Over a third of HR professionals are considering leaving their roles amid a sustained period of hardship in the industry, a new report finds.
The HR Mental Wellbeing Report 2026, published by Ultimate Resilience – a consultancy founded by clinical psychologists to research and support the mental health of HR professionals – provides a snapshot of the challenges workers are facing – and why.
Drawing on responses from 1,446 people professionals between January and February 2026, the report shows 38% are considering leaving the profession, rising to 66% among those who don’t feel they receive any support at work at all.
Excessive Workload: The Top Stressor for the Third Consecutive Year
For the third year running, excessive workload has emerged as the most frequently cited source of stress for 52% of HR professionals. Poor management follows at 40%, with lack of support at 25%. The extent of those combined pressures is apparent in other aspects of the data, which shows that 62% of respondents are “very likely” experiencing burnout and 12% are identified as “at risk.”
“When the people responsible for holding others together are struggling themselves, the organisation loses an early-warning system,” Dr Felicity Baker, Clinical Psychologist and Co-Founder of Ultimate Resilience, told Employment Hero.
“If they are depleted, problems are more likely to escalate, decisions become more reactive, and the culture quietly teaches everyone that suffering in silence is part of the job.”
Beyond burnout, 44% of respondents meet the threshold for clinically significant depression – 2.4 times the general population rate, according to Office for National Statistics data cited in the report, while 40% meet the threshold for clinically significant anxiety (i.e. 2.6 times the general population rate, according to Our Future Health).
The analysis comes as HR teams navigate a period of considerable legislative change. Separate YouGov data commissioned by Employment Hero found that more than half of UK businesses (56%) say employing staff has become more complex in the past 12 months, with 53% worried about unintentionally breaching new employment laws – many of which arrived via the Employment Rights Act.
These issues are compounded by the prevalence of complex, unconsolidated systems within small to medium enterprises, issues which tend to make day to day performance much harder for HR professionals. OnePoll data commissioned by Employment Hero from February last year shows the average SME is using 3-4 systems to manage employment, with only 11% using one platform. While May 2025 data from OnePoll shows 9 in 10 leaders agree that there is potential for innovation within the HR function of their company.
Peter Cheese, CEO of the CIPD, said the scale of what the report describes should register well beyond the HR community: “The findings that the wellbeing of HR professionals in terms of mood and fatigue is considerably higher than the general population, and that many are considering leaving the profession should be a cause for concern not just within the profession but to colleagues across business.”
How Workplace Support Determines HR Retention
Though 38% of all respondents are considering leaving the profession, that number shifts significantly when it comes to whether people feel championed at work.
Among those who feel “not at all” supported, 66% are considering leaving. For those who feel “very” supported, the figure drops to 7%. Looking at levels of absence in relation to support, a similar pattern emerges. Thirty-five percent of unsupported professionals took stress-related time off in the past year, compared with 14% of those who feel well supported.
Paula Harwood, client HR consultant at TC Group, recognises the pattern.
“When you’re part of a business you end up supporting everyone else in the business without that support yourself,” she told Employment Hero.
“You sort of end up taking a lot of the pressure of the organisation and individuals on your own shoulders, rather than anyone kind of looking out for you. And because it often falls at HR’s door – I think that is hugely overlooked.”
Three Years of Data, the Same Message
The 2026 survey extends a trend that has been present in the data since 2024. For a profession where almost half of workers feel unsupported or rarely supported,, the report’s conclusion is direct: this is a structural problem, not a temporary one.
