I recently read an interesting post from Heather Vogel – the HR Whisperer – over on the HR Mouth of the South blog called “Superjobs or Super Stress.” She cites an article from the Wall Street Journal about how with the continuing economic instability, employees who have been forced to take on multi-functional roles will be required to maintain them in order to keep their employers happy. These multi-functional roles or jobs have been dubbed “superjobs.” Heather provides some great tips on how to help employees cope with this situation.
Reading Heather’s post really hit home for me so to speak. I started a new job back in January, changing industries from higher education to engineering consulting. I was extremely excited for a new opportunity with a rapidly growing company where I would be able to learn and grow my skills as a human resources professional. I was hired on as the divisional human resources manager. Today marks my six-month anniversary with the company. I must say that these first six months have been an absolute whirlwind and have not gone exactly as I had expected.
Rather than having a real opportunity to transition into my new role I was forced to immediately start running…and the running hasn’t stopped. I still have piles of paperwork and tasks from the previous HR manager that need to be dealt with but no time to take care of them. On top of that our division is growing rapidly and I have been consumed with filling highly specialized positions for an office in another state and the complete re-branding of our company, including a name change. It’s been a very long time since I had a normal 8 to 5 work day.
Yes, I am completely exhausted and super stressed but I still enjoy my job. Every day I get to do something new and challenging, it just feels like it is enough for 4 people. I have had an opportunity to work in areas of HR I have never had a chance to before. I’ve handled a multitude of issues that one normally only reads about in articles from HR Magazine. I believe I’ve done an excellent job with multi-tasking but there is a limit for every person and some days I do get maxed out.
One big change for me has been my inability to carryout my volunteer duties with the HR Florida State Council. As the social media director and a voting member I have specific duties that I am expected to uphold. My dedication to SHRM groups, specifically HR Florida has had a great impact on my career and I do not take that for granted. Unfortunately, with the very long work days, travel and other time consuming responsibilities I have with my paying job it has become very difficult to do my part. For a month or so I even had to admit that I couldn’t juggle everything any more and took a temporary leave of absence from my duties to support the annual state conference so that I could manage extended hours with my paying job.
During this time I was upset with myself. I do not like to back out of things that I agreed to take care of. I really do not like to disappoint people. Fortunately I had the forethought to be completely honest with our team of volunteers. I explained my situation and we worked to develop a plan to keep things moving forward. It was also during this time that I had an epiphany about why I constantly step up to volunteer for so many things.
I enjoyed my past two jobs a great deal. I experienced so much and learned a great deal about myself and the industries in which I worked on top of continuing to develop my human resources and management skills. However, they did not seem to fully “complete” me professionally. They left me longing for more knowledge and opportunities for growth. Hence I began the volunteer with my local SHRM chapter and have been a dedicated supporter ever since. I took all that free time that I had and devoted it to volunteerism. Now with my new job I simply do not have that problem. All of that extra time I had is taken up by working with my managers to integrate new policies and procedures, roll out new standards of practice, and primarily full-on recruiting.
Yes, I admit that I feel super stressed, but it is not all bad stress. I am thankful to how fulfilling my job is but I also acknowledge the fact that I can only push myself so far. This is what I am trying to deal with as we speak. Continuing to be successful in my job while also finding balance across both the personal and professional plains. I know that if I do not I will snap at some point. With this challenge comes even more opportunities for growth. Specifically, I hope that I can lead our management to take on some of the ideas shared in Heather’s post to use for our company and continuously improve our culture for our employees. We all work towards the success of our company but we also have to understand and acknowledge how much effort we each put forth. If we don’t, I fear we will find ourselves as one of those Conference Board statistics. I look forward to the challenge.
Image by @boetter
Steve
Geraghty-Harrison
