What It Means To Be A Hr Professional

In order to understand what it means to be a HR professional, it is important that we first look at the meaning of professionalism. David Maister (2017) describes true professionalism as ‘believe passionately in what you do, and never knowingly compromise your standards and values. Act like a true professional, aiming for true excellence’. In my opinion, this description highlights the attributes a professional would consider themselves to have regardless of their role, industry, or level of experience.

An exercise carried out with a group of mid-career doctoral candidates is discussed in CIPD’s Community ideation lab (2015) firstly about, ‘what it means to be a professional and secondly, to be professional or act professionally’. The results

From this, and David Maister’s definition, it is reasonable for us to assume that a combination of knowledge, skills and behaviours are essential to be considered as HR Professionals.

CIPD’s Profession map is a great tool which sets out global standards for the HR professional. It highlights the ‘knowledge and behaviours that HR and L&D professional need to demonstrate in order to meet requirements for professional membership’ (CIPD, 2017).

The Map outlines four bands of professional competence and provides HR professionals an understanding of the activities performed within each band and a path to transition for development. I think it is important to consider that HR Professionals may have no aspirations to transition into the higher band. Therefore, the bands can support individuals in understanding how they can do better in the role they currently

This means it is fundamental for HR professionals to grow and develop these ‘great HR capability regardless of your role, location or stage in careers’ (CIPD, 2017) and ultimately play a role in shaping and driving the organisation to deliver its strategy. The specialisms also include organisation design, organisation development, resourcing and talent planning, learning and development, performance and reward, employee engagement, employee relations and service delivery and information (CIPD, 2017). It is important that we consider the size, resources and growth rate of a business and thus the requirement for each of the specialisms.

Finally, CIPD’s Profession map highlights eight behaviours that ‘underpin good practice regardless of specialism’ (CIPD, 2017). These include being curious, decisive thinker, skilled influencer, personally credible, collaborative, driven to deliver, courage to challenge and role model (CIPD, 2017). I believe it is essential, regardless of your role or band, to have an element of all of the above in order to be a true and effective HR