Each year the popularity of the profession of manager of personnel grows; more and more executives understand the importance of this role to the support and growth of the business, more and more organizations invite specialists in HRM. In this blog academic leader of the program HRM in business, teacher of LvBS, Natalka Shpot gives a few advices to the HR Manager who are starting their work in the company to make their activity effective and bring satisfaction. We hope these tips will also be valuable for those professionals that have been working in the organization for long.
1. At the start of your activity in the company focus on that the best way to get acquainted with your new employer and study all the aspects of the organization activity. You need to figure out things like:
- How and what is the value that the company creates to their customers?
- How does it treat customers and employees?
- What is the model of management and distribution of power and responsibility in the company?
- How does the organization communicate outside and inside?
Try to do it not assessing and not emotionally: your task now is not to evaluate whether the organization works “right” or “wrong”, and just lay down a system vision of how it makes that. HRM function touches all aspects of the company activity, and, before you start to make a decision, you should understand how the system works and what you can get by modifying the individual elements. Finally, who, if not you should understand the importance of the organizational adaptation, so let yourself to go it qualitatively.
2. Having seen the company as a whole, try to formulate for themselves the corporate culture and basic values, which the company use. I would recommend to use images, metaphors for that, because they allow you to display simultaneously what do you know about the company (cognitive aspect) and what you are feeling (emotional). At some point, your organization may be seen to be implicated in the clock-serviceable at all times, or that creaks and falls short, with the family in the whole spectrum of the possible emotion, with the story of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs or other fairy tale, etc. Of course, your metaphors will be subjective, you can occasionally check their relevance and replace with the new one, but they have one more value – they are simple means of reflecting of the complex systems of objects and relations.
3. And now comes the good moment to put the goals for job and personal one, in the framework of the work. Give yourself the answers to the following questions:
- Whether the existing method of personnel management in that company is optimal for the strategy execution?
- What the company has to reach as a result of your work, and what should be the result for you personally?
If the official objectives, as a rule, are clear, you should once again stress the importance of the personal goals, because they will keep your willingness to act and to overcome obstacles, they will motivate you in the long term.
4. When the goals are set, planned in time and written in tasks, the first two tips once again become relevant. System and culture is the context, “background” of your activity. It influences the priorities where primarily the attention should be paid when performing tasks and goals. For example, it happens that the aim of the company is the growth of the competitiveness due to the introduction of innovations, and you understand that the organizational culture resembles you an army: a structured, disciplined, but not initiative. Here you will need to do some work:
- to establish a new model of competences,
- to define the organizational structure of the company areas that are the most favorable for the innovation and take there the relevant people,
- to organize the general information work to support the new environment,
- to understand which values the old culture is based on, and who is its bearer first of all,
- how should new values be adapted to the new needs without destroying the positive experience.
As a result, you will get a series of lower-level goals, with different and sequence implementation divided, in turn, into daily tasks, with specific results and terms.
5. And finally, if you really listen to these tips, it would be much easier for you to measure and evaluate the results received and feel effective, useful and valuable employee. You may assess your work just keeping track of how you manage to move in accordance with the defined plan. The job of HR manager is independent enough and not always noticeable, and even more so, not always understood by the other employees, so it is worth to have an image of the desired result for each goal or each stage. This approach also allows not dissipate to the spontaneous requests and the excessive routine. From time to time, looking retrospectively at a number of such “done” along with tasks, you will see the made volume, and how much you are closer to the goal. Yes, you can enjoy the work and create a significant contribution to the development of the business.
We remind you that the Lviv Business School of UCU (LvBS) started enrolling on the certified six-module program HRM program in business “for those who want to start a career in HR.
