The Sussex-based HR tech company for SMEs - BreatheHR - has revealed the findings from recent research carried out on attendees of its recent webinar.

Following the effects of the pandemic over the past 18 months, BreatheHR asked the question, “Who is HRing HR?’ - the aim being to understand how responsibilities have changed within the HR function and whether HR feel they are being supported.

More than half - 58.6 per cent - of HR respondents said that they are not being supported; 95.1 per cent said their workload has increased since March 2020, with 54.8 per cent stating they have had a 3 to 5 hour increase and 32.8 per cent reporting a 2 hour increase in their workload. Over 92 per cent said existing HR policies are not fit for the purpose and must be adapted, following the pandemic health concerns boom. 

Regarding concerns over mental health, the overwhelming majority - 87.8 per cent - of employees were highly concerned about teammates wellbeing in the past year, saying 26.8 per cent of SMEs have not provided additional training to deal with wellbeing concerns.  As a result, HR staff felt unequipped to tackle the problems.

Of the respondents, 78 per cent say duty of care has changed - with HR staff needing to further protect their teams, but 74.3 per cent of HR teams feel unable to gauge their staff wellbeing across remote teams. Experts warn that the impact on mental health - if not addressed - will contribute to staff burnout issues.

HR professionals cited updating company policies (21.4 per cent) and recruitment related administration (17.3 per cent) as the two areas taking up most of their time since March 2020. This was closely followed by maintaining employee records (15.8 per cent) and furlough management at 15.1 per cent.

Jonathan Richards - CEO at BreatheHR - commented:

“The truth is that HR teams have been a badly-hit part of many businesses. It’s shocking to see the extent to which these professionals are feeling unsupported, and the varied tasks the past 18 months have thrown up at them. As we emerge out of this, I think a key area will be for businesses to check in on their HR teams more. Understanding where their pain points are and helping to alleviate them, be that through talking about problems or implementing software that helps to automate tasks, will be crucial to getting making HR teams feel best supported.”