Peter Dunn: Your HR department needs to be ready for anything

During my research for my new book, “It’s Not Your Fault, But It Is Your Problem: How People Leaders Can Build Amazing Organizations by Understanding Employees’ Challenges,” I found myself repeatedly amazed by the unreasonable expectations placed on human-resources professionals.

In the business world, we like to pretend that HR is a utility—something we plug into the wall when we need a solution. But HR is made up of human beings. And those human beings are currently being asked to absorb and respond to an unspeakably complex set of employee problems that few departments are actually equipped to handle.

On paper, HR is tasked with recruiting, hiring, onboarding, culture development, compliance, benefits, training, conflict resolution and everything else related to employee experience. In practice, HR professionals also have become financial therapists, mental health advocates, grief counselors, elder care coordinators, housing support and wellness advisers. And, yes, they’re still expected to do all that recruiting and compliance stuff, too.

I spoke to several dynamic, renowned HR leaders while writing the book, and a theme emerged rather quickly. Nearly all of them want to help their people. They really want to. But the reality is that the modern workforce is dealing with challenges that are deeply personal, extremely nuanced and nearly impossible for HR professionals to address without overstepping, underperforming or just flat-out failing.

Let’s take financial stress, for example. In a vacuum, it’s just math. Spend less, save more, optimize your resources. But in real life, financial stress is tied to stagnant wages, student loans, medical debt, caregiving responsibilities, predatory lending and wildly unpredictable expenses like housing and child care. The idea that HR can fix this with a lunch-and-learn about budgeting is laughable. Even the best financial wellness programs struggle to cut through the deeply entrenched, often shame-filled patterns employees bring with them to work each day.

Then there’s mental health. We all agree it matters. We want people to bring their whole selves to work, as long as their whole selves are mentally healthy and emotionally balanced. But what about the employee battling anxiety after a divorce or the person silently navigating depression while caring for an aging parent?

Most HR pros aren’t trained mental health professionals. They can hand out the Employee Assistance Program flier, but they can’t make someone call. They can create a culture of empathy, but that doesn’t mean the employee gets the help they need. And yet, when people break down, the blame often lands on HR for not doing enough.

It doesn’t stop there. The housing crisis, for example, has priced many employees out of living near their workplace. This impacts reliability, engagement and retention. Is HR supposed to solve that, too? Should HR host first-time homebuyer workshops? Negotiate rent discounts with landlords? It all sounds a bit absurd, until you realize employees do expect some level of support. And businesses that ignore these realities pay for it in productivity loss, absenteeism, turnover and mistakes.

It’s hard to be the human resource for all of these complex human challenges.

What makes this worse is that business leaders often misinterpret HR’s role in all of this. HR doesn’t own the burden alone. Leadership owns it. Culture owns it. But when a challenge shows up, it’s HR’s door that gets knocked on first. If an employee is missing work due to caregiving stress, HR is expected to intervene. If a manager is toxic and eroding team morale, HR is asked to fix it. If a brilliant employee is struggling to perform after the birth of a child, HR is expected to navigate accommodations and feelings with poise and policy.

And yet, HR rarely has the budget, influence or headcount to act at the level needed. HR personnel are often stuck in the middle between employees desperate for help and leaders worried about costs or optics. The pressure can be crushing. HR burnout is real. And when HR burns out, so does your culture.

Here’s the irony: We now know that ignoring the real-life concerns of your workforce costs you. People don’t just leave because they get paid more somewhere else. They leave because life is hard, and the workplace makes it harder. They leave because the expectations on their personal lives are incompatible with the rigidity of their professional one. And they leave because they don’t feel seen, heard or supported. But how can HR leaders reasonably be expected to see, hear and support when they are drowning in competing priorities?

The solution? Start by not expecting HR to carry it all. Make employee well-being a business strategy, not just an HR initiative. Give HR the necessary resources and authority to create meaningful support systems. Create policies that reflect the real lives your employees are living, not just the ones you wish they had. And for the love of all that is good, stop using HR as a Band-Aid for problems you’re not willing to solve at the root.

HR folks can’t do it alone. They were never meant to. It’s not their fault. But if we keep pretending they can do everything, it becomes everyone’s problem.•

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Dunn is CEO of Your Money Line powered by Pete the Planner, an employee-benefit organization focused on solving employees’ financial challenges. Email your financial questions to [email protected].