Essential Skills of Human Resources Management -

How Many Do You Have?

Tuesday, July 18, 2006 9:40 AM
by Jay Schleifer

Human Resources Management Key Skill #1: Organization

Human Resources management requires an orderly approach. Organized files, strong time
management skills and personal efficiency are key to the Human Resources function. You’re dealing
with people’s lives and careers here, and when a manager requests a personnel file or a compensation
recommendation that lines up with both the organization and the industry, it won’t do to say, “Hold
on. I’ll see if I can find it.”

Human Resources Management Key Skill #2: Multitasking

On any day, an HR professional will deal with an employee’s personal issue one minute, a benefit
claim the next and a recruiting strategy for a hard-to-fill job the minute after. Priorities and business
needs move fast and change fast, and colleague A who needs something doesn’t much care if you’re
already helping colleague B. You need to be able to handle it all, all at once.

Human Resources Management Key Skill #3: Discretion and Business Ethics

Human Resources professionals are the conscience of the company, as well as the keepers of
confidential information. As you serve the needs of top management, you also monitor officers’
approaches to employees to ensure proper ethics are observed. You need to be able to push back
when they aren’t, to keep the firm on the straight and narrow. Not an easy responsibility! Of course,
you always handle appropriately, and never divulge to any unauthorized person, confidential
information about anyone in the organization.

See what everyone in HR is talking about every morning. Become a member of HR Daily Advisor and
receive your FREE special report, 5 Mistakes Everyone Makes with Job Descriptions And How to Avoid
Them.

Human Resources Management Key Skill #4: Dual Focus

HR professionals need to consider the needs of both employees and management. There are times
you must make decisions to protect the individual, and other times when you protect the organization,
its culture, and values. These decisions may be misunderstood by some, and you may catch flak
because of it, but you know that explaining your choices might compromise confidential information.
That’s something you would never do.
Human Resources Management Key Skill #5: Employee Trust

Employees expect Human Resources professionals to advocate for their concerns, yet you must also
enforce top management’s policies. The HR professional who can pull off this delicate balancing act
wins trust from all concerned.

Human Resources Management Key Skill #6: Fairness

Successful HR professionals demonstrate fairness. This means that communication is clear, that
peoples’ voices are heard, that laws and policies are followed, and that privacy and respect is
maintained.

Human Resources Management Key Skill #7: Dedication to Continuous

Improvement

HR professionals need to help managers coach and develop their employees. The goal is continued
improvement and innovation as well as remediation. And looking to their own houses, the HR
professional also uses technology and other means to continuously improve the HR function itself.

Human Resources Management Key Skill #8: Strategic Orientation

Forward-thinking HR professionals take a leadership role and influence management’s strategic path.
In gauging and filling the labor needs of the company, devising compensation schemes, and bringing
on board new skill sets leading to business growth, they provide the proof for the often-heard
management comment, “People are our most important asset.”

Human Resources Management Key Skill #9: Team Orientation

Once, companies were organized into hierarchies of workers headed by supervisors. Today, the team
is king. HR managers must consequently understand team dynamics and find ways to bring disparate
personalities together and make the team work.

Looking for more tips for success? Download HR Daily Advisor’s 2011 HR Essentials for Success
Kit and get 3 FREE special HR reports covering some of the biggest pain points for the HR
professional.

Nine Skills, But Also One Caveat

As we listed these skills, one thing we didn’t do was try to prioritize them. Because no general list of
skills can take into account the business strategy at your particular organization.

Which leads to the caveat we mentioned, as expressed by Bob Brady.

“HR is a creature of, and serves the business strategy,” Brady says. “It’s important for HR people to
know what that strategy is and what makes the business tick so the approach to HR can be tailored
accordingly.
 “Never think of HR in isolation,” he advises. “Because if Human Resources professionals think of
themselves as ‘just HR,’ that’s what the rest of the organization will think too.”

