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#CareerAdvice : The Future of Work- Four #JobSkills the #HRLeaders of the Future will Need…It’s Time For the Oft-Maligned #HumanResources Function to Kick Old Habits & Drive Businesses Forward. That will Take HR Leaders with Broader Skill Sets.

July 24, 2018/in First Sun Blog/by First Sun Team

How would you characterize your past employers’ HR departments? Chances are terms like “administrative,” “reactive,” “transactional,” or less-flattering terms come to mind.

Human resources originally evolved out of a personnel-based function rooted in administrative and compliance-driven tasks that historically haven’t been perceived as adding value to organizations in the same way that sales, marketing, or engineering do. And if you dissect old-school HR teams, you’ll find many practitioners who’ve spent most of their careers in the field; career paths have tended to be linear, rising from coordinator to manager, ultimately all the way up to the top chief human resources officer (CHRO). This career path meant the function was rarely infused with perspectives and practices from outside the field, and often led to insular ideas on what it means for an HR professional to support the business.

Times are changing. According to a recent reportissued by HR Open Source (HROS), the community platform for HR professionals that I cofounded, 68% of current HR professionals have worked in fields outside of human resources. Inevitably, they’re steadily cross-pollinating the HR function with new skills and ideas that organizations should be all too eager to embrace. Still, modern HR requires more than a semantic shift from “human resources” to “people operations.” It requires broader capabilities and job skills than have typically been demanded of HR professionals in the past–allowing them to tackle critical issues ranging from sexual harassment to emerging recruiting technologies, not to mention a business and industry acumen to rival their executive peers.

With those needs in mind, here are a few big-ticket skills that HR leaders will need in order to adapt to the future of work.

1. LEARNING AGILITY

According to HR tech analyst William Tincup, there are over 24,000 HR software tools on the market today, with recent estimates valuing the market at some $400 billion. Artificial intelligence, bots, blockchain, automation, and technologies are rapidly transforming the HR technology ecosystem. But that’s no guarantee they’ll all be adopted, let alone implemented properly. Indeed, separating hype from substance and finding effective ways to harness emerging technologies in order to execute an effective people strategy is now a vital skill. This is particularly true in small to mid-size organizations where HR leaders often run lean teams without dedicated HR analysts to advise them.

So if you’re planning a career in HR or looking to hire human resources professionals who can lead your organization into the future, fluency with technology and the ability to learn about new tools and practices should be a top priority.

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What Skill Sets do You have to be ‘Sharpened’ ?

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2. CREATIVITY

Something transformative seems to have happened over the last decade or so. As the field of “employer branding” matured, HR added a rarely used term to describe itself: “creative.” HR is now on the front lines of most company’s branding efforts, telling stories and shaping prospective hires’ perceptions of what it’s like to work in your organization. That’s pushing HR professionals to coordinate with marketing teams, making sure the organization’s people narratives support and align with its consumer branding. As a result, modern HR leaders need to think much more creatively than their predecessors. They should understand social media and digital engagement as well as the types of compelling and authentic messages to attract the right talent.

3. BUSINESS AND DATA ACUMEN

While hardly a new skill set for HR executives, the complexity of modern business and the expectation that HR leaders will be trusted advisers to the CEO make deeper business and operational knowledge all the more critical. Effective HR leaders now need a strong grasp of their organizations’ business model and market strategy, industry dynamics and competitive landscape, and how all those components impact human capital–from hiring and performance to diversity and inclusion. What’s more, HR leaders will need to develop adaptable people strategies that can evolve with the business.

So it’s no surprise that one of the most significant shifts in the field over recent years is the focus on data. In the recent HROS report, “people analytics” was the field with the highest increase in expected impact (22%) among HR professionals, 48% of whom said their organizations planned to invest in people-analytics software over the next three years. This means that modern HR leaders have growing access to enormous amounts of data on recruitment, retention, performance, productivity, employee satisfaction, and more. How they gather, evaluate, and ultimately interpret that data to drive their strategy is what’s really important.

4. STORYTELLING

Any effective leader who represents and manages employees needs great communication skills, and HR leaders are no exception. But skill with narratives that can influence and engage people–both inside and outside the organization–will be even more vital in the future. As human resources becomes an ever more public-facing function, HR leaders will need to be able to articulate an organization’s value propositions as an employer, not just as a company that sells a product or service. And being able to connect with a broad range of audiences through compelling stories is key. It’s what inspires people to rally behind a company’s mission and purpose–and, ultimately, decide to apply to jobs there and stick around once hired.

This list of emerging job skills for HR leaders is far from comprehensive. Empathy, compassion, emotional intelligence, knowledge of diversity and inclusion issues, coaching, and more are all vital elements of HR’s expanding role. Which traits might be more critical than others may depend on the leader, the company, and its culture. Still, a broad skill set is vital–not just to bring HR out of the back-of-house position where it’s long languished, but to bring entire companies forward into the future, too.

