The success of any organization depends on its most critical asset—employees. Treating your employees fairly and equally and offering them opportunities to grow is the key to achieving your business goals. And this is essentially what HR professionals are well-placed to do.
Traditionally, HR’s tasks included going through many resumes (https://adelabelin.com/blog/tips-for-resume-writing-to-grow-your-freelance-business), hiring employees, onboarding, offboarding, taking care of the annual pay review and addressing any employee issues or disputes.
However, these have evolved over the years, and today they cover a wide array of responsibilities beyond these generic ones like leave management, safety compliance and employee training and development.
Moreover, HRs also play a critical role in improving employee productivity, engagement and promoting a positive business culture.
Thus, the importance of HRs in a company is undeniable—irrespective of the industry, so much so that a poor HR performance can negatively affect your organization and business outcomes.
So, considering the fact that business employees drive profits and competitiveness, as an HR, you need to possess professional traits to help you find the best talent, ensure employee retention and satisfaction, and support your organization’s growth.
In this article, we’ll cover those essential traits to help you become the go-to HR professional for your company.
6 traits every successful HR professional must have
A few years back, Uber faced bad publicity (https://enquiron.com/blog/dont-another-uber-disaster-startups-need-top-notch-hr/) and lost many employees and customers because of a catastrophic HR department that consistently ignored cases of sexual harassment and employee complaints—destroying Uber’s employer brand.
One slight mistake or ignorance can significantly deteriorate your business reputation. So here’s a quick rundown of the critical traits you require as a successful HR professional.
1. Knowledge and expertise in HR
Let’s start with an essential aspect and prerequisite—having knowledge and experience in Human Resources. You need to hold an educational foundation or relevant HR Certification (https://crm.hr.com/en/app/blog/2021/11/now-is-the-right-time-to-prepare-to-become-certifi_kwl4cv2n.html) to be a successful HR manager like any other position.
Besides a bachelor’s or a master’s degree, you should be eager to learn and remain up-to-date with the latest trends, ethics, and best practices in this profession.
This knowledge and expertise will allow you to stay disciplined, dedicated and play your best game when dealing with any potential challenges in your company.
2. Excellent communication skills
The majority of tasks as an HR includes interacting with candidates, employees, unions, and management—making it critical to possess effective employee communication skills.
Besides verbal communication, your written communication skills should be on point. With a professional tone, deliver clear and concise information to the employees when communicating with senior authorities or addressing challenges and disputes.
Apart from great speaking skills, your listening power should also be top-notch, which is especially critical when solving employee conflicts or interviewing candidates—that brings us to our next point.
3. Conflict management skills
Whether small, big, or nasty—workplace conflicts significantly affect business operations and productivity.
According to the study of 2020 CIPD of UK employees (https://www.cipd.co.uk/Images/managing-conflict-in-the-workplace-1_tcm18-70655.pdf), workplace conflicts result in lower performance and productivity, increased stress, loss of time, and decreased ability to achieve organizational goals.
In such situations, it’s your responsibility as an HR to hear both the parties and manage conflicts as smoothly as possible to ensure an optimal work atmosphere.
Here are a few tips to help you with this:
Clarify and find the source of conflict
Find a safe and private place to communicate—to avoid engaging other employees within the matter
Embrace an assertive and positive approach by listening actively and letting both parties have their say
Take your time, dig deeper, and investigate the situation if needed before giving your final verdict
Brainstorm with both the parties and determine ways to meet the common goal—resolving the conflict and ensuring it doesn’t resurface
Agree on the best, fair, and unbiased solution and determine preventative strategies for the future
Thus, conflict management skill is a must-have trait for HR to defuse employee tension and meet organizational goals.
4. Strong multi-tasking abilities
From deciding a recruitment strategy, facilitating the employee onboarding process, addressing staff complaints, to responding to questions about maternity leaves or vacation—you’ll need to tackle a wide range of tasks as an HR. And to do this effectively, multi-tasking skills are imperative.
A huge workload can swamp you with the changing organization’s requirements—such as the need for active hiring. In such a situation, you may have to speed track your tasks, handle multiple things and be accountable for them at the same time.
5. Ethics and integrity
As an HR, you act as the moral compass of your organization. It’s your role and responsibility to uphold equal employment opportunities. You should display integrity by being fair and reasonable to every employee.
Maintaining confidentiality, adhering to organizational policies, ensuring inclusive hiring, and complying with organization workforce laws and programs are essential factors that make an integral and ethical HR representative.
6. Courageous decision-making
Courage, risk-taking, and prompt decision-making are critical HR traits that can influence your career growth.
For instance, you’ll have a vital role to play during layoffs, resolving conflicts, or even hiring a suitable candidate from the sea of vast and competitive applicants.
Sometimes you may even have to stand up against everyone else on the panel to fight and recruit talent that everyone’s against, but you feel is the right fit for your organization’s current needs.
During such challenges, being confident, courageous, and firm, able to take a risk will help you turn testing times into opportunities and aid your professional progression, apart from benefiting your organization.
Conclusion
Since 2016, the demand for HR and recruiting professionals has increased by 63% (https://www.zippia.com/advice/human-resources-statistics/) and is only growing at a faster rate.
However, as the demand grows, the competition for HR managers also increases.
The job of HR is no longer limited to designing interview papers (https://writersperhour.com/blog/how-do-you-write-an-interview-paper) and hiring candidates. They play a much bigger role and handle tons of responsibilities to maintain and ensure an organisation's consistent growth, especially during difficult times like the pandemic.
Besides, in the remote working environment, HRs act as supporting managers to remote employees—helping them work from home efficiently and providing physical and mental health support.
If you enjoy interacting with different people, you can find the job of an HR specialist satisfactory and rewarding. But, you need to possess the necessary traits, as mentioned in this article, to become a seasoned professional HR and a valuable asset to your company.
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Alex Garcia is a content editor and writer at Writers Per Hour (https://writersperhour.com/). She enjoys writing (and reading) about small business marketing, entrepreneurship, and design. When she's not writing, she's probably learning a new skill.
