Is Being an HR Manager About Skills or Innate Traits? Let's Discuss

Dear members,

This question always keeps me pondering as to whether HR is a specialized job. To me, anyone with an attitude of looking at both sides of the coin can prove to be a good HR manager too. What differentiates a qualified HR professional vis-a-vis others who have an inbuilt character suitable to do this job or have picked up the traits in their work life? What, according to a business perspective, should be the ideal profile for an HR Manager? What is the unique selling proposition (USP) for HR in business? A lot of jargon is used in our day-to-day work like Strategic HR, Business Manager, Talent Management, Performance Management. To me, all of these are very fundamental aspects of a human being's character.

I would invite the views of my friends.

Narayan

Of course, HR is a specialized function. See what happens if an accountant tries to do HR as well. In fact, I think HR is a very difficult function to manage/run because it cannot be quantified in any way, only assumed and opinionated upon.

Regards, Devjit

Hi! I'm really happy to see this post.

As part of my masters, I did a comparative study of 'complexity science' (often criticized as a pseudoscience) and 'HRD'. The reason for doing this study was two-fold:
a. Understanding HRD
b. Delineating the recent trend in HR of questioning its own existence. The criticism towards HR has been augmented by the stress on HR outsourcing.

My approach is simple. Yes, HR is a specialized function.

1. Theoretically, it brings together varied disciplines - psychology, sociology, theoretical natural sciences, accounting, statistics, history, management sciences, etc.

2. In practice, a good HR manager is more than "a good people person". There are so many specialized areas that one needs to be "skilled" in: recruitment, payroll, compensation/benefits, ESOPs, organizational design/structure, employee welfare, performance management, etc.

At an organizational level, how the leadership perceives the HR function makes a difference. Additionally, how an HR manager perceives his role can make a significant impact on inter-departmental accountability.

Hope this is useful.

Regards,

Anubhuti