The ecstasy and agony of working as an HR professional in organizations today.
What does it take to become an HR Professional in today’s world? HR as a role has evolved through the 20th century from doing only transactional jobs to being the game changer for the business. We as a community have moved forward to being the strategic partners for business and involved in the growth of the organization.
HR work has consistently grown more and more interesting and rewarding for professionals. It has become a culmination of three basic skills – understanding business tactics, being hands on your topic, and most importantly, understand and bring out the best with the human factor.
HR now encompasses a wide array of job opportunities, from Talent Acquisition to Compensation and Benefits to HR Business Partner to Employee Engagement and so on and so forth. But all of these areas have evolved and transformed. Innovation is the key. We are striving to be more innovative in our work and our deliverables.
Digital Transformation is taking the HR profession by storm. Digitalization and Artificial Intelligence in HR Areas has helped us reach new milestones and has helped us with accuracy, meeting timelines and improve results. This means that we as professionals have to become more tech savvy and be flexible and agile in implementing it across the organization.
The glee of seeing something which was your brain-child help in improving the process and impacting the organization is something which is beyond simple happiness. It is a sense of satisfaction and pride. With a simple change we can impact the lives of so many people. Hence it also makes us responsible for our actions and builds our trust and credibility.
For me, the most interesting part of being in the HR fraternity is also being in the constant thick and thin with the business or with the employee. It is self-evolving and helps me be a better human being by improving upon my communication, discipline, relations on a professional as well as on a personal level.
I have experienced some wonderful projects with my peers and seen the positive impact it has had on the organization. This does not mean that everything is going on the desirous path. There are lot of improvement areas, and HR being the front runner for change in the organization, they generally land up on our laps.
It is a fact that as a professional we are looking for new challenges always, but there are also some people in the organization who refuse to look beyond the transactional roles for us.
This becomes contradictory for the HR Professional as we are striving to move our role beyond the everyday grime, whereas some people always want us to settle arguments, be the policeman and eve act as counsellors to the employees. The mindset change at business leve is something we need to target.
Hence we need to walk on a very tight line and maintain the balance. This sometimes becomes very grueling and challenges are aplenty.
Even though we have moved ahead a lot from the starting line somewhere in the beginning of the 20th century, we need to cover many more miles and have a long journey ahead of us which will be bumpy and rough.
This is good for us as the world of opportunities has opened to the HR Professionals. We just need to grab them.
