HR professionals are struggling with new kinds of employee sensitivity. How can they get the balance right between empathy and understanding, and turning some employees into an ‘over-privileged’ and fragile faction?
According to Office for National Statistics figures there are now record highs of people off work with long-term illnesses: 2.58 million, and an increasing proportion of them with mental health-related concerns. Each week there are new pieces of research pointing to staff unhappiness: how they’re being poorly treated, discriminated against and unappreciated.
Research among 2,000 UK workers by Mental Health First Aid England (MHFA) in March, for example, suggested around one in three have been the subject of ‘micro aggression’ or ‘discriminatory’ behaviour from their manager in the past six months. In turn, for many, this was said to have led to negative effects on their mental health. Younger people were more likely to have been affected by — or paid attention to — these kinds of behaviours from managers: 66% of 18-34-year-olds, compared with 38% of those in the 45-64 age group. The ‘exclusionary behaviours’ pointed to in the report include ‘not getting credit for work done’, ‘favouritism of other employees’ and ‘sarcasm.’
Are these signs of poor management and toxic workplaces — or an acceptance of over-sensitivity and unreasonable complaints? It’s not a straightforward picture.
Society has changed. People — and especially younger generations of employees — have a much more acute sense of their rights, of their own worth and the importance of equality as a principle. In the past, the contract with an employer was simply based on an employee’s responsibilities in return the for all-important financial rewards.
There are now signs of a backlash against employee demands, in response to worrying trends such as the record levels of employee absence and long-term sickness. In March, the work and pensions secretary, Mel Stride, announced plans to get 150,000 people with “mild illnesses” back into work. People were being signed off too easily with mental health conditions, he said, when in many cases they were just the result of the “normal anxieties of life”. “There is a real risk now that we are labelling the normal ups and downs of human life as medical conditions, which then serve to hold people back and, ultimately, drive up the benefit bill.”
It’s a complex and controversial area, and the debate over employee resilience is likely to become louder and more intense in the coming years. Everyone would agree that employees dealing with psychological distress should be given every form of support possible; and that cases of toxic management and inappropriate behaviours must be addressed. But it’s a set of issues riddled with grey areas. Where can the lines be drawn without being seen to be uncaring on one side, or weak on the other?
For HR to find the right balance, there is a need for flexibility and clear-thinking over rigid rules. In other words, More than ever, organisations need good cultures and people management skills. Where everyone knows that attitudes will be reasonable and fair. Where there is honesty, openness and common sense. Where truth comes first.
With this kind of Clear Air culture, issues are raised earlier, in more informal ways. Tensions are eased more quickly just as a matter of course, and there’s a virtuous circle of trust and confidence in how a workplace operates. It’s always when minor grievances are bottled up, when there are examples of poor handling of cases, that employees are likely to slide into the negative circle: feel more aggrieved, unable to speak up, and need to make more use of formal processes (including the opportunity to be absent). And it’s over time that an accumulation of negative feelings turns into mental health concerns and the potential for illness.