 Send to a Colleague
 Print this Tip
 Share your Comments
 More Sharing ServicesShare|Share on linkedinShare on facebookShare on twitterShare on email

Comments

# re: The 9 Essential Skills of Human Resources Management - How Many Do You
Have?
Tuesday, July 18, 2006 2:58 PM by Kevin Cook
Greetings -

I read your article " The 9 Essential Skills of Human Resources Management: How Many Do You
Have?" and was amazed by how closely it falls in line with the 11 Leadership Principles that are taught
in the US Armed Forces. As a US Navy Reserve Senior Enlisted Leader and a 2 time OIF Vet, I found
the similarity striking.

The 11 Leadership Priniciples will work for all business leader also.

They are:

11 Leadership Principles of the US Armed Forces

1. Know yourself and seek self-improvement - By properly evaluating your own weaknesses/strengths
and looking to improve those areas daily, you will continually improve your ability & performance -
Make sure your staff follows this also.

2. Be technically and tactically proficient - Keep current with the latest technical developments in your
field of expertise and know how to deploy your resources for the maximum return on investment -
another great development principle for your employees.

3. Develop a sense of responsibility among your subordinates - Drive accountability down to the base
level among your staff - Make sure they are aware that you will hold them accountable for their
actions and assignments.

4. Make sound and timely decisions - Make sure that your decisions are well thought out and take into
account all relevant information - Don't act rashly or out of anger, desperation or any other emotional
state.

5. Set the example - Lead from the front - make sure that your staff sees you as the role model Be
visible in your daily activities - hold yourself to a higher standard - this will motivate subordinates to
improve themselves.

6. Know your people and look out for their welfare - Only by demonstrating that you are interested
and concerned for their welfare will you win their loyalty. A good leader is a compassionate listener
and understands what motivates his/her staff.

7. Keep your people informed - Information is the life's blood of any organization and only good if it is
shared across the widest possible spectrum. Share your ideas and knowledge with your staff - this will
make them feel included and valuable.

8. Seek responsibility and take responsibility for your actions - Be prepared for your next assignment
and take charge of all areas of responsibility - if a mistake is made, stand up & take the heat. By
doing so, you will demonstrate a key principle of leadership - We all make mistakes, we are all fallible
 but it is how we respond to our mistakes that separate the professionals from the pretenders.

9. Ensure assigned tasks are understood, supervised, and accomplished - You need to trust your
people but verify - Trust your employees to do their job but verify it has been done to your standards.
By doing so, you will make sure that you are involved, accountable and creditable with your
superiors.

10. Train your people as a team - Have your staff work together as a team and cross train on each
others responsibilities. This allows them to utilize each other's strengths and to feed off of the team
synergy. Teamwork develops a sense of shared responsibility and commitment to the objective.

11. Employ your team in accordance with its' capabilities - Know the limitations of your self, your
people and your department. Don't look to take on more than you should. By knowing your
limitations, you'll know when to call in the reinforcements.

Importance of Human Resource Management

By Richard Morgan, eHow Contributor

 Print this article

Human
resource management can help resolve disputes.

Human resource management deals with employees on several levels. When conflicts
arise, the HR staff may play a role in bringing about a fair and speedy resolution. Human
resources management also acts preemptively, looking at issues such as job performance
and employee interaction, taking measures to make sure that things run smoothly.
Other People Are Reading

 The Role of Human Resource Management in Business

 The Importance of Human Resource Management to Managers
1. Policy
o Human resource management helps establish a workplace policy in which employees
understand the rules, regulations and boundaries. This is an extremely important HR
function since all employees need to understand what is expected of them.

Talent Management
o Talent management, or human capital management, also falls under HR's jurisdiction.
Talent management is designed to keep track of the best workers and make sure that those
employees are content and want to stay with the company. In addition, HR works to recruit
promising employees to the company.

Outsourcing
o Another important function of HRM is determining when to advise company officials to
outsource some of the workforce. A good HRM team can look at the company's overall
picture and suggest how the labor can be best utilized.

Sexual Harassment
o The importance of HRM in preventing sexual harassment in the workplace cannot be over-
emphasized. Not only should all employees work in an environment in which they feel safe,
but it is actually the law. HRM makes sure employees and management understand the
various forms of sexual harassment.

