Firstly, my heartiest congratulations on your appointment as an HR/Administration Executive. Let me confess, you have now been admitted into a school where the learning is going to be lifelong. I'm not sure if you are in the manufacturing sector or the IT/ITES, but I need to clarify that IT/ITES has taken HR to a high expertise level as each of the branches of HR is broken into broad parts like:
Talent Acquisition, Organization Development, HR Engagement, and HR Operations.
Each of these has further sub-divisions.
Talent Acquisition - Resources Planning, Hiring Strategy, Staffing, Campus Relationships, Branding, Channel Building, Outsourcing Contract/Vendor Management, On-boarding, Employee Touchpoints coordination, Reference checks, ...
Organization Development - HR Policies and Practices (Making, Implementation, Tracking, and Monitoring), Career Development, Training and Development, Performance Management, Rewards and Recognition, Leadership Development, ...
HR Engagement - Consistent Communications, Employee Assimilation, Employee Deployment, Employee Advocacy, Performance Tracking, Employee Development, Coaching Employees, Career Planning, Career Growth and Options, Mentoring and Counseling, Work-Life Balance, and Recreation.
HR Operations - Talent and Employee Mapping, Process mapping, New Hire Touchpoint Mapping, Dashboard Reporting on HR Information System (Personal, Performance, Compliance, Growth, and Compensation data), Payroll Management, Standardizations, Employee Letters, Exit Interviews, and Exit Management, etc.
HR Generalist Jobs
A human resources generalist is a person who manages all human resources activities required for a given company's staff. In general, the human resources generalist handles process improvement projects within the organization, which includes title normalization, performance management improvement, and the establishment of training plans associated with well-defined career ladders.
A human resources generalist also provides direct support to the CIO, VPs, managers, and employees within the organization. A human resources generalist's job also involves the management of employee inventories, the handling of employee relationship issues, payroll processing, confidential compensation and benefits information, terminations, employee performance evaluations, and performance management process improvements.
A human resources generalist often has experience in managing HR processes for an organization of similar size and complexity. To become a human resources generalist, one needs to have considerable experience in hiring managers to organize and execute processes associated with identifying and hiring information technology employees. For a human resources generalist's job, one also usually has to have experience screening candidates, coordinating interviews with hiring managers, and managing post-interview correspondence.
Human Resources are vital to an organization's success. Effective management of human resources is necessary for all organizations to ensure that the right people are doing the right type of job in the organization. Since organizations are giving more and more importance to the management and development of human resources, the need for people who can efficiently do this task is also increasing, and therefore HR jobs are being offered by all organizations.
HR generalists are specialists who manage the day-to-day operations of the human resource office. They look after the hiring, training, and selection of employees. They also evaluate the performance of employees and decide about their salaries and other benefits.
In any organization, anyone employed in HR generalist jobs is required to fulfill the following responsibilities:
- Recruiting the right kind of staff.
- Evaluating and measuring employee performance.
- Developing employee training systems.
- Managing employee development.
- Maintaining documents related to employees.
- Managing orientation and induction of employees.
- Maintaining good working relations with employees.
- Ensuring good relations between employees.
- Developing plans for the safety and welfare of employees.
- Administering the compensation packages.
- Arranging for counseling of employees.
- Reporting to and advising the top management about personnel issues.
- Developing and implementing departmental plans and goals.
- Monitoring the annual budget.
- Maintaining and updating employee information on the company's website.
- Reviewing employee salaries periodically.
- Protecting the interests of employees.
- Listening to employee grievances.
To be successful in an HR Generalist's role, the following nine skills are a must:
- Organized
- Multitasking
- Discretion and Business Ethics
- Dual Focus
- Employee Trust
- Fairness
- Dedication to Continuous Improvement
- Strategic Orientation
- Team Orientation
What I have basically attempted is to give you a very broad outline of things that are and what the expectations of employers would be (indirectly what are the skills that you need to possess or equip yourself with). There is a lot of work that has to be done, and you are now
"WORK IN PROGRESS" WITH NO FINISH TIME, so there are only four possible movements: (1) movement forward; (2) movement backward; (3) movement splattered in all directions; (4) no movement at all.
I believe things will take shape provided you keep your curiosity of learning high, and learn to apply whatever learning so that you gain confidence. Pray you get a good mentor, or a set of good professional friends who have achieved something worthwhile in their professional/personal life. Again, I must confess what I have done is just to scratch the surface.
I can make an offer to you or anyone else here who would want to be "coached" - and my contact detail would be [Email Removed For Privacy Reasons].
I'm sure there would be many like me who are very capable and can lend their support to you in the growth phase. We need to help each other to make this a flourishing community of professionals. HR is a very "specialized subject" and it has to be in the hands of responsible people.
