It is my firm belief that none of us turn up to work thinking to ourselves, “Gee, I really want to do a bad job today.”
No business owner or manager wakes up and thinks, “Wouldn’t it be great if I really let down or upset a staff member today?”
In essence, I choose to believe and trust that the majority of us are not inherently bad, committed to mediocrity, or actively trying to fail. What we are is human.
As businesses grapple with the impact of a 4.75% award wage increase, rising insurance premiums (including but not limited to public liability, professional indemnity and property insurances), higher utility costs, increasing interest rates, and the ever-growing expense of simply keeping the doors open—particularly at this time of year, when keeping workplaces warm adds another layer of cost—many conversations are beginning to focus on redundancies, outplacement services, and reduced working hours.
At the same time, annual reviews and employee pulse surveys are revealing growing concerns about financial pressure, with more employees requesting wage increases as they face higher mortgage repayments and escalating living costs. And don’t get me started on supermarket prices. It’s no wonder tensions are beginning to rise as businesses and employees alike feel the squeeze.
A 70-year-old retired friend of mine recently summed it up perfectly.
“Liz, I went to get my hair cut this week—just a trim—and it cost me $70. I nearly fell off my chair.”
Yes, times are changing, and many of us are feeling a little unsteady in our seats.
Now add another layer.
If we walked into the average workplace and took a deep dive into the lives of the people sitting in those chairs, we’d find that most are carefully balancing the complexities of life. Friendships forming and falling apart. Relationships growing stronger or bracing for impact. The arrival of children, the illness of loved ones, navigating kids flying the nest or even the country, caring for ageing parents, supporting young families—and sometimes all at the same time.
Some may be grieving a death. Others may be grieving a path not taken, a dream deferred, or a turn taken too wide to stay comfortably on the road.
When you stop and think about it, it’s hard not to wonder:
What chance do any of us really have?
What chance do we have of showing up every day as the very best version of ourselves?
To reach our potential—or the potential that others see in us.
To be the manager, colleague, mentor, leader, or employee we aspire to be.
To consistently live our own values, uphold our company values, walk and talk our codes of conduct, navigate difficult conversations well, and emerge from performance discussions with five gold stars from everyone involved.
The reality is that modern workplaces are incredibly complex environments.
In fact, I would argue that navigating today’s workforce often requires as much understanding of human psychology as it does business strategy.
And that complexity is only increasing.
As more people turn to AI tools in the absence of a traditional “village” of support or person to person mentoring, we need to ask ourselves an important question.
Is AI helping people find perspective, common ground, and rational pathways forward?
Or are we increasingly seeing self-validating advice, combative language, and reinforcement of legal positions that may escalate rather than resolve conflict?
These are important questions for leaders, managers, and HR professionals alike.
So what are we seeing in our work?
We feel like we are seeing risk and red flags in every corner of the workplace.
We are seeing business owners and managers who are exhausted—trying to carry the weight of their teams while simultaneously wading through the trenches of their own challenges.
We are seeing employees who feel stuck and overwhelmed.
Dr Ben Hamer recently shared a statistic suggesting that 82% of employees say they’re happy in their job, but 43% are still exploring other opportunities. Whether those exact numbers hold true or not, the sentiment feels familiar.
Many people are looking around, wondering whether there is a better option out there.
The challenge is that as markets slow, those opportunities may not always exist.
As a result, we are seeing more people unable to jump into a new boat, yet increasingly frustrated by and potentially rocking the one they are already sitting in.
So what does this mean?
It means the same things we have always known remain true.
Build trust.
Build presumption of best intention.
Develop self-awareness.
Invest in wellbeing and have conversations often.
Strengthen emotional intelligence across all levels of the organisation.
Understand that proactive measures are often harder to financially justify in the short term but almost always cost less than reactive measures over time.
Most importantly, remember that we are all human.
Put your own bag of challenges down for a moment and look around at the loads others are carrying. Consider the business owner navigating rising costs, the manager balancing competing priorities, the colleague quietly dealing with pressures at home, or the employee worried about what the future may hold.
Their bag may not contain the same things as yours, but it may be just as heavy.
You may even discover that the muscles you’ve built through your own experiences can help someone else carry theirs.
Sometimes, the most meaningful thing we can offer is not a solution, but understanding, support, and a willingness to share the load.
At the same time, this is also a reminder that a workplace is still a workplace.
There is a minimum standard of behaviour required from all of us.
If things are feeling overwhelming, if you’re struggling to regulate your emotions, or if life’s challenges are becoming too heavy to carry alone, it may be time to lean on those with the appropriate expertise.
Seek help in the right places—first and foremost for your own wellbeing, but also for the wellbeing of those around you.
And for those of us working in HR, this serves as an important reminder too.
Whatever process we are managing, whatever issue we are navigating, our commitment is ultimately to people.
Behind every complaint, investigation, mediation, performance discussion, redundancy, or difficult decision sits a human being with a story.
An experience.
A perspective that may be very different from our own.
If we can hold onto that, perhaps we stand a better chance after all.
For free mental health support services that may be of assistance to you, someone you work with, or someone close to you, you can access a referral table via the link below. This includes services such as Beyond Blue and Lifeline, which may be helpful:
If your business offers an Employee Assistance Program (EAP), we encourage you to make full use of these valuable services.