FastCompany.com | July 24, 2018

#Leadership : #WorkPlace Evolution – 4 #EmotionallyIntelligent #HRPolicies #Employees May Suffer Without…When #TeamMembers Face Crises in their Personal Lives, they Need to Know their #Employers have their Backs–in Word and in Deed.

June 26, 2018/in First Sun Blog/by First Sun Team

Depression, suicide, addiction, domestic abuse, mental health: These issues impact workforces in countless ways, many of them hidden from public view and employers’ eyes alike. But responsible organizations can’t assume that bad things aren’t happening in their employees’ lives just because they don’t hear about them.

A great work culture is one that goes out of its way to proactively support employees who are struggling with grief, mental health, abuse, and addiction issues–and does so with compassion and emotional intelligence. These are a few ways to adjust existing human resources policies in order to do that.

1. FLEXIBLE BEREAVEMENT LEAVE

Many organizations need to be more flexible in the ways they support employees who are experiencing loss. The standard policy of three days of bereavement leave may be enough time to attend a funeral out of state, but it hardly sends the message that employers care deeply about their team members during their periods of greatest need.

According to Susan Bartel, a researcher at Maryville University of St. Louis who studies grieving and loss in the workplace, “Many people need or use distraction to help manage their grief at work, and their jobs can be a healthy distraction. Allowing longer bereavement leave gives employees an opportunity to adjust slightly to a new way of life before having to reengage in the world at large,” she explains. “If they feel their grief is recognized and understood they are more likely to contribute to the organization even earlier than they could otherwise.”

After the death of her husband, Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg revamped the company’s HR policies to include up to 20 days of paid leave days to grieve an immediate family member and 10 for extended relatives. The change was an acknowledgement that organizations have a duty to think more compassionately about how employees cope with loss.

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2. AN EMPLOYEE ASSISTANCE PROGRAM

Few organizations have formalized employee assistance programs, or “EAPs” on the books, and they may be underutilized at the employers that do. These programs can be set up internally within HR departments or operated through third parties, but the core goal is the same: to offer employees confidential support for coping with crises in their personal lives.

To promote an EAP and encourage employees to use it, HR leaders can ask team members who’ve already done so to share letters of endorsement (including anonymously, of course) regarding the help they received. Employees who participate in EAPs often become their biggest advocates. Offer those who express interest opportunities to take ongoing training in areas of grief, addiction and abuse counseling, and suicide prevention. These knowledgable allies inside the company can be crucial in vouching for and connecting their colleagues with the EAP resources they need when HR managers can’t.

3. OPEN COMMUNICATION CHANNELS (FROM THE TOP DOWN)

In addition to being more generous, employers need to market their policies more widely and continuously, making sure team members are aware of what they’re entitled to; scrambling to sort out an unfamiliar policy during a time of intense emotional pain usually only makes things worse. Many employees only learn what’s available to them in the midst of crisis, while leafing through a benefits package or union booklet or by speaking with an HR manager they’ve barely interacted with before. It’s pretty easy for organizations to do better. Regularly sharing information on social media and internal chat platforms is a great start; tying messages about company policies into events happening in the news can be even better.

Managers should also remind team members during meetings and other events not just what the organization’s policies consist of, but that there are multiple ways to gain support and information. Links to external resources like National Suicide Prevention Lifeline or Crisis Text Line should be prominently displayed within the company’s intranet, for example, and leaders should remind staff that they’re there.

Perhaps more important still, leaders should personally raise awareness and launch initiatives to support their workforces. Employees need to see this in action in order to overcome the stigma of asking for help with their personal lives at work. Some may even worry that doing so could prevent them from being considered for promotion. If possible, managers should share their own experiences coping with mental health issues or supporting relatives with addiction problems. Transparency and authenticity goes a long way toward giving employees permission to do so themselves.

4. INTERNAL SUPPORT GROUPS (FROM THE BOTTOM UP)

Every workforce contains countless people who have deep experience coping with a wide range of difficult issues. Many of these staffers are willing to lend a hand or a kind ear to their colleagues if only there were an appropriate setting to offer that. Some organizations hold on-site support meetings, including Alcoholics Anonymous, but for many, the last people an employee may want to know about her struggles with substance abuse are her coworkers (another argument in favor of a robust EAP).

But other team members find internal support groups helpful. Similar to employee affinity groups (or “EAGs”), these informal collectives can help colleagues come together to discuss shared experiences, including difficult ones. In providing safe spaces for those conversations, these groups can also help disseminate resources available in the organization’s EAPs and curb employees’ hesitation around taking advantage of them.

It’s easy for employers to look at these HR offerings in terms of financial cost and effort, but there’s potentially huge benefit to implementing them. Not only do such programs create goodwill within the workforce, helping retain employees for longer, but they also reinforce the empathy and emotional intelligence that are the lifeblood of every strong work culture–especially during those difficult times when it really counts.

FastCompany.com | June 26, 2018