do you end up dismissing most of them?

HR is about keeping a company out of court. It is not a happy role, but if you have trained the management on avoiding these situations it can progress to more of an employee support role.

From your OP though, if you are demotivated them how do you expect the majority of the staff to be? Are there any benefits or perks that you can bring in? Do you have authority to discuss the overall issue with the board? Is losing so many people by dismissal costing money? Or saving it?

So many angles. So many issues.

Most people do get back to work, dismissals are definitely our last resort and aren't very frequent. We try and get people into other parts of the organisation where we can if they cant do their job anymore. I can only think of 1 time where I felt I helped someone, I helped redeploy them into another role and they sent an email to say thank you. I don't expect to be thanked even. I think it's because you hear lots of sad things all the time and it's a long drawn out process and where people do go back to work I don't see that end result so maybe that's why I feel I've not made a difference, I just have a continuum of cases and never really see positive outcome if that makes sense.

We are such a big place that there is a whole department that look after staff well-being so I don't really have any influence unfortunately

I've gone for a few roles in other areas of HR but haven't been successful. The colleagues who have moved up work in the same role but looking after different areas in the org. In their areas the management are more hands on with their staff, more capable so those colleagues have had the opportunity to pick up projects that are interesting and so have gained wider experiences and therefore have better examples at interview. In my areas the managers aren't the best, they need so much support so I couldn't physically take on extra project type work and it makes me feel stuck a bit

ex HR professional here - what you are feeling - I don't miss those days one bit! I specialised in early careers work and then my career really took off. I still help people too. Feel free to PM me if you'd like a CV review for other roles to get into/look into.

The main thing that jumped out was the training side - why don’t you have a look at L&D/Training roles. They would tick all of your pros too.

Definitely see if you can move into a training role if that's what you enjoy.

definitely move into L&D

do you really need to dismiss sick employees or could you improve your reasonable adjustment processes and utilise access to work, occupational health etc?

You might find you have less grievances if you did less sick dismissals

I'd suggest moving into private sector if you can. Much less nonsense and tolerance of poor behaviour from employees.

Also don't feel you have to make managers take your advice. It's not advice if it's obligatory to take it. Push it up the line if necessary but advice should never be forced.