HR practitioners are often required to deliver tough decisions that can leave them feeling emotionally drained. Navigating this emotional labour goes deeper than burnout. In some instances, it’s leading to moral injury.

HR practitioners have routinely been tasked with managing some of the most challenging aspects of work. However, over the past couple of years, this has become more pronounced.

Modern work life has become much more complex. Employees are growingly disillusioned as trust in authorities and institutions breaks down; mental health issues are on the rise; artificial intelligence technologies promise transformation but also disruption; and, amid this, economic pressures persist. 

While many of these challenges sit outside of HR’s control, their ripple effects often manifest in the workplace.

Managing these challenges all at once could be leading to an emotionally depleted profession. In fact, research published in CIPD’s People Management found that 34 per cent of HR professionals were considering leaving the profession due to burnout.

HR’s emotional labour

Much of the emotional exhaustion felt by HR practitioners is likely due to dealing with emotionally taxing situations, such as supporting distressed employees through life-changing events or supporting a business through a major transition.

Adding to this is the fact that HR practitioners are often pulled in multiple directions – from advocating for the employee to supporting the business’s broader goals which, at times, can conflict with one another.

“There’s a two-way advocacy role for HR and people and culture leaders,” says Venerable Canon Rod Bower, Director of Mission at Newcastle Anglican and upcoming speaker at AHRI’s National Convention and Exhibition.  

“If they see a number of employees coming to them with a similar discordance of values, then HR’s advocacy role is to go to the governance body and say, ‘Something needs to change here.’

“By the same token, there’s often also a tension from the organisation, with HR needing to say to team leaders, ‘We don’t seem to be meeting our objectives here. What needs to change for us to meet them?’”

When HR practitioners continually mediate between these functions, often acting as the organisational shock absorber of negative emotions arising from the workforce, it can lead to deeper emotional challenges.  

“Sometimes moral dilemmas arise because there’s actually no good choice. We want individuals to not take that on as their own personal dilemma, but recognise it as a dilemma of the work they’re doing.” – Dr Andrea Phelps, Deputy Director, Phoenix Australia, Centre for Posttraumatic Mental Health

The risk of moral injury

It’s not uncommon for HR practitioners to be charged with complex tasks that might go against their own moral compass, such as utilising data from the digital monitoring of employee activities without full transparency or consent. 

Continuous exposure to organisational decisions that go against their personal values can put HR practitioners at risk of ‘moral injury’.

The term was formally coined in reference to returning soldiers and has been recognised across professions such as healthcare and education. 

“If my personal values aren’t resonating with the organisational values, and I have to behave in a way that offends my personal values, that’s when you’ll [risk] moral injury,” says Bower. “It’s not good for the wellbeing of the employee, and it’s certainly not good for the wellbeing of the organisation.”

Moral injury is a step up from compassion fatigue, says Dr Andrea Phelps, Deputy Director of Phoenix Australia, Centre for Posttraumatic Mental Health, and Associate Professor at the Department of Psychiatry in the University of Melbourne.  

“Where compassion fatigue is specifically related to the effect of working in a caring profession that demands compassion for others, moral injury occurs specifically in response to events that transgress one’s moral code,” says Phelps.

Those who experience it may grapple with ‘moral emotions’ such as guilt and disgust, and struggle with “shattered beliefs about humanity,” says Phelps.

Read HRM’s article on tips to identify and mitigate burnout in HR practitioners.

What causes moral injury?

Phelps says it’s important to think about moral injury on a continuum.

“In the HR profession, the greater risk is the accumulation over time of mild to moderate stresses that have a moral dimension. It’s probably not one single event, but the accumulation of being put in difficult situations.”

There are three types of events that can give rise to moral injury:

• Transgressions by others: “This is where individuals see something someone else has done that cuts across their sense of right and wrong, which can lead to feelings of injustice or anger,” says Phelps.
  
  For instance, an HR practitioner might need to get on board with a management decision they disagree with, such as sunsetting the company’s DEI initiatives, which they have been making progress on for years. 
• Transgressions individuals commit themselves: “If they do something themselves that goes against their moral code, that might lead to feelings like guilt or shame.”
  
