Enhancing Effectiveness in HR Practice: Skills, Knowledge, and Behavior for Success

Executive Summary

Herein, in this report light is drawn on the value of HR and the areas are defined across which the individual competencies can be enhanced. HR Professional map incorporates esteem standards of professionalised skills that are considered important for people who belong to L&D and HR. The present report further defines the eight behaviours that are a reason to gaining significant HR capabilities are Collaborative, Curious, Decisive Thinker, Skilled Influencer, Personally Credible, Role Model, Driven to Deliver, and Courage to the challenge. Further, the report highlights the Ulrich model and his proposition on the six competencies. Lastly, a distinction is made between the areas of professional map and competencies of Ulrich model.

Introduction

The aim of conducting this report is to understand the skills, knowledge and behaviour that one needs to grasp to become an effective HR practitioner. The first part of the report showcases the areas and ways which one needs to abide by in order to gain credibility and turn successful within the field of Human Resource Department. Furthermore, the HR professional map is used as a tool to reflect upon what behaviours an HR practitioner can grasp in their routinely life to meet the striving challenges both within and outside the organisation.

In the second part of the report emphasise is drawn upon the Dave Ulrich competency model and CIPD professional areas. There are points framed differentiating between the discrete components of two models wherein Ulrich expresses what an HR is required to do, and CIPD showcases how it can be done.

TASK 1

A: HR Professional Map

Professional map imbibes the epitomised values that an HR needs to add to the organisation and people, which are applicable currently and in future. It proclaims to incorporate esteem standards of professionalised competencies that are considered necessary for individuals who belong to L&D and HR (Ulrich and et.al., 2013).

This map helps in capturing the elements that are important from all aspects and speciality of the profession driving an efficacious and effectual HR person. This professional map has been set to assist in mapping, planning and benchmarking across our careers (Rees and French, 2013). The Map consists of standards that are perceived to be requisite for HR professional outlining the ten key professional areas, four bands defining competence and the eight behaviours that pinpoint on how a professional HR is required to perform its role and contribute successfully towards organisational goal.

The eight behaviours that lay the foundation to specifying the crucial HR capabilities are:

Curiousthe characteristics they showcase are future focused, seeking innovative and creative ways to enhance value and being inquisitive at all times. At times the approach of such HR person seems irrelevant from a wider perspective being more considerate about the present they often overlook the future implications of their decisions.

Collaborative: such people show commendable capabilities by working inclusively with a variety of individuals who are both in and outside the organisation. Such people work in isolation and fail to identify the importance of diversity.

Decisive thinker: they use data and information in a structured manner to form their opinions and make recommendations accordingly. The ability to make analysis help them undertake robust and definable conclusions (Francis and Keegan, 2006). The most common issue faced by people possessing this character is their avoidance towards understanding sensitive problems and focusing on symptoms rather than causes.

Personally Credible:herein HR showcases sheer professionalism by being commercial and showing expertise in creating value for the organisation, peers and stakeholders. Such kind of people pays less time on developing their peers and colleagues professionally. It is because; they show consistent resistance towards sharing their proficiency with others.

Skilled Influencer:the influential power of gaining necessary support and commitment from a diversified range of stakeholders in quest of enhancing organisational value. In many a case, the approach adopted by them is not reliable in all circumstances they tend to take a manipulative approach which uses influences in a negative manner.

Driven to Deliver: With the aim of delivering the best outcomes for its people and organisation they reveal traits of pure determination and ingenuity (Perkins and White, 2011). People exhibiting this character is often seemed to be unfocused and tend to fail when there is any modification made regarding deadlines, standards or targets.

Role Model: those that lead through example. Such an individual act through balance perspective, impartial, integrity, independent towards the organisation and on legal matters as well. On the other hand, it has been seen that such person does not stand by their own principles and are inconsiderate about the needs of the organisation and its clients.

Courage to the challenge:holds the poise and confidence to speak with courage further possessing the skill to challenge others even if they are defined through resistance in any unaware situations. This approach shows their act of stubbornness to avoid a particular confrontation or conversation.

Identifying the four key professional areas:

Insight, strategy and solution:creating, shaping and driving oneself and others activities in an organisation. Skilled influence behaviour tends to influence others to attain the desired goals.

