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Sound familiar? Five most common complaints HR professionals hear

Most common complaints from HR professionals

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HR has to deal with a whole range of issues; however, it is often the same ones which pop up time and time again. HR professionals have to seek to understand these problems and try to work with those involved to resolve them, making them invaluable to any business. Here are five of the most common complaints that HR professionals encounter:

Much of an HR professional’s work is centered on solving interpersonal conflicts. In any sized office, there are bound to be people who do not always see eye-to-eye. Complaints of this nature can range from being a one-off snappy comment to people who simply do not get on. In these scenario’s it is the role of the HR professional to help colleagues get along and, in doing so, will create a better working environment for all and will boost the business’s productivity as people will be focused more on their work.

In large organisations, and even in smaller ones, there are many things that need to be done and people will want to be recognised for what they do. Because of this HR professionals will hear from many people who have problems with their title, role or salary. If their title does not truly reflect the responsibilities of their role or they are not being satisfactorily remunerated for their seniority, they will want to be properly recognised for the work they do. HR’s role in this is to help people to approach their managers in order to rectify the problems and they act as a useful link between employee and manager.

Most people are always trying to further their career and inquiries into new openings within a business are ones HR professional will have to field. They will be able to help you to assess if you have the necessary skills to have a realistic chance of being promoted or whether putting in the work to make an application is likely to not yield any results. HR professionals can also look over your CV and suggest improvements and alterations to give you the best chance of securing your promotion.

Here is another complaint related to pay. HR professionals will often have to field queries from employees about their paycheck. They may be paid less than expected and want to know whether the figure is correct or whether they may get some of the money back when doing a tax return. Working in HR, you have to know the answers to these questions so that you can get help to identify the problems and how it may be resolved.

At some point in your career, it is likely that you will feel the work-life balance slip too much in a direction you do not want it to go in. People will often go to HR if they think that they are being asked to sacrifice too much for their job. This could be anything from a meeting scheduled on the weekend or constantly working beyond their contracted hours. HR can talk to your manager to work with you both to come to a solution that works.

Complaints like these are commonplace and, if they arise, it does not necessarily point to anything symptomatically wrong with the business; it is in the nature of human relationships for them to not be perfect. HR plays an important role in helping people talk to their colleagues so that these problems do not turn into something worse. Through their day-to-day management of issues like this, as well as dealing with larger-scale problems, they are an indispensable part of any business.

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