Why HR Starts Every Year Behind (And How to Stop the Cycle)

After 15 years in HR, Mikki Forbes, Co-Founder and COO of Forbes Consulting, LLC, now partners with executives as a Fractional HR leader to design people systems that work — systems that reduce turnover, strengthen leadership pipelines, and align everyday behavior with business goals.

As the year turns, HR is expected to help every department reset by realigning priorities, stabilizing teams, and guiding leaders into the new year. Yet while HR supports the organization’s transition, its own systems, workflows, and unresolved inefficiencies are often carried straight into January.

The result is predictable. HR begins the year reacting, managing backlog, pressure, and risk instead of setting direction. This pattern repeats annually not because HR is ineffective, but because HR rarely gets the same reset it is expected to provide for everyone else.

Over time, adaptability becomes a liability. When HR absorbs pressure without recalibrating its own operating model, endurance is mistaken for effectiveness.

December doesn’t just create pressure, it exposes it.

Policy updates, year-end reporting, benefits administration, PTO gaps, and employee relations issues all collide in a compressed window. At the same time, employee stress rises. Grief, financial strain, burnout, and disengagement surface more openly during the holidays, pulling HR deeper into emotional labor.

Under that strain, familiar cracks widen. Manual workarounds multiply. Inconsistent processes resurface. Systems that “mostly work” begin to fail under volume and urgency. HR teams respond the only way they can by working longer, improvising, and pushing through.

SHRM says that HR responsibilities expand without corresponding increases in capacity or structural support. December simply makes that imbalance visible.

What rarely happens is a pause to ask whether the way HR is operating is sustainable.

When HR enters January already behind, the consequences ripple quickly.

Operational issues crowd out strategic work. Managers grow frustrated by delays or inconsistent guidance. Employees experience uneven support as HR triages competing priorities. Over time, credibility erodes but not because HR lacks expertise, but because the system cannot keep up.

This reactive posture also increases risk. Incomplete documentation, delayed follow-up, and inconsistent policy application leave organizations exposed. Issues that might have been resolved quietly in December become more visible in January, when leaders expect momentum and clarity.

Gartner has consistently warned that ineffective HR operating models allow inefficiencies to accumulate, limiting an organization’s ability to respond during periods of change. January is one of those periods.

Why HR Resets Rarely Happen

HR resets don’t fail because they’re unimportant. They fail because they aren’t urgent in the traditional sense.

There’s no single deadline forcing HR to reassess workflows, redesign intake, or evaluate tools. These efforts feel less pressing than responding to today’s issue, even though skipping them guarantees the same problems will reappear.

There’s also a cultural factor. HR professionals are conditioned to support others first. Pausing to address their own function can feel indulgent or impractical, especially in lean environments.

But skipping this work has a cost and HR pays it every January.

A reset doesn’t require a full overhaul. It requires intention, clarity, and leadership support starting with recognition that HR effectiveness depends on the health of its own operating foundation.

What a Meaningful HR Reset Actually Looks Like

A sustainable reset starts with an honest assessment of how HR work really flows. Useful questions include:

• Where are requests coming from and how are they triaged?
• Which processes rely on individual heroics instead of structure?
• Where are manual steps compensating for system limitations?

These questions surface friction that has often been normalized over time.

Next comes prioritization. Not everything can be fixed at once but not everything should be carried forward. HR should identify which processes create the most drag in January and address those first. Intake processes, documentation standards, and manager communication protocols are common pressure points.

Leadership alignment is critical. HR cannot reset in isolation. Leaders need to understand what’s changing, why it matters, and what tradeoffs are involved especially when resetting expectations around responsiveness or scope. Without alignment, old habits quickly undermine new structures.

Supporting Employees Without Overloading HR

Any reset must account for the emotional realities of the season. Employee stress doesn’t disappear in January. HR remains the point of contact for grief, burnout, and personal disruption.

Without structure, this support becomes reactive and uneven.

A sustainable approach clarifies roles. Managers need guidance on how to support employees, when to escalate concerns, and what resources are available. HR’s role shifts from absorbing every issue to enabling consistent support across the organization.

This protects employees without exhausting HR.

The most effective HR teams resist the urge to rush into January without reflection. They use the year-end transition to close open loops, reset expectations, and strengthen the systems that support their work.

This pause is not a loss of momentum. It’s an investment in stability.

Harvard Business Review continues to emphasize that HR’s role is expanding and that expansion requires clearer operating models and stronger alignment. Without a reset, growth becomes unsustainable. With one, HR is better positioned to lead.

When HR starts the year with clarity, structure, and realistic capacity, the benefits extend beyond the function itself. Managers receive consistent guidance. Employees experience steadier support. Leaders gain a true execution partner—not a function in constant recovery mode.

HR doesn’t need a reset because it has failed. It needs one because it has adapted for too long without reinforcement.

January shouldn’t be about catching up. It should be about moving forward with intention.

The information contained in this site is provided for informational purposes only, and should not be construed as legal advice on any subject matter.