Fourteen years ago in October, the effects of the Great Recession were evident in businesses, large and small. Fifteen million people found themselves without a paycheck, and unemployment had crested at 10%.
You would think, with so much employee concern, that Human Resource (HR) departments would have remained fully staffed, to assist current and departing employees with the many changes. But that was not the reality.
Prior to the Great Recession, the “rule of thumb” was to have one HR professional for every 100 employees. However, HR positions were also culled during the Great Recession; and the new normal became one HR staffer for every 200 employees.
For medium-to-large companies, this meant twice the work for an already-stretched-thin HR department. For small companies, it was just “business as usual” for the solo practitioner.
All that might not seem too cumbersome for a one-person department, right? Fewer employees means less work, right?