#HR #CareerChange #HumanResources #JobSatisfaction
Hey everyone! 👋 I’ve been seeing a lot of talk lately about people wanting to leave the HR field, and as someone trying to break into it, I’m curious to know why. Was it not what you expected? Was it the workload? The company culture? Share your thoughts!
Here are some possible reasons why people might be leaving HR:
– Lack of appreciation for the work done
– High stress levels and burnout
– Limited growth opportunities
– Feeling undervalued
But, fear not! There are solutions to these issues:
– Seek out mentorship and support from fellow HR professionals
– Advocate for yourself and your achievements
– Look for companies with a positive company culture that values HR
– Remember the impact you have in shaping a positive work environment
I’d love to hear more about your experiences and insights on this topic! Let’s start a conversation and support each other in our HR journeys. 💬✨ #HRCommunity #SupportEachOther
I will be leaving in a few years to take care of my parents’ farm. Currently love my job and the career, even though there are definitely difficult moments.
HR definitely has its rewarding moments, but generally it is a thankless job that (especially in today’s anti-corporate tiktok era) paints you as the enemy and you are seen as only trying to protect the company, not the employees. We are often given direction from executives who don’t care about their people, but only the bottom line, and have to work very hard to maintain integrity and do the right thing for all parties involved, both the business and the people.
I love my HR job but there are days where I leave the office and just say WHAT THE FUCK WAS TODAY??? in my car on the way home lol. You have to have a thick skin (people will ALWAYS point the finger at HR because we are the deliverer of bad news) and be prepared to deal with the most unimaginable things all the time. Last week, I had to address an employee bringing a live pet squirrel into the office, and the damn thing bit someone. It’s a worker’s comp claim now! I mean….come on. But it’s just not an easy job. You have to really love it and be willing to work HARD to gain both the trust of your organizational leaders and the employees you serve. You will never please everyone either, so being able to live with that is important.
Some positives though are getting to watch people grow through training and development, getting to know different people and their skills, getting the rare thank you when you’ve done something nice for somebody, watching people enjoy celebrations you’ve worked hard to organize, and seeing people’s life milestones. It’s just nice to connect with people. But building trust is hard and takes time, so you have to be ready to deal with some bumps in the road on the way
HR can be rewarding but well-paid isn’t likely. HR is a cost center not a revenue generator so our salaries tend to be on lower side even at the executive level.
I love HR and will stay until I retire but I’m also at the point where I dream of retiring regularly but that’s probably more due to external circumstances.
HR is a grind and a lot of HR jobs absolutely suck. It takes some hopping around to find a really good fit: well paid, low stress, good work life balance, good boss etc. Jobs like that are very few and far between.
You have to be really keen on working through conflict among people, especially if you’re in a dysfunctional culture or company with adversarial union relations. And at times it can feel like you’re not empowered to handle situations that call for HR expertise but instead have HR rubber stamp the decision for management to move forward.
In addition to that, you’re not a revenue driver for the company, meaning you’re not driving sales or profit, so the strategy discussions or extra budget allocation doesn’t include you.
Finally it’s not exactly an industry that I saw a lot of movement in terms of innovation. Yes, there are new HR technologies but it’s operating model and practices remain largely the same. I graduated in 2010 and up until 2020 working in HR, the predominant model was a three pillar model, HR was STILL talking about how to get a “seat at the executive table”, and People/HR Analytics haven’t really taken off among all the companies, aside from basic metrics like turnover, but nothing predictive.
I was a Generalist for four years, consulting for almost two, and executive recruiter for HR candidates for two and a half years. I’ve seen a lot of HR. And when I switched into software development four years ago, it was really a better fit for me.
Politics. Back bitting, inequality
When I was dealing with more tactical HR, it’s generally a thankless job and you’re dealing with managers and people navigating arguably the most difficult situations of their careers when it comes to employee performance and employee relations. It can be rewarding, but mostly it’s just emotionally exhausting.
Even at the strategic executive level at its best you’re still just dealing with the organizational bureaucracy to help a business run efficiently. At its worst when you don’t have leadership and HR strategy aligned, it’s just constantly fighting headwinds/an uphill battle/ignored/cleaning up messes/being asked about benefits from someone who thinks you’re still the personnel office.
I got lucky and I have been in an hrbp role and upward trajectory at multiple companies since starting HR out of grad school ~5/6 years ago to now being an HRBP for EVP/VP executives and I’m throwing in the towel and back in school for computer science.
