Hi all
I had a very interesting discussion with my manager today culminating in her asking me what i liked about HR.
Thinking it was quite a straight forward question i responded along the lines of "i enjoy working with different people across the company". To which she replied, "is that what HR is?". This prompted a discussion around what we consider HR to mean & what is involved. So that's got me thinking...
What do you consider true HR to be & what do you like about working in HR?
Jill
Replies
I think there is another way to look at it as well....
Given that we know the importance of HR and all that HR can stand for and achieve...
Why would 'HR' like you? What knowledge, skills and importantly attitude & behaviours do you bring to the party?
While you think about that here is another couple of good links on roles within HR from @Tomwhaak
13 roles for HR in 2013
10 roles for HR in 2014
Thanks for those Mike, interesting articles!
Totally agree that you need to consider what we each bring as an individual - what are our strenghts/weakness etc.
On the other side of this, it also depends on how your company & HR department are structured. For example some companies separate the Organisational Development part of HR into a entity on it's own so some of the "roles" in the articles you highlighted are not something you perhaps do on a day to day basis in your current job but it's important to be able to have the capacity to assume these roles. HR is a multi-faceted monster haha!
Thanks for the links Mike, some good stuff there.
Sorina - thanks for your thoughts, totally agree about the requirement for soft & hard skills i think that's something that a lot of people don't understand. My company is currently going through a merger & the HR department has been renamed the People Department - there has been quite a few comments from people i've spoke to about this saying it's twee or cliched but i actually think it's pretty accurate as all aspects of "people" are our focus.
Jill
Hi Jill,
In my case, what I like most about HR is working with people, no matter their expertise, background, origin. It's a job that requires both soft skills and hard skills and the challenge is to know or to discover when to use them, how to use them, how to properly balance them in order to get the best results with people.
HR is like an intersection in a company where company's needs and goals meet with people's needs and motivations and the HR department needs to sort out how to put them work together at their best (pursuing the company's goals and keeping the people engaged, motivated, challenged).
An HR person should always remind that the human capital is the biggest asset of a company.
I could think of more but in a few lines this is what I like about HR.
Sorina
I will reply in more detail to this as it's an important question
In the meantime there are some good points (and links worth reading) raised over here