Certain aspects of all professions involve ‘necessary evils’. A policeman has to occasionally make arrests while doctors need to tell certain patients that they suffer from incurable diseases. Similarly business professionals undergo times when they need to do ‘wrong things’ in order to serve broader organizational issues. Most notable of such cases is where HR managers need to inform employees regarding their job termination. Business analysisprovided by the Bureau of Labor Statistics tells us that over tens of thousands of people have been laid off over the past two decades in the north-east of the USA alone. HR professionals often associate their work with helping people so such activities are quite stressful. Many such professionals have totally broken down. Some HR professionals have tried to cope up with such activities by withdrawing or by using numbers instead of names to somehow rationalize the activities. Many such solutions though have not lasted long or have only succeeded with those for whom it was a onetime activity. In the long run, it is only those professionals who have somehow tried to help others rather than escape who have found balance between such activities and other usual ones.

Source: https://hbr.org/2016/08/coping-with-the-effects-of-emotionally-difficult-work