written by
Animesh Rai

6 Tips To Handle Difficult HR Conversations, When An Employee Is Facing Personal Hardships

HR Policy Personal Effectiveness Emotional Culture Leadership 1 min read

HR management functions in any organisation must be vibrant to the personal or family hardships of an employee. This is because, whatever we do, the personal hardships issues continue to crop up from time to time. These may be due to a traumatic situation in the family, loss of a close family member, a painful divorce, or even an ongoing battle with addiction.Such hardships may affect the efficiency of the concerned employee; thus, the organisation.

In all such situations, HR should try to find the most comfortable way to mitigate the personal hardships.

The following strategy may be adopted to deal with such situations.

1) Don't ask directly about the hardship

We should be always indirect and tactful in trying to know about the hardships. Though sometimes, the employees themselves come up and want the help required.

2) Listen intently

HR needs to listen intently

At most of the times, it has been observed that listening intently is good enough to give the moral support to employee. It mitigates their hardship.

3) Be aware of the company policies

You must be fully aware of the benefits your company offers in such specific situations.

4) Differentiate work and personal life

All efforts in this direction, should not appear to be favoritism or preferential treatment. At the same time, all this should be done in such a way as the work does not suffer.

5) Try to help

Lunch meeting with HR
HRPhotographer: Laurens R.M.D. | Source: Unsplash

You may try to help by any of the following ways

  • Use their lunch time in counselling
  • Rearrange some of their responsibilities
  • Arrange advance money on promise to return it in installments
  • Allow sometimes to work from home.

6) How to convey the message

As a representative of the organisation, you have to strike a right balance between genuine care and corporate support. But you must realize that an employee has to accomplish the assigned task and it should not disturb the output of the organisation.

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