  Consider an HR practitioner who delivers a termination they disagree with on ethical grounds, such as a long-tenured employee whose role is being automated without a clear strategy in mind. 
• Betrayal: “This is when individuals feel let down by someone in authority. That could be with the organisation, when someone is asked to act in a way that goes against what they believe to be right.”
  
  For example, an HR leader who may have been instructed to minimise internal knowledge of incidents of workplace bullying by a member of the executive team.

The effects of moral injury goes beyond psychological harm.

“Moral injury can contribute to lower morale, loss of team cohesion, loss of trust in leadership and, over time, have a negative impact on workplace culture,” says Phelps.

“One of the key things we see in someone who has a moral injury is that they start to feel a loss of belonging or loss of meaning in their work.”

Bower adds that it can also impact workplace civility.

“We often go through our workspace sometimes feeling uncomfortable, or with a sense of disquiet and not quite knowing why. If we don’t know why, we’ll tend to project it onto [our colleagues].”

Protecting HR’s mental health

Preventing moral injury requires a holistic approach – one that factors in individual and environmental factors. This is particularly important, with employers now legally charged with managing psychosocial risks in the workplace. 

Below are some strategies HR and leaders can put in place to avoid moral injury.

1. Acknowledging moral dilemmas

Phelps acknowledges the vulnerabilities involved in opening up about emotions such as shame in the workplace.

This is where equipping HR leaders with trauma-informed training and cultivating psychological safety is critical to facilitate a safe space for practitioners to process their experiences. 

On a team level, HR leaders can consider how they are distributing work with a high emotional load amongst their team. This could look like rotating responsibilities so each practitioner is not overly burdened with emotionally demanding tasks, or including rest and recovery time following a potentially emotionally taxing situation, such as a redundancy.

Sign up to AHRI’s webinar on addressing burnout and practical wellbeing strategies for HR practitioners.

2. Create support and supervision networks

Professional workplace supervision models, like those practised in psychology, can be beneficial to identifying signs of moral distress in the HR community.

Trained supervisors can guide HR practitioners in confidential conversations to discuss aspects of an interaction which may have caused moral discomfort and reflect on how they responded.

At his organisation, Bower practices a structured form of reflexive supervision which is often used by chaplains for a variety of reasons.

“Have each and every one of your people and culture team actively engaged in workplace supervision. Make it values-based workplace supervision. 

“Reflexive supervision can be facilitated with very little training, as long as they stick to the rules and keep it safe.

“It’s about raising the consciousness of the soul, role and context – raising the consciousness of what motivates me to be here.”

Bower says when reflexive supervision is practiced on a regular basis, participants walk away with deeper insights into the impact of their work and stronger connections to their colleagues.

“Every month we come together for an hour and we do our supervision because it holds the space and it deepens the teams’ trust.”

This isn’t to say that HR managers should be wholly tasked with their team’s mental health, especially if they’re in the red zone themselves. It may be appropriate for leaders to encourage HR practitioners to access specialist external mental health services. 

3. Reconnecting to your values and purpose

Helping leaders to deeply understand their own values can help when it comes to repairing moral injury.

“I sometimes get our senior leaders to do a values survey and come into a workshop with a consciousness of what their values actually are,” says Bower.

“When I first did this, I thought I knew what my values were, but I got a bit of a surprise when I saw they were quite different.

“I’d spent many years working in the human rights field which I found rewarding but exhausting. 

“I eventually discovered that my exhaustion was due, at least in part, to the fact that while I was, and remain, passionate about justice, surprisingly, it is not one of my core values. Duty is – something that has taken almost a lifetime to understand.”

A core component of repairing an individual’s relationship with their work is asking them to name the value(s) they feel have been compromised, says Phelps. 

“We want them to share [the experience] with someone, so if they’re thinking, ‘This is all my fault’, or, ‘This is the organisation’s fault’, they might be able to see it from a different point of view.

“Sometimes moral dilemmas arise because there’s actually no good choice. We want individuals to not take that on as their own personal dilemma, but recognise it as a dilemma of the work they’re doing.”

Phelps also suggests creating opportunities for individuals who have experienced moral injury to re-iterate the value that has been violated, work through forgiveness and make amends with those harmed – helping them to restore not only their sense of purpose, but also their sense of self.

While navigating complex workforce challenges, which demand ethical decision-making, are inherent to HR’s work, creating space to work through moral injury can help safeguard HR’s wellbeing and moral centre in the long-term.