Learning and talent development: evaluating the competency and developing the requisite skills to perform and motivate others to grow (Harrison, 2011). Driven to Deliver reveal traits of pure determination thus being considerate about learning and developing to deliver the best outcomes.

Service delivery and information:gaining efficiency in providing accurate information timely and in cost effective manner. Decisive thinker often is best at scrutinising information to make the most of it.

Leading HRin order to lead others one can develop skills and advance their experiences across the career life. For this one can adopt role model behaviour that consistently leads by example.

B: Agreement or disagreement to HR Behaviour

Yes, I agree that these behaviours are important for an HR professional to be effective.

C: Justification

HR professionals are entrusted with duties to meet the customer needs and deliver the guaranteed level of services through all times. They are believed to meet employee’s aspirations, dreams, concerns and fears. These behaviours grasped by HR professional can help in bringing the desired results to upkeep the performance of the company. Thus, in order to gain professional standing as an individual one needs to acquire behaviour like a role model, curiosity and decisive thinker (Anderson and Gilmore, 2010). These behaviours help one to take decisions related to competition like technology up gradation, price determination, quality of work, etc. require far-reaching knowledge of senior management to make successful and firm decisions.

Collaborative, driven to deliver, skilled influencer and courage to challenge are the behaviours that emphasise on team building. Such behaviours shall assist in situations where one needs to deal with the hostile economic environment, changing circumstances of business goals and vision require one to make group contacts and solve problem mutually with everyone’s participation.

TASK 2

CIPD Professional areas and Ulrich (2016) Competencies Model

CIPD Professional areas define what one is required to do and get acknowledged about each areas belonging to HR profession stated just right at the four bands of professional competence (Jones and Saundry, 2012). The two core professional areas that sit at the centre are Insights, Strategy and Solutions and Leading HR. the rest 8 professional areas are:

1. Organization Design
2. Organization Development
3. Resourcing and Talent Planning
4. Learning and Development
5. Performance and Reward
6. Employee Engagement
7. Service Delivery and Information

Dave Ulrich has been presenting its influential ideas on HR from a very long time. He has set proposition on the six competencies that an HR needs to develop in order to tackle the challenging economic systems, the technological changes and such other factor that persists within the macro environment (2016 HR Competency Model, 2015). The six competencies are:

1. Culture and Change Champion
2. Human Capital Curator
3. Total Reward Stewards
4. Technology and Media Integrator
5. Analytics Designer and Interpreter
6. Compliance Manager

Key differences between two models components

Human Capital Curator Vs. Learning and Development:

Human Capital curator indicates that HR professionals need to integrate HR solutions in order to manage people within its organisation. For gaining fruitful human capital, it is required to assess the key talents, develop leaders, establish key metrics to measure professional standards and promote the technical experts (Gilbert, De Winne and Sels, 2011).

The Learning and Development, on the other hand, is the professional area, which indicates towards how HR can develop the requisite proficiencies and knowledge to meet both short-term and long-term goals of an organisation. HR can meet the requirements by developing different learning strategies and designing solutions to manage talent and develop leadership qualities.

Compliance Manager Vs. Employee Relations:

According to the manager of the conformity competency, it has been found imperative that HR professional must be capable of managing the matters related to compliance as per the prescribed regulatory guidelines (Ulrich and et.al., 2012).

As per the professional area, i.e., Employee Relation has considered it indicates towards enhancing the relationship between the staff and its organisation. For this, the HR can frame clear and transparent policies underpinning the organisational practices, which is ultimately in tune with the necessary employment laws.

Total Rewards Stewards Vs. Performance and reward:

The Total Rewards Steward indicates that an HR needs to create a system of rewards that incorporate benefits and compensation as well as any non-monetary rewards. Such rewarding systems help in enhancing employee’s physical heath and motivate them to deliver better performances.

Whereas, the Performance and Reward provide the means through which rewarding system can be strengthened. It indicates that an HR professional must build an esteemed level of performance culture by encouraging programmes that identify and reward analytical skills, experiences, capabilities and remarkable performances (Perkins and White, 2011). The rewarding systems must be prepared that are based on equity, market value and cost efficient.

Culture & Change Champion Vs. Organisational Development

The Culture and Change Champion direct HR profession on the need of managing both change and culture. The balance between the two can help in bringing consistency and gaining sustained performance of the organisation (Ulrich, 2013).