I managed to collect this up late last year:
Exclusive:
The six competencies to inspire HR professionals for 2012
Dave Ulrich and colleagues, 04 Jan 2012
HR Magazine - Exclusive: The six competencies to inspire HR professionals for 2012
Modern HR must take on many roles to demonstrate competence and effectiveness, say DAVE ULRICH, JON YOUNGER, WAYNE BROCKBANK, and MIKE ULRICH, who celebrate 25 years of research. Can HR turn base metal into gold? A first cut of the results... Additional interviews by DAVID WOODS
Any good HR professional wants to be better. This begins with a desire to improve, followed by a clear understanding of what it requires to improve.
As the number of global HR professionals climbs close to one million, it becomes important for this relatively new profession to define what it means to be effective. HR effectiveness matters more than ever because leaders of businesses and not-for-profit organizations increasingly recognize the importance of individual abilities (talent), organization capabilities (culture), and leadership as key to their success. HR professionals should become insightful advisers and architects on these matters. In a constantly changing world, there has never been a greater need to identify what HR professionals must be, know, do, and deliver to contribute more fully to their organizations.
Since 1987 - 25 years and still counting - we've chronicled what it means to be an effective HR professional. Our 2012 data set marks six waves of data collection that trace the evolution of the HR profession (see methodology).
This research is important because it defines what it means to be an effective HR professional: not just knowing the body of knowledge that defines the profession, but being able to apply that knowledge to business challenges.
In this round of research, we have identified six domains of competencies HR professionals must demonstrate to be personally effective and to have an impact on business performance. These competencies respond to a number of themes facing global business today:
- outside/in: HR must turn outside business trends and stakeholder expectations into internal actions
- business/people: HR should focus on both business results and human capital improvement
- individual/organizational: HR should target both individual ability and organization capabilities
- event/sustainability: HR is not about an isolated activity (a training, communication, staffing, or compensation program) but sustainable and integrated solutions
- past/future: respect HR's heritage, but shape a future
- administrative/strategic: HR must attend to both day-to-day administrative processes and long-term strategic practices.
Our research found that by upgrading their competencies in six domains, HR professionals can respond to these business themes and create sustainable value.
These six HR competence domains come from assessment by HR professionals and line associates (more than 20,000 global respondents) of 139 specific competency-stated survey items.
- Strategic positioner. High-performing HR professionals think and act from the outside/in. They are deeply knowledgeable about external business trends and able to translate them into internal decisions and actions. They understand the general business conditions (e.g., social, technological, economic, political, environmental, and demographic trends) that affect their industry and geography. They target and serve key customers of their organization by identifying customer segments, knowing customer expectations, and aligning organization actions to meet customer needs. They also co-create their organizations' strategic responses to business conditions and customer expectations by helping frame and make strategic and organization choices.
- Credible activist. Effective HR professionals are 'credible activists' because they build their personal trust through business acumen. Credibility comes when HR professionals do what they promise, build personal relationships of trust, and can be relied on. It helps HR professionals have positive personal relationships. It means to communicate clear and consistent messages with integrity.
As an activist, HR professionals have a point of view, not only about HR activities but about business demands. As activists, HR professionals learn how to influence others in a positive way through clear, consistent, and high-impact communications. Some have called this 'HR with an attitude'. HR professionals who are credible but not activists are admired but do not have much impact. Those who are activists but not credible may have good ideas, but not much attention will be given to them. To be credible activists, HR professionals need to be self-aware and committed to building their profession.
- Capability builder. An effective HR professional melds individual abilities into an effective and strong organization by helping to define and build its organization capabilities. Organization is not structure or process: it is a distinct set of capabilities. Capability represents what the organization is good at and known for. HR professionals should be able to audit and invest in the creation of organizational capabilities. These capabilities outlast the behavior or performance of any individual manager or system. Capabilities have been referred to as a company's culture, process, or identity.
HR professionals should facilitate capability audits to determine the identity of their organizations. Capabilities include customer service, speed, quality, efficiency, innovation, and collaboration. One such capability is to create an organization where employees find meaning and purpose at work. HR professionals can help line managers create meaning, so that the capability of the organization reflects the deeper values of the employees.
- Change champion. As change champions, HR professionals make sure that isolated and independent organizational actions are integrated and sustained through disciplined change processes. HR professionals make an organization's internal capacity for change match or lead the external pace of change. As change champions, HR professionals help change happen at institutional (changing patterns), initiative (making things happen), and individual (enabling personal change) levels. To make change happen at these three levels, HR professionals play two critical roles in the change process. First, they initiate change, which means they build a case for why change matters, overcome resistance to change, engage key stakeholders in the process of change, and articulate the decisions to start change.
Second, they sustain change by institutionalizing change through organizational resources, organization structure, communication, and continual learning. As change champions, HR professionals partner to create organizations that are agile, flexible, responsive, and able to make transformation happen in ways that create sustainable value.