I found that I’m happiest solving problems for a product I think is personally interesting/valuable with a clear mission and a tight team (think labor contract negotiations) and have always been a little little bit of a nerd so I’m positioned to make the jump into software engineering in a couple years.
Edit: Once you break into the BP/HR manager realm for a larger company it’s well paid and can have better work/life balance. My trajectory was ~90k > 96 > 100 > 115 > 135 > 140 > layoff > 135
I was neutral about HR, never loved it. Gaining HR Admin experience turned that neutrality into a strong dislike. Everyone’s problem is now your problem and that gets old. All leadership cares about is cost savings which meant more of my time gets wasted in order to prove value. The never ending loop of office politics, pointless meetings, and lack of support was not worth the little money I was making. I’ve talked to many people and they’ve said it may take years to get a good fit in HR and I don’t have the patience.
Underpaid and over worked. I’m looking to jump into finance or something else. I have worked in HR nearly 8 years and have realized that me breaking my back and working so hard may help some the company but when I get older and retire, I won’t have much to show for it. I need to make more money for my future.
Take everything with a grain of salt. People come to forums to complain. And there are so many different HR roles in so many different companies so everyone’s experience is unique. My experience has been with large international companies and it has been a lot of fun. It feels like a lot of the complaints on here are from people in smaller companies and blue collar shops where it’s naturally going to be a tougher role. Hats off to all of them I couldn’t do it.
It’s not rewarding in the slightest and it really is one of the easiest careers to fake it until you make it. I’ve generally come across more incompetent people than competent – more so on the HRBP side. I’ve worked with a lot of HRBPs who are more tactical or whose guidance is very rudimentary, “Have you given feedback?” vs. being able to see the big picture with org design planning, training, and really understand the business.
The pay was good over the last few years, but ranges have definitely flattened in the market.
One of the reasons I want to leave is it doesn’t feel rewarding and I don’t feel like I’m growing. The only thing that I actually enjoy at this point is the international side and expansion and M&A. Everything else feels very, “Been there. Done that.” 10 years experience for reference.
The other things I’ve experienced is that if you don’t have the autonomy or ability to select and implement your own tech stack, well, good luck. You’ll be miserable.
Also, if you work for an organization that doesn’t have any L&D investments and initiatives for managers, you’ll just spend your career in perpetual cycles trying to solve for the same thing.
I probably have one last start-up in me before I call it quits, take a pay cut and do something more meaningful with purpose.
I am actively in school to work on an exit plan from HR. I have been in this career for over 10 years, and it was always challenging to me. However, pre-pandemic offered me more work/life balance and structure, which made it enjoyable most days. Post-pandemic has been insane for me, I feel like I don’t know what I’m doing anymore and everyone is driving me crazy lol. The cases I’m dealing with on the regular, my peers and boss have never seen before in their 25+ year careers.
Respect to all my peers – we are really in the thick of it and I salute you.
In a corporate context, HR is an advisory role. Not a decision-making role. As far as being part of the ‘decision-making team’, you supply facts to the decision makers. They tell you what your budget is, what the shift schedules are, and skill sets required to staff. You have some discretion, people-helping opportunities, but very little decision making. That means your future within the company is stagnant: you advise – they decide whether to listen and heed your advice. After a while, I felt not respected. Important point: having worked with senior mgmt gave me the interest in changing my role, I found that consulting, contracting, while finishing my uni degree paid the bills. Took operations mgmt, marketing, group decision-making, finance to finish the degree. Back to X-well-paid project and consulting work, very lucrative, very satisfying. Best of luck – keep your eye on the ball!
It’s like choosing a life partner – the company you choose is critically important, more so than the industry, in my opinion. I’ve had great experiences and miserable ones. I’ve been an advocate but I’ve also been used as a weapon.
I’ve stayed in HR for 20+ years, and sunny intense to leave but I’ve touched myself into roles that take me out of the some of the most frustrating parts for me.
How good an HR role is, is directly proportional to the culture of the company and the degree to which your executive team truly believes in the value of its employees. There are financial pressures and realities that you cannot escape in any company. No company prints money when they need it, so you need to balance empathy and advocacy for employees with the needs to sustain a profitable company. There are good companies who do that well, but no company makes the call you want 100% of the time.
I no longer want to spend my days dealing with employees’ emotional dramas. I don’t mean to imply that all employees are at fault, but much of the problems are exacerbated by employees who can’t remove themselves from the emotions of the situation, and make an adult decision. You do get jaded when you realize how many adults act like children or teenagers at best.