On the contrary, Organization development target on possessing committed workforce that is reliable for future in order to meet the strategic ambitions. Herein it is required to define a strategy, which has build on OD intervention and has assessed the organisational capabilities striving to manage change.

Credible Activist Vs. Leading HR

Credible Activist proclaims the need to gain the respect and trust by HR within the organisation to demonstrate integrity and morale (Burns, Smith and Ulrich, 2012).

Leading HR performs, as a role model for expanding its influence on the organisation the HR needs to support, develop and measure others throughout the organisation. It is possible by providing advice in a confidential manner in consistency with organisational policies and practices.

HR profession is required to be capable of using analytics for good decision-making. This makes it imperative that HR needs to be accurate enough to interpret the statistics and scrutinise data to the decision relevancy (What’s next for HR? The six competencies HR needs for today’s challenges, 2012).

The Service Delivery and Information emphasise that HR needs to circulate timely and cost efficient services and information to leaders, executives and staff on the organisation. For this, they can build customer service culture and mark its effectiveness within the organisation.

Other two CIPD professional areas:

Resource and Talent Planning:

The HR-proficient working here guarantees that the association can distinguish and draw in key individuals with the capacity to make upper hand and that it effectively deals with a fitting parity of asset to address evolving issues, satisfying the short and long haul desires of the organisation strategy (Rees and French, 2013).

Organisational Design:

To make sure the organisation can deliver its objectives in the long run as well as in short run, the design professional of the organisation makes sure that it were correctly designed and managed effectively.

Conclusion

From the above report, it can be clearly articulated that HR is an integral part of an organisation, which possess a diverse range of roles considerate both within and outside the organisation. In order to enhance the role of an HR, CIPD Professional Map has been designed which states the areas and behaviours that one can focus on, in order to gain the desirable skill and knowledge required by profession. The Map framed herein has been designed in a manner to assist HR professional at every stage.

Similarly, Dave Ulrich has also specified a model, which focus on valuing HR by determining six competencies, which an HR professional needs to adopt for tackling the global challenges. In the report, a clear distinction is drawn between CIPD and Ulrich Model to predominantly recognise the value of HR in different facets of components.

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References

Books and Journals

• Anderson, V. and Gilmore, S., 2010. Learning, experienced emotions, relationships and innovation in HRD. Journal of European Industrial Training. 34(8/9). pp.753-771.
• Burns, E.W., Smith, L. and Ulrich, D., 2012. Competency models with impact: Research findings from the top companies for leaders. People and Strategy, 35(3), p.16.
• Caldwell, R., 2010. Are HR business partner competency models effective. Applied HRM Research. 12(1). pp.40-58.
• Francis, H. and Keegan, A., 2006. The changing face of HRM: in search of balance. Human Resource management journal. 16(3). pp.231-249.
• Gilbert, C., De Winne, S. and Sels, L., 2011. The influence of line managers and HR department on employees' affective commitment. The International Journal of Human Resource Management. 22(8). pp.1618-1637.
• Harrison, P., 2011. Learning culture, line manager and HR professional practice. Journal of European Industrial Training. 35(9). pp.914-928.
• Jones, C. and Saundry, R., 2012. The practice of discipline: evaluating the roles and relationship between managers and HR professionals. Human Resource Management Journal, 22(3), pp.252-266.
• Perkins, S.J. and White, G., 2011. Reward management: alternatives, consequences and contexts. Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development.
• Rees, G. and French, R., 2013. Leading, managing and developing people. CIPD Publications.
• Ulrich, D., 2013. Human resource champions: The next agenda for adding value and delivering results. Harvard Business Press.
• Ulrich, M. and et.al., 2012. HR talent and the new HR competencies. Strategic HR Review. 11(4). pp.217-222.
• Ulrich, M.D. and et.al., 2013. The state of the HR profession. Human Resource Management. 52(3). pp.457-471.

Online

• 2016 HR Competency Model, 2015. [PDF]. Available from . [Accessed on 22nd November 2016].
• What’s next for HR? The six competencies HR needs for today’s challenges, 2012. [Online]. Available from < http://www.personneltoday.com/hr/whats-next-for-hr-the-six-competencies-hr-needs-for-todays-challenges/>. [Accessed on 22nd November 2016].