This story is in two parts. Workloads and Bullying.
Workloads:
Workloads have consistently been unrealistic within the Customer Relations & Advocacy Team. Ultimately the same across claims teams too. All around me my peers were reaching burnout (and still are).
QBE is one of many corporations who love to embrace the virtue of being a Mental Health focused employer. However, the actions against what truly is causing mental health stress amongst it’s employees never seems to be addressed. More staff, and smoother processes are paramount yet consistently ignored. In order to take annual leave you really need to work twice as hard in order to clear your work for your break, and upon return, you’ll likely get stacked up with reallocations of work from peers due to unplanned sickness. So you don’t get a mental break.
They also seem to be in denial about people getting burnout. They’ll mention any other excuse about what’s going on for that person, yet don’t see that the common denominator is the business. I’ve had multiple people confess to me that the pressure from their work is affecting their relationships with their family. One even breaking up a relationship after they hit burnout. They had one month off and upon return to work it seems the business referred to the time off as being due to healing a break-up and not the fact the time off was soley due to burnout from the role. Obviously, to avoid liability and accountability.Reforms need to be put in place to enforce adequate staffing. Employees should have a process to notify their stress levels in a third party anonymous survey to gauge how well an employer is doing at looking after their staff.
Bullying
Passive bullying and vilification or exclusion occurs from certain managers who do so in a way that they can avoid accountability and deny any toxic treatment of the staff member.One particular manager seemed to allow one of their staff to continue toxic behaviour despite multiple staff having anxiety attacks about having to deal with her. Somehow, they managed to stay in a position in which they were dealing with staff and continuing to cause undue stress.
This behaviour needs a way to be addressed. HR departments are not there to protect the employees at all, so they are not considered trustworthy. And pulse surveys are not trusted as being anonymous when they know what specific team you’re from and whether you’ve completed the survey or not.