11 essential HR tips and tricks

 

HR is an extremely competitive business. It can be tricky to stay ahead of the game and achieve excellence, but if you’re willing to go the extra mile it’s perfectly possible. Here are 11 essential tips and tricks that will ensure you’re leading the charge in HR.

1. Know Your HR speciality

Whether you’re a jack of all trades or a generalist in the field of HR, you still need to ensure you’re the absolute master of one specific area. You need a speciality. A speciality is the one thing that makes you utterly unique and propels you to the head of the pack.

2. Relationships over results

In HR, your performance and ability to deliver results are vital. They are the tools that help you gain recognition, attract attention, and earn promotions and rewards. It’s easy to get tunnel vision and become obsessed with your results, but they only matter to a point. Of far greater importance in HR, especially when it comes to ranking in the leadership stakes, are the relationships you forge. The higher up the ladder you get, the truer this becomes – results will always be important, but your relationships within your organisation, and with other HR specialists, carry even more weight.

3. Your team is your talent

If you’re a leader in HR, nothing speaks more to your talent than your team. Hire the people who are, at the very least, your equal. Where possible, hire people who are a bit better than you. Stocking your team with B and even C players will not only ruin your department – it will leave your leadership reputation in tatters.

4. Stay current

Staying current and at the top of your HR game is essential. This business is a rat race, and the pace is only getting faster!

5. Street cred

You likely spend a lot of time composing elevator pitches to ensure you always have the perfect thing to say about yourself. The thing is, what other people say about your reputation in HR carries a lot more weight than anything you say yourself. Nurture your reputation.

6. Keep Your Options Open

The most successful HR pros have a lot of different projects in the pipeline. Make sure you keep your options open with different paths that have the potential to skyrocket your career.

7. Be Open to Feedback

Getting regular feedback is vital. Set up face-to-face meetings on a regular basis to ensure you have the chance to clarify your feedback, and really drill down to the core of any feedback you’ve received.

8. Monofocus

Multi-tasking is not your friend. Have laser focus on one thing at a time, and make it your most important task.

9. Career hour

You will often get so caught up doing your job that you forget to spend time on your career. Set aside one career hour per week, and spend it doing things that will actively further your HR career.

10. Keep Your Ego in Check

It’s easy to let your ego get out of control, especially when you’re doing well and compliments are coming at you from all angles. Keep your ego in check!

11. Blog

If you really want to stand out from the crowd and distinguish yourself, start a blog. Position yourself as an HR thought leader and blog consistently – you may only post once a month (blogging is time-consuming!) but consistency and quality are more important than quantity. Get your thoughts and views out there!

HR advice and hands-on support for UK employers and employees are one thing that we at Goodwille are experts at! If you have any questions or need help and support with UK HR, then feel free to get in touch.