When interviewing a potential new hire, it is the role of an HR professional to assess the candidate against a list of specific skills and personal characteristics needed for the job.
As businesses become more connected and fast-paced, identifying efficiencies are critical to the success of any company, across multiple industries. So who decides on which HR professional to hire? Let’s look at the list of key attributes and characteristics of an excellent HR professional.
Human resource management requires an orderly, well thought out approach. Strong time management skills, personal efficiency and organised files are key to an HR professionals effectiveness. You will be dealing with people’s lives and careers, when a manager requests help with a grievance, termination or compensation they want someone who can get it done immediately with little or no disruption.
On a typical day, an HR professional will deal with a range of issues from an employee’s personal issue, a question about holidays or leave to a recruitment need. Along with this, there are also wages, hours, holidays, staff retention and numerous other aspects critical to the success of the company that an HR professional is responsible for.
HR professionals are required to be on hand and be able to prioritise tasks in response to business needs. One manager may require you to hire someone immediately, while another manager may need you to terminate someone, both situations are as important to the business as each other so you are required to handle both in a timely manner.
Many HR professionals are often presented with general vagueness. Is this a discrimination case or harassment? HR managers often have to act with little and incomplete information and use their best judgment to deal with the situation. These professionals also need to know when to seek the professional help of other colleagues, attorneys or other experts.
It is within the HR professionals power to set up regular face to face meetings to clarify and decode any vague information and to ensure the best outcome is met to resolve a situation.
HR professionals are often met with situations that will require some form of negotiation. There are often two or more opposing views and it is the HR professionals place to find the acceptable middle ground. The goal of negotiation is to end up with all parties involved to be satisfied with the outcome. Unfortunately, this is not often easy to achieve but will become much more manageable with experience.
An HR professional should have the ability to communicate with everyone on the team, from CEO’s to managers, current employees and even potential new employees. This communication comes in many forms, writing, giving large presentations to small meetings and even through the company’s social media channels. All forms of communication must be caring and most importantly believable and trustworthy.
HR professionals are the conscience of the company. Although you are serving the needs of management, you also need to be aware of their actions towards employees and be sure that policies and regulations are in place and followed. There are some occasions when you may need to push back to keep things in order and to follow procedures. Some people can find this uncomfortable especially when dealing with higher management but your persistence and reasoning will help support your case. As an HR professional you will be the keeper of confidential information, you must handle all disclosed information appropriately and never disclose to people it does not concern.
Employees expect human resource professionals to advocate their concerns, yet professionals must also enforce management’s policies. Creating a perfect balance between everyone will win the trust of all those involved and concerned. There will be occasions when you must make decisions to protect the individual and other times when you need to protect the organisation, its cultures and values.
Unfortunately, we do not get on with everyone. To ensure we reach high productivity we must all learn to work with everyone as civil as possible. HR professionals have a way to allow this to happen. This is along with the influx of other problems HR professionals need to solve.
Human Resource professionals are often seen as an administrative obstacle renowned for saying “no” to anything that may make work more constructive or fun. Making a conscious effort to say yes from time to time will have a positive effect on staff morale. People want to look forward to coming to work, and therefore this is a huge positive for you and the company culture you have helped to structure.
Various misconceptions about the work human resource professionals do could be abolished by being more transparent with staff members. Outlining clear processes being performed regarding important decisions will allow others to trust and believe your best judgments.
Become the human resource leader your employees wants. Adopting these core values will make you and your company a better place to be.
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