The HR Confidence Club: Sarah Venables’ Mission to Empower and Support HR Professionals

Hello! I’m Sarah (Sasi) Venables, a full-time HR Business Partner with over 20 years of experience in the public sector. My expertise spans job evaluation, policy, DEI management, training, and employee relations. I see myself as a facilitator of confidence, championing and empowering my fellow HR professionals to rediscover their inner spark and belief in themselves.

The HR Confidence Club:

Is a community for HR professionals facing similar concerns, findings support and reassurance, kindness and empowerment to enable change. My mission is to empower early intervention to avoid burnout, and the feelings I had in 2019. 

What it means to me:

My values and ethos are all about kindness, empathy, community and collaboration. I will happily help others who need it. This club aims to fulfil all those things and support those of us struggling

The inspiration behind the HR Confidence Club - who is HR for HR?

• The mental health of our HR professionals is suffering, the pressures and demands of the roles and the balancing of many different and difficult internal and external factors such as legislation changes, dealing with things like the pandemic.
• We are often seen as the gatekeepers and protectors of the organisation. 
• The general day to day emotional demands can be exhausting, trying to support when things go wrong, having to be reactive a lot of the time, as we are not being included in the early conversations, whilst seen to be the fixers and solvers of the issues that arise. We can be emotionally dumped on because of our empathetic and compassion natures. The question who is HR for HR, keeps coming up over and over.
• We are often not thanked, valued, respected, praised or appreciated by leaders or employees and it can take its toll on us.
• I have struggled with mental health decline, possibly burnout in 2019 somehow recovered from that, wishing I'd kept a journal at the time to have seen my journey since. Signs started to re-emerge in January 2023, and determined not to be in that place again, I decided I needed to do something myself. People began navigating towards me opening up and sharing concerns about their unhappiness and lack of confidence. Others that new me were asking me what I done to become more confident because they were noticing a change. I decided something needs to be done to support HR professionals and so in May this year The HR confidence club was born

Empowering HR Practitioners: Personal Strategies to Boost Your Confidence

Having awareness and acceptance of the thoughts and feelings from these confidence concerns is key. First exploration of the thoughts and feelings, what am I feeling and why am I feeling it. As raw and painful as that can be at times enables you to take control of the issue, and then be able to plan to address and deal with it. For me doing this work, it enabled me to recognise quickly what was happening and try to circuit break my emotions to prevent a reoccurrence and a downward spiral of my mental health. I made the decision to take control of my inner turmoil, to deep dive into myself, to find a way out of the negative thoughts I was having. I can honestly say making that decision to not stay stuck, to not wait for external help or work intervention, to fully direct and emerge myself in self-development, and other avenues of support was the only option and best thing for me at that time. 

I appreciate that not everyone will be able to take the time needed to explore the self-discovery journey, and they may need more structured help and guidance. I would always advocate for counselling or therapeutic help if that is needed too. The quicker we can understand and solve our concerns, the quicker we can start to enjoy and live wonderfully fulfilling lives.

How I and the Club encourage confidence:

• I have created a free step by step guide, on how I overcame low self-confidence
• I share useful information, signpost other experts and information
• a listening ear to support and advise. I offer free 30-minute discovery calls exploring people's current confidence feelings and situations they are dealing with, providing reassurance that they are not alone in this, that it is not something they have done wrong, building motivation and drive to start with clarity and then working out the next steps out of the situation.
• 1:1 Facilitated conversations

How HR Confidence Drives Organisational Success

Self-confidence is a feeling we have about ourselves, the trust we have in our Abilities, Judgments and decisions, or JADe as I like to call it. It is our emotional reactions to a situation that is affecting us. 

If HR professionals are confident in their abilities, they are productive, feeling well, less likely to make mistakes, efficiency is high, not in danger of mental health decline, exhaustion, burnout. They are flourishing and thriving rather than purely surviving. 

When I was at my lowest, I recall feeling like I had functioning depression, those feelings were dark, they consumed me, my consistent self-doubt and second guessing of others’ views, thoughts and judgements, had me tied in knots. I would ruminate and replay perceived mistakes, replay conversations in my head “did I say the right thing?”, “what if I was too direct”, “what if I made the wrong decision”, “what if such and such is going to be unhappy”, “what if they complain to my manager, or my managers manager about something I said, or their disagreement with my advice”. I was broken, and I wasn’t productive to the organisation. I then had time off work which is also a cost to the business, and something I didn’t want to be doing, personally or professionally, and I didn’t want to be causing additional stress and pressures for my work colleagues. I wanted to be great at my job.

Empowering HR: Essential Resources and Tools to Boost Your Confidence

I believe my free confidence guide HR Professionals: 8 Tips To Help Build Self-Confidence (thehrconfidenceclub.com) is a great tool to look at the steps that have helped me, I cover the whole journey but it may be people aren’t yet ready for some of the later steps, needing to spend some time on the first step of gaining clarity of the issue first.

