10 Skills Every HR Professional Needs To Succeed
HR is one of those professions where you're sort of expected to be a jack of all trades.
One day you're expected to be great at retention and engagement, and the next, you're expected to be a genius at policies and procedures. This can make it difficult when you need to narrow down the key things you need to succeed.
Of course, certain qualifications and knowledge come into play, especially when you're dealing with technicalities, but what happens when you have all the book smarts and you need to put them into practice?
What will truly set you up for success is soft skills.
In a job where every day is different, whether that's an urgent problem that needs to be fixed or a challenge that requires a certain level of sensitivity - you have to have the soft skills to effectively deal with them. Hundreds could be spoken about, but here are the 10 core soft skills every HR professional needs.
1. Communication Skills
Effective communication is at the heart of HR.
When you're regularly conducting interviews, conducting onboarding, or having 1-1 meetings, you don't just need to be conveying information clearly and concisely, but you also need to be actively listening to answer any questions and be of support
When your goal is to be a trusted person in the workplace, prioritising thorough and transparent communication, both with senior leaders and employees, will go a long way. Not to mention that with good communication comes empathetically listening to feedback and concerns to solve problems proactively, whilst being a safe place in the workplace.
2. Organisation Skills
With a bunch of tasks and responsibilities on your plate, possessing strong organisational skills is what will help you stay on top of your workload.
Not only are there plenty of tasks to be done, but many of the tasks are a range of crucial and sensitive tasks that need to be handled quickly and with care, meaning they can't afford to slip through the cracks. Ensuring you have a solid system you use to keep track of tasks and deadlines will leave little room for mistakes.
Staying organised isn't just for the benefit of the company either, it's for the benefit of you. Did you know that 50% of HR professionals feel burned out? (HR Magazine). But did you also know that organisations can help reduce burnout? (Gallup). If you want to support your well-being at work, this is a simple way to help.
3. Priority Management
Just because you've got plenty of tasks to complete, not all of them have the same urgency.
If you treat them like they do, you will quickly fall behind in tasks, fail to respond to situations when you should and not balance the daily ups and downs that human resources naturally has. Being able to not only have time management but identify and prioritise tasks based on their urgency and importance is crucial for maintaining productivity and meeting deadlines.
4. Proactivity
HR isn't the sort of job where you wait around for things to do.
Anticipating and addressing potential issues before people even realise there are issues is an invaluable skill in this industry. Whether that's improving employee engagement to prevent turnover, or introducing better performance management strategies to ensure employees know there's structure in place to progress - you'll be able to tackle problems before they become problems.
Not to mention that there are neverending things you can work on to support the company and doing those things by default goes a long way for an employer.
5. Business Acumen
A large aspect of HR is business and to truly be effective at it, working to have a deep understanding of the organisation's goals, objectives, and strategic priorities is what will level up the quality of your work.
Every company has goals that can't be truly fulfilled without HR initiatives but if HR doesn't understand the goals - not much will get done. And if you're wondering, this goes further than understanding the company's mission and values from face value. It means wanting to understand at every changing moment what is happening to the business, from revenue to reasons for recruitment drives, to business objects.
This will help you to align your initiatives with the company's overall mission, rather than playing guesswork.
6. Analytical Skills
In HR, data-driven decision-making is increasingly important.
Whether that's through tracking:
Turnover
Engagement
Employee ROI
Demographics
Having the analytical mindset to not just collect but actually analyse and put data into practice can make your strategies all the more effective. Maybe you've identified a certain trend or pattern which helps you to see areas for improvement.
7. Leadership Skills
Whether you're leading a team or not, having leadership skills in HR is crucial.
Your goal is to steer the company in:
Learning and development
Incentives
Diversity and inclusion
And the list goes on. To do that, you need to be able to exercise authority in a way that inspires trust, motivation, and respect for the things you're implementing.
This doesn't just apply to employees either. Even employers and those in the senior leadership team should respect your position and take your incentives and advice on board.
8. Emotional Intelligence
Unfortunately, there's a narrative that HR professionals aren't trustworthy. In fact, 34% of employees wouldn’t approach HR out of sheer mistrust (HRD) and a large reason for this may simply be because they don't show enough empathy to make them look approachable.
Emotional intelligence is defined as "the capacity to be aware of, control, and express one's emotions, and to handle interpersonal relationships judiciously and empathetically."
This means a large part of emotional intelligence is not just being able to care about people's problems, but it's to be aware of them, often before they've been spoken aloud. There are many sensitive issues you may face in HR, and it often means being able to put yourself in someone else's shoes and have the self-awareness to deal with the problem effectively.
This will not just help you to be a problem solver, but it will help you to build and maintain trust - being seen as a reliable person to go to in workplace situations.
9. Assertiveness
In HR, there are times when assertiveness is necessary to enforce policies, address performance issues, or advocate for employee rights.
This doesn't mean arrogance, nor does it mean you can't show humility and listen to others, but at the right times, assertive communication allows for you to express yourself confidently and respectfully while upholding organisational standards.
Let's say someone has violated a policy and you're having to have a meeting about disciplinary action - what good does it do not exercising assertiveness? Saying what you need to say as a warning will help you get your point across. But being the right level of assertive also leaves room for providing relevant support to ensure the employee knows you're being fair.
10. Critical thinking
There's a level of ambiguity in HR, which is why it takes a certain skill to be able to read situations properly and deal with them effectively.
There's not a textbook answer for every situation you may come across... and sometimes there's not the time to find one either. This is why being able to critically think and solve problems with good, ethical, business-minded thinking is something that is truly valued in any workplace.
- Written by Oliver Howson
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