- Human resource innovator and integrator. Effective HR professionals know the historical research on HR, so they can innovate and integrate HR practices into unified solutions to solve future business problems. They must know the latest insights on key HR practice areas related to human capital (talent sourcing, talent development), to performance accountability (appraisal, rewards), organization design (teamwork, organization development), and communication. They must also be able to turn these unique HR practice areas into integrated solutions, generally around an organization's leadership brand. These innovative and integrated HR practices then result in a high impact on business results by ensuring that HR practices maintain their focus over the long run and do not become seduced by HR 'flavor of the month' or by another firm's 'best practices'.
- Technology proponent. In recent years, technology has changed the ways in which HR people think and do their administrative and strategic work. At a basic level, HR professionals need to use technology more efficiently to deliver HR administrative systems such as benefits, payroll processing, healthcare costs, and other administrative services. HR professionals also need to use technology to help people stay connected with each other. Technology plays an increasingly important role in improving communications, organizing administrative work more efficiently, and connecting inside employees to outside customers. An emerging technology trend is using technology as a relationship-building tool through social media. Leveraging social media enables the business to position itself for future growth. Those who understand technology will create improved organizational identity outside the company and improve social relationships inside the company. As technology exponents, HR professionals have to access, advocate, analyze, and align technology for information, efficiency, and relationships.
Because these six domains of HR competence respond to the external trends we identified, they have an impact on both the perception of the effectiveness of the HR professional and on business performance where the HR professional works.
This data shows that to be seen as personally effective, HR professionals need to be credible activists who build relationships of trust and have a strong business and HR point of view. They also have to have a mix of competencies in positioning the firm to its external environment (strategic positioner), doing organization capability and culture audits (capability builder), making change happen (change champion), aligning and innovating HR practices (HR integrator), and understanding and using technology (technology proponent). These competencies explain 42.5% of the effectiveness of an HR professional.
We found that this same pattern of HR competencies holds true across regions of the world, across levels of HR careers, in different HR roles, and in organizations of all sizes.
HR competencies also explain 8.4% of an organization's success. But it is interesting that the competencies that predict personal effectiveness are slightly different from those that predict business success, with insights on technology, HR integration, and capability building having more impact on business results. The key issue is for HR professionals and departments to work together and to mutually reinforce their efforts so they collectively achieve high performance.
These findings begin to capture what HR professionals need to know and do to be effective. Some implications of the data for HR professionals include:
- Learn to do HR from the outside/in, understand social, technological, economic, political, environmental, and demographic trends facing your industry, and knowing specific expectations of customers, investors, regulators, and communities - then building internal HR responses that align with these external requirements.
- Build a relationship of trust with your business leaders by knowing enough about business contexts and key stakeholders to fully engage in business discussions, by offering innovative, integrated HR solutions to business problems, and by being able to audit and improve talent, culture, and leadership. Earn trust by delivering what you promise.
- Understand the key organizational capabilities required for your organization to achieve its strategic goals and meet the expectations of customers, investors, and communities. Do an organization audit that focuses on assessing key capabilities your company requires for success and their implications for staffing, training, compensation, communication, and other HR practices.
- Make change happen at individual, initiative, and institutional levels. Help individuals learn and sustain new behaviors. Enable organization change by applying a disciplined change process to each organizational initiative. Encourage institutional change by monitoring and adapting the culture to fit external conditions. Be able to turn isolated events into integrated and sustainable solutions.
- Innovate and integrate your HR practices. Innovation means looking forward with fresh and creative ways to design and deliver HR practices. Integrate these practices around talent, leadership, and culture within your organization, so HR offers sustainable solutions to business problems. Evolve your organization's HR investments to solve future problems.
- Master technology, both to deliver the administrative work of HR and to connect people inside and outside to each other. Make social media a reality by using technology to share information and connect people both inside and outside your organization.
We also found that an effective HR department has more impact on a business's performance (31%) than the skills of individual HR professionals (8%). HR professionals need to work together as a unified team to fully create business value.
Conclusion
We are optimistic about the present and future of the HR profession and we have empirical reasons for our optimism. We now have specific insights on what HR professionals need to know and do to become better and more effective at delivering value to employees, organizations, customers, investors, and communities. We know the HR department should excel at helping businesses be successful.
DAVE ULRICH is a professor at the Ross School of Business, University of Michigan, and a partner at RBL Group, a consulting firm aiming to help organizations and leaders deliver value. He has published widely and this year was ranked number one in HR magazine's list of most influential international thinkers. JON YOUNGER is a partner of RBL Group and leads the strategic HR practice area. WAYNE BROCKBANK is partner emeritus at RBL Group. He has been a clinical professor of business at Ross School of Business and a consultant and executive educator at RBL. MIKE ULRICH is a research associate at RBL Group, focused on research methods and statistical analysis.
Regards,
Raman