The private HR Confidence Club group has monthly guest speakers, experts in the field willing to support and champion my cause. The brief is that through their specialism they provide a session aimed at building confidence, ideally with a tool that people can refer back to build upon and review. So far, I have had 

• Michelle Hartley, from People Sorted – Finding Your Authentic Self
• Danielle Wood, Belonging Base – What's Holding You Back?
• Jo Wright, author of no more sh*t managers – There’s No Such Word as Can’t 
• Dr Jo Burrell, Ultimate Resilience – Overcoming Negative Self-talk

I am so excited to have future guests lined up until May 2025

I also run monthly virtual Confidence Coffee and Connect sessions. They are an opportunity to come together, chat, provide group support, Q&A or an input on the subject area, for example I ran a session exploring self-doubt. These sessions tend to have more of a reflective style of approach with questions they can answer and build upon. 

There are lots of websites out there which have lots of articles, reports and tools to assess yourself against, places like Positive Psychology, Mind Tools, Facebook pages such as The HR Sanctuary Facebook group, HR Ninja’s self-help group, Kelly Swingler’s Burnout Academy, The People Experience Hub Drivers of Engagement and Wellbeing at Work report, and Ultimate Resilience’s HR Wellbeing Report

Building a Confident Team: How HR Leaders Can Foster a Culture of Confidence

That old cliché of conversation, conversation, conversation. I am seeing more and more leaders not wanting to have what are deemed to be difficult conversations where it is either the setting of a standard or a sensitive conversation about something. Using a coaching style of approach if standards aren’t met or mistakes made, rather than a micromanagement approach. 

Accepting we are human, and some days may make mistakes and whilst we don’t want a repeat of them, put them in the appropriate perspective they need. Mostly the carrot approach works with people, rather than the stick each and every time. Which leads me on to the need to having trust and respect in their staff, empowering them to do the jobs they were employed to do, exploring alternative ways to develop their staff rather than a command-and-control approach.

Most important of all giving positive praise, recognition and appreciation for the work people do, absolutely verbally but also in writing, the specifics of how and why it was helpful, what benefit it created. People have clarity of the thing they did, they will be pleased and hopefully satisfied, and in turn motivated to try to repeat it.

Starting Strong: Confidence-Boosting Advice for New HR Professionals

Seek support, get a good network of people to bounce ideas and advice from. I am in a couple of Whatsapp groups and they are invaluable for near on immediate advice. To be able to ask any questions, even when you many feel they are silly, obtaining reassurance that it may be shrouded in grey is wonderful boost that it’s not you and that the question you have raised is a complex one. 

HR covers so much legislation, and a large number of functions, 1 person can’t possibly know everything there is unless that is their whole life. Things are constantly changing, evolving and developing and so that network is key.

I would always advocate for obtaining the CIPD qualification, and whilst it is not the be all and end all it provides clear structure, standards of operation and a baseline of knowledge which can be built upon with other avenues of information. The CIPD also provide a whole host of things, factsheets, advice lines, community support, mentoring schemes, the local Branches can be a great avenue for support, and with your membership people can attend any online or in person CIPD event that a local Branch is running. With the CIPD you get out of it what you put in and go and find, it is all there for you when you are ready.

Reflections on My Journey: Key Takeaways

Treating yourself in the same way you would a loved one, with kindness, with empathy, and with compassion. Be a friend to yourself.

Finding Clarity in the issue, the cause of the discomfort, and your current situation is key. As raw as that may be understanding enables progression to the next step to address the thoughts and feelings. Knowledge is power.

Accept those feelings and or concerns as fact at that point in time.

It is not defeat, and it is not failure, it is recognition of the situation you are in, and the feelings you have. Hopefully you are now ready to move forward knowing this current feeling is not going to last forever because you are aware. You have accepted this current feeling and decided to tackle the issue in order to move forward with your life

Explore why you need this situation to change, what is your motivation, what is going to give you the drive and determination to alter the situation, how is the situation impacting upon your life, and how will your life be better. Then explore what it is you now need to do to improve the current situation.

Strengths reminding ourselves of out strengths and abilities. When we are in an emotional or negative state we can often too easily disregard what we have done in the past as nothing, as meaningless, all the hard work, all the great work we have done, and we can genuinely forget. We need to remind ourselves, and then use those transferrable skills to start having belief we can do it again or adapt them for the new situation we face

Identity and Values working out our personal values is crucial and invaluable to our mental wellbeing. Often our emotional thoughts, negativity, inner voice is a misalignment of our personal values. Where can I out who we are, whatever USP is, authentic selves, it's where we ideally want to be

Plan how that is going to be achieved, and who you may need to get some help and support from

Timescale what deadlines will you give yourself for the implementation of each action

Listen / watch Sarah on our recent podcast episode - https://open.spotify.com/episode/6jXMelBYA2v1uyXTKsIAgB?si=804623a25fdc4f1d 

Linked page Sarah (aka Sasi) Venables MCIPD | LinkedIn

THRCC page (1) The HR Confidence Club (The Page): Overview | LinkedIn

THRCC Group The HR Confidence Club | Groups | LinkedIn

Linktree The HR Confidence Club

Self-confidence guide HR Professionals: 8 Tips To Help Build Self-Confidence (thehrconfidenceclub.com)