Jonathan Richards, CEO at Breathe
The pandemic hit both businesses and professionals in many different ways. SMEs were impacted especially hard, with the government implementing a range of small business support tools from delayed tax to furlough for staff. Now, as we begin to see the light at the end of the tunnel, SMEs with stretched resources need to focus on both recovery and business development. From increased stress leading to mental health concerns through to preventing burnout during the various lockdowns and beyond – HR professionals have had their work cut out for them.
The past 18 months have demonstrated to so many that culture is the most important aspect of working life. Employees continue to move jobs in their spades, with the Great Resignation coining a new phrase – the Great Reshuffle.
So, what is HR teams’ role in this? How can they help to support teams in the best way possible? And what should SMEs be prioritising to ensure company culture is felt most acutely and teams are supported?
The impact of the pandemic on SMEs
The aftermath of the pandemic across the UK has been strongly felt. This is particularly true for SMEs, with research finding that over a quarter (26.8 per cent) of SMEs haven’t invested in additional training to handle pandemic-related wellbeing concerns and HR staff felt ill-equipped to cope, further showing the difficultly for this sector in bouncing back more readily.
Employees are facing a plethora of issues, from toxic workplace culture through to presenteeism and burnout – much of which has been further exacerbated by the pandemic. So, what is culture? Its definition can be somewhat woolly, but Breathe’s 2021 Culture Economy Report summed it up as: “Put simply, it is the environment that an organisation creates for its employees. It is the mix of its leadership, values, traditions, beliefs, interactions, behaviours and attitudes that contribute to the emotional and relational environment of the workplace.”
Although culture appears to be elusive and intangible, the good or bad results it can deliver are anything but. This report, which surveyed 2,000 UK employees in December 2020, showed that 27% of those who left their jobs in 2020 had done so because of toxic culture, and estimated that such toxicity costs the UK economy £20.2bn per year.
Despite this, senior managers have been reluctant to address culture, perhaps because it is so tricky to pin down. It’s one of those issues that leadership teams have ignored or only paid lip service to, yet an unhealthy culture affects every aspect of the business. It drives or keeps away good people, alienates customers and hits bottom lines. Beyond that, it can lead to bad or, in extremis, illegal practices, and can even bring down behemoths – Lehman Brothers and Enron being two cases in point.
This ultimately leads us to question: How can HR teams best support on this?
How we can support our teams
This is where HR teams need to have the headspace and time to support their employees. Ensuring companies have a strong company culture is paramount. That doesn’t necessarily mean having juice machines, beanbags and ping pong tables, rather instilling true, core values across your business.
Recent research has found that UK SMEs, on average, spend an hour (62 minutes) on admin each week. This equates to over seven working days every year, meaning lost productivity costs £19billion, and time wasted on admin is negatively impacting company culture and the wellbeing of teams.
Breathe is a one-stop shop for SMEs, allowing HR teams to easily manage their employees so that they have the time to focus on what’s most important: their people. Using technology, such as Breathe’s HR and rota time and attendance packages to streamline employee admin, ultimately gives employers more time to spend evaluating their wellbeing strategies and creating support systems.
Looking after our HR heroes
The truth is that HR teams have been a badly-hit part of many businesses. As we continue to support our teams post-pandemic, 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.
Using technology to simplify admin tasks gives business leaders and SMEs the space to focus on their people and drive business goals. There’s a real business case for using technology to alleviate the time pressures admin creates. Using a product can literally give you time which you can invest back into the people and the business, to create long term productivity and engagement which furthers business goals. In turn, SMEs can continue to build their company culture and ensure their most valuable assets, their people, are best supported to thrive.
