R U OK? and value of HR in tough industries

I hope by now you’ve heard about R U OK? in your workplace or from one of your friends. In the instance that you haven’t, R U OK? is an organisation which is about preventing suicide in Australia.

The premise is simple- a conversation can change a life. By connecting with friends, colleagues and loved ones and simply talking about what’s happening- suicide can be prevented.

R U OK? is inspired by the death of a man named Barry Larkin; a successful business management consultant who committed suicide. His sons decided to initiate a national suicide awareness initiative fourteen years after his death in the aims of encouraging ordinary Australians, like themselves, to come together and support each other in a bid to tackle this silent killer, by promoting connection at every level of Australian society.

Their website claims that suicide claims the lives of more Australians each year than the road toll – over 2000 people every year (Source: ABS 2007 statistics). It is the biggest killer of men and women 15-35 years old. For every person who takes their own life, it is estimated that up to 10 people make an attempt. That means each year approximately 20,000 people are directly affected.

This has impacted the media industry (and hence corporate community) in a big way because Gavin Larkin (son of Barry Larkin) led the initiative as the CEO of the creative agency The Brand Shop.

Watch Gavin talk about it all on the Mumbrella report here (and my organisation is mentioned as a participant).

Interestingly with regards to HR; Mumbrella actually ran an article called “Agencies ‘undervalue human resources to detriment of stressed staff’” this afternoon.

Aegis Media Regional CEO Lee Stephens is quoted as saying “It outrages me that there are so few HR departments in our industry. We really need a commitment to quality HR. We’ve got three people in HR and I couldn’t imagine life without them,” he said.

On the flip side, some of the comments from people in the industry who decided to leave posts on the site were slightly different. Here are a few, but you can check out the whole thing on the Mumbrella site.

Wouldn’t the logical solution here be, instead of hiring more HR staff to sooth stressed and overworked staff, actually hiring more staff to take the workload and stress off the current ones?

 
don’t really buy the need for more HR “specialists”. surely the answer is giving more ownership to the whole agency and get more collective decision-making about what kind of agency they want to be. i’m sure some HR people are well qualified and very useful but my experience of junior to mid-level HR people is not great. would be more effective to spend the money on a good espresso machine…
 

I could talk at length as to how true this is and how many ridiculously unprofessional agency professionals I’ve worked with in management positions who think that working your employees til they burn out is something that is across the industry and therefore acceptable. Oh well I am just extremely thankful that I don’t have to put up with it anymore being on client side…

In the case of many agency manager the roles these people hold have been are evolutionary. People did not necessarily start out in ad land to become manager of people, and in many cases they may not be equipped or trained to deal with the requirements of their positions and the responsibilities inherent in these roles. Management training on topics like issue resolution, how to deal with problems, recruitment and so on are significant advantages of having an in-house HR team.

Very interesting words from the frontline for HR and senior leaders to take onboard.