What does it take to be great in HR?

[Raynor]

To me HR is more than a profession. Every day I find it bring challenges of all types: mental; physical; emotional and spiritual. I've never mastered it, and it is that challenge that keeps me in the HR and not in line management.

People come to HR from almost every other profession and formal education does not seem to be a distinguishing factor between good and great.

Finding great HR practitioners is not easy - and neither is becoming one.

Apart from formal education, what experience, values, competencies and skills do you need to bring to the HR to be one of the greats?

[The Y-man]

IMHO it is "street cred" (or "line cred" in this case?).

I think many people "fall" into HR roles from other areas, as the have credibility in those areas they come from.

For instance in my workplace, the image HR has amongst the "operational" divisions is one of "pay roll/redundancy news bearers/training red tape hurdle"

As someone posted in reply to one of my threads regarding where HR careeers lead to - I think the aim of strategic HRM - of having the HR professionals comfortable with talking the "language" of (and truly relating to and understaing the issues faced by) the operations, sales/marketing, IT and finance groups - are essential.



The Y-man

[TriciaDant]

what is the biggest challenge a HR manager faces everyday?

[michaelakassar]

Hi,

I generally agree with the responses so far.

I feel a great HR practitioner needs to apply a strategic framework in everything they do, even in operational/functional areas. I also think understanding the needs of the business as a whole, and gaining basic commercial awareness is also critical, as is good informal leadership.

A challenge still facing many practitioners is the cold, conservative nature of executives and senior managers who treat the HR area like paper pushers, even when they do have some business skills, and are trying to deal with the real, often intangible issues. It appears that most senior people only recognise those with technical, financial, and admin skills rather than people management abilities and leaderships. It is rather sad that people from admin backgrounds fall into HR. Trust me, an administrator with industry knowledge and no HR background who is appointed to an HR Manager is a recipe for disaster.

Perhaps we need to look after each other and inform other practitioners as well as up and coming ones, about specific organisations that really look after their employees through effective, strategic HR practices. Maybe we need published list of the best places for HR practitioners to work, so we can empower people to move away from their bad employers and into the good ones.

More appropriate, non theoretical training in strategic rather than just generic HR would also help younger people to learn the skills they need for the profession.

Great question,



Cheers
Michaela

[People Person]

Michaela,
HR is competitive and there are various pathways to HR. I'm not sure why an administration manager cannot grow and develop into an HR role. Why not? I've seen senior managers from other areas move into HR and it has been disasterous because their motivation is to climb the corporate ladder - not to be a good HR practitioner. I've also seen admin employees prop up dysfunctional HR managers and fix their mistakes. I think you might have had a bad experience but, administrative employees come from all walks of life and are often pursuing other career interests whilst they work, and surprisingly may even have appropriate qualifications and skills for HR (if anyone bothered to ask them.)