Career Roadmap

Human Resources

Overview

Human resources (HR) is a general term meant to cover a wide range of activities. Some of the work that falls to HR professionals includes hiring and firing employees, creating a constructive organizational climate, managing employee communications, settling employee disputes, creating benefits programs, navigating government regulations, dealing with legal issues such as sexual harassment and occupational safety, handling labor relations, and setting up policy and programs for measuring performance, compensating, recognizing, and training employees. In other words, HR doesn’t consist of a single activity or function but a huge network of them; basically, HR refers to everything related to the employer/employee relationship. Both specialists and generalists can find a home here, with specialist tracks ranging from training to pension plan administration to legal compliance. In HR, there’s something for just about everyone.

Long considered a support role, in recent years HR has taken on an increasingly strategic dimension in the world of business as managers have recognized employees as a source of competitive advantage. Companies like Southwest Airlines, Nokia, Intel, The Container Store, Edward Jones, and others have shown that HR practices that create supportive environments for employees and strong corporate cultures can lead to superior returns for shareholders by being more innovative, efficient, and productive than their peers. Meanwhile, globalization has complicated the HR role, creating new challenges, such as managing employees and overseeing employee regulations in different countries and cultures.  Meanwhile, technology has created a new array of opportunities for streamlining HR administration and practice—everything from putting benefits programs online, to e-learning, to automating payroll, and other administrative HR tasks.

Of course, the responsibilities and activities of HR practitioners vary depending on the size of company. At a small company, the HR pro will usually wear many hats, whereas at bigger companies you’ll find both generalist and specialist HR roles. Large Fortune 500 companies, for instance, divide HR into corporate and field operations, with those on the corporate side setting policy and those in the field working with divisions to implement programs and handle day-to-day issues. Many smaller and midsized businesses, or those of less than 1,000 employees, are increasingly outsourcing some of the HR functions. A few responsibilities that fall to HR in both small and large organizations have grown into multibillion-dollar service sectors designed to support in-house HR functions.  Some examples include staffing, compensation, benefits, and HR systems.

Who Does Well
Human resources acts as the mediator between an organization’s management and its workers. This requires wearing many hats: It’s an HR administrator’s job to make sure that employees not only work in a safe environment, but are able to contribute fully all they have to offer.  Some other functions could include diversity awareness training, management/leadership development, technical training, and succession planning.   HR will look at both group and individual issues and solve problems on the systems level as well as the individual level.   At the same time, HR is charged with recruiting new employees who will both fit in well and help the company achieve profitability. They also represent management in labor negotiations issues like compensation, benefits and companywide policies. The needs of HR cover a wide range of tasks and, therefore, require someone who is not only good with people, but also organized, analytical, business-minded, and able to juggle many projects at once.

Source: WetFeet

Print Resources Available in the CDO

Career in Human Resources – Wetfeet Insiders Guide

The ASTD Training & Development Handbook - A Guide To Human Resource Development

Online Resources

SHRM - The Society for Human Resource Management is the world’s largest association devoted to human resource management serve the needs of HR professionals by providing the most essential and comprehensive resources available.  This is a good site to view job postings.

http://www.shrm.org/

American Society for Training & Development (ASTD) is the world’s leading association for workplace learning and performance professionals.  Learn about conferences, expositions, publications, products and services, and job bank.

http://www.astd.org/astd

The International Association for Human Resource Information Management (IHRIM) provides a link to the unique world of HR information management, systems issues, trends and technology.

http://www.ihrim.org/

World at Work - The world’s leading non-for-profit professional association dedicated to knowledge leadership in compensation, benefits, and total rewards.  It focuses on disciplines associated with attracting, retaining and motivating employees.  View job posting from this link as well.

http://www.worldatwork.org/

Monster Human Resources – International recruitment database with information on job searching and resume writing.  The site includes HR news and articles compiled from a variety of experts and sources, as well as conference information.

http://www.monsterhr.com/

Additional Job Search Web Sites - www.som.yale.edu/careers/jswebsites/jswebdefault.asp

Human Resources Career Preparation Timeline