HUMAN Capital - Summer 2016 - (Page 28)

FEATURE Hr's future bY rob CASWell, SHrm-CP, CHrP "How did you wind in up in HR, anyhow?" Without fail, if I am at any sort of event outside of the circle of Hr, or happen into a conversation with someone on where they are taking their career, it is only a matter of time before that question is posed. I would go through my spiel of how I ended up in a profession that I love, moving from a path that had me much closer aligned to sales and marketing. I needed a change; I found a calling; I went to school and made a move. I am confident my experience here is not much different than many of you. Just like I look at my friend the urban planner with awe and wonder how she decided to end up there, and do that with her life, many of the people we interact with both inside and outside of the workplace view Hr as this nebulous being with a cloaked door. I cannot say I disagree with them. our very dear profession of Hr is so complex in its breadth and width that I find myself asking the very same question to the Hr specialists I work with. "What led you to compensation? When you got into HR, did you know organizational design is where you wanted to end up? What do you do in data analytics, anyway?" recently, this has me thinking about what those conversations with future Hr professionals will look like. unlike a number of professions we deal with (and often recruit for), Hr has multiple lines of entry for practice: while there many post-secondary programs designed to prepare one for a career in Hr, many of us talk about how we "fell" into it. We came from business. 28 | www.hria.ca We came from finance. We came from operations. The VP decided "we were good with people." The coursework was either replaced with experience, or came as we navigated the job and we decided we needed a firmer understanding of the theories. Whether we entered Hr from the completion of our focused degree, or were pathed in from our experience in business, we entered into prescribed structures and fairly standard job functions across the realm of advisors, business partners, specialists and managers. There is no doubt that Hr is in a constant state of evolution, and the speed of which we are hit with the latest emerging trends and models - and how we interact with staff, candidates, and each other - continues to accelerate. As business - and the business of Hr - continues down this next path, we have significant questions to answer. What will the future HR job look like? How will we prepare ourselves for this change? Is our business ready for this change? Where will we find people to fill these roles? The new Conversation in Hr much like when the shift came from personnel to human resources, and the focus of Hr changed from the transactional to the tactical; the strategic influence Hr could have as a voice in leadership in the business, we are embarking on another shift in how Hr will be positioned to support the people we work for. While it may be trite to say, "the future is now," with the glitz and glamour of a las Vegas-style billboard, we need to draw this kind of attention to the shift underway. The future is now. like many Hr trends, the new conversation is not as new as we would like to think, and there are already leaders in it who are executing it now while we wax poetic on what the future holds. How we do business in Hr is changing, and with that, the jobs in our own profession we are recruiting for today will also change. The future Hr Job Spend any time in the social conversation on Hr and two items that far transcend trend status will pop up: data, and tech. The businesses we support want more information on customers and employees. You would think that logically this means more Hr work in analytics. I think that is absolutely correct. However, in contrast to stiff, cold numbers, the leading edge on this transformation is creating a byproduct where there is a resurgence of humanity in the workplace. In my view, there are two job families that this shift impacts. They already exist in other departments in your organization. They are now getting a better mix of that Hr and business flavour, and we need to find a way to integrate them into our working family. moreover, they are going to create a new career path for those moving in to, and out of Hr, as the mainstream moves beyond the standard convention. 1) People analytics We will find these individuals right now in our IT departments, providing infrastructure support to everything that makes the business run. We will also find them, more on the analytics side (and in finance), titled as business Analysts. http://www.hria.ca

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of HUMAN Capital - Summer 2016

Leadership Matters
Tech Talk
Career Crossroads – Which Path Should I Follow?
Grow Your HR Career by Helping to Grow Your Organization
Individual Career Pathing: Taking Charge of Your Own Career Path
Career Pathing Case Study: CompuCom Performance Support and Development Strategy
Encore Careers
When Organizations Need Career Pathing Options
HR’s Future Career Path
Legal Source
Policy Corner
Suppliers Guide
Index of Advertisers/Advertisers.com

HUMAN Capital - Summer 2016