The HR expert explained the impact of HR on the atmosphere in the team

Even an interesting project and a competitive salary do not always keep an employee if there is no psychological security in the team. Vladislav Bykhanov, CEO of Cornerstone HR company, told Izvestia on October 12 about how HR affects the atmosphere in the team and why it depends on it whether people leave or stay.

According to him, psychological safety is an opportunity to ask uncomfortable questions, offer alternatives, and disagree with a supervisor without fear of humiliation or punishment. If everyone nods to the boss at meetings, this is not necessarily a sign of a well-coordinated team. Perhaps the employees simply stopped believing that their opinion would change anything. As a result, problems are discovered late, initiative decreases, and work is perceived as a set of mandatory tasks rather than an opportunity to influence the outcome.

At the same time, HR cannot be solely responsible for the atmosphere: the employee's daily experience is largely determined by the immediate supervisor — how he sets tasks, distributes the load, reacts to mistakes and provides opportunities for development. HR's task is to help the company see systemic problems, establish feedback, and build processes in which the quality of human resources management becomes part of the business outcome.

If a specialist is thinking about leaving, the first step should be to find out the reason. There is no universal solution: what will keep one may not be important for the other. Sometimes the best way is not to offer more money, but to give a project in which an employee can open up: launch a new direction, develop a product, or implement an idea.

According to the expert, it is important for strong specialists to influence decisions, and excessive control makes work meaningless. Not everyone needs a promotion — someone is more interested in deepening expertise or expanding their area of responsibility. If the reason for leaving is a conflict with the head, corporate events will not help — you need to change management practices. It is also important to compare the promises made during the hiring process with reality: micromanagement quickly destroys trust.

It is possible to understand that the atmosphere in the team has deteriorated long before the layoffs. Employees stop offering ideas, avoid difficult discussions, and are reluctant to give feedback. Additional signals include recurring reasons for layoffs, high turnover in individual departments, and difficulties adapting to newcomers.

HR should analyze the reasons for leaving, hold individual meetings, and compare metrics between teams. If people are quitting more often in one department, it is important to study not only salaries, but also management style, workload and development opportunities. At the same time, feedback makes sense only when the company is ready to act on its results: if management does not change anything, trust decreases.

"If a business wants to retain strong specialists, it needs to work not only with people's motivation, but also with the environment in which they work," Bykhanov concluded.

On October 1, Andrey Boyko, head of the Selecty recruitment team, told Izvestia how to correctly explain a long break in work. He drew attention to the fact that there may be a large number of reasons for a career break, and a significant part may have good reasons. According to the expert, the most important thing is to present a pause in your career correctly.