Hi,
First of all, pls. consider English is not my native language so some of the words I use may not have the right nuance.

I’ve been working for 6 weeks as an HR contractor in a very small (25) foundation active in social work (addictions). They have 2 departments (pretty disconnected from each other), one of them faces an incredible number of burnouts (4 people out of 10).

The current manager, 1 year into the tenure, is a very decent if not perfect person. An issue is that she is overloaded and can not allocate the right amount of time to team management and individual coaching.

Another issue can be that their environment has changed a lot in the last years and so have requirements towards the workers as addictology has progressed a lot as a study field. Sadly, this evolution has not been dealt with properly and there is a cruel lack of skills; some of this gap will not be overcome by training, especially among people with many years of service. Due to company size, they cannot be reaffected elsewhere.

People’s attitude has turned sour, the manager is facing mobbing accusations, and she feels mobbed herself. Any simple 1:1 is turned into a trap and people have over-sensitive reactions that I have never seen in other industries.

We meet Thursday off the walls to discuss solutions, and tend to think that we’ll need to take several individuals out to bring fresh blood to the foundation and meet the expectations of the authorities that allocate funds to us. However, we fear to be exposed and publicly shamed by the trade union.

Has anyone already faced such a situation and would be OK sharing some of the steps they took to get out of this rut?