Required skills of a
manager
 How to be a good manager

HOM E | FREE | CREDI TS | ABOUT US | CONTAC T US | PRI NT

What skills does a manager need?

There are three fundamental skills of a manager:

1. TECHNICAL
The manager should be proficient at specific tasks. This in turn helps to provide the
credibility or knowledge to persuade people to do certain things.
2. HUMAN
The manager has to know how to work with people.
3. CONCEPTUAL
The manager can see the organization as a whole. In other words, there has to be some
knowledge of the organization and what it does and how it interacts with other organizations.

The most important skill of a manager

For more specific skills, here is a list compiled by management experts in decreasing order of
importance:
1. People skills
2. Strategic thinking (planning ahead and predicting what was going to happen)
3. Visionary
4. Flexible/adaptable to change
5. Self-management
6. Team player
 7. Solve-complex problems and make decisions
8. Ethical/high personal standards

Hence the most important skill of a manager is to understand people and what makes them
motivated to do the work in the achievement of certain goal(s).

Are managers leaders?

Firstly we need to know the difference between a leader and a manager.

A leader is someone described as a creative genius who has the vision of leading his/her people
within an entire organization or nation to something that we can all believe in and realistically
achieve as something worthwhile to strive for in our lives.
A manager is someone described as a practical genius who is aware of the vision for an entire
organization or nation and can achieve various goal(s) to help reach for this vision in a practical way.
Now a good manager is one that has both managerial and leadership skills. Thus a manager can
be a leader. It all depends on the person's upbringing, nature of the managerial job, and the kind of
knowledge and experience he/she acquires to become a good manager.

What makes a good manager?

A management expert by the name of Charles Gibbon described the key elements of a quality
manager as follows:
"1. Possess well-defined goals.
2. Be able to allocate resources according to priorities.
3. Be able to make decisions, act upon them, and accept responsibility for them.
4. Be willing to compromise.
5. Be able to delegate and to depend on subordinates.
6. Be self-motivated and self-controlled.
7. Be able to organize, plan, and communicate for effective use of resources.
8. Maintain good relationships with others.
9. Possess emotional maturity and the internal resources to cope with frustration, disappointment,
and stress.
10. Be able to appraise oneself and one's performance objectively, to admit to being wrong.
11. Expect that one will keep on growing, improve one's performance, and continue to develop."
(Person 1983, p.334)
But just keep in mind the following points and you should do well:
1. If not in survival-mode, a manager should avoid creating hierarchies in an organization as
this will only create inferiority and superiority complexes in people after a while and will reduce the
full potential of everyone.
2. Consistency in behavior is an important characteristic of a good manager.
3. Managers should perform their work exactly as they preach to others. This is all part of
consistency. As Marion Nicolson, managing director of the Australian firm Library Locums, said: "Our
philosophy is simple - we treat people with respect and do what we say we'll do."
4. Managers should be friendly and approachable.
5. Communicate with everyone regularly and when it is necessary.
6. Managers should support their staff through praise, encouragement and improving the work
environment.
7. Managers should be leaders. They must have creativity and not just the practical skills to
solve problems.
8. Managers should have the ability to confidently and appropriately direct others to work if
they have not yet actualized and reached the level of being self-managed.
9. It is claimed that internal customers should never crack under pressure from others. This is
the robotic view of management. The human view of management is that people are allowed to
express their emotions and views. It is the job of a manager to look for these situations and to talk to
staff as early as possible to understand why and resolve them before the emotions reach a level that
can affect external customers. Similarly, the reverse is true: look for situations where external
customers may find themselves under stress or become frustrated, talk to these customers, listen to
them, and resolve the problems for things the manager has control over.
10. Remember when things go wrong, everyone is responsible, not just staff, but also
management. Everyone must work together. Sacking people is not the way to solve problems. It
 should be seen as a last resort.
11. The people who must improve the situation is everyone. We are all the solution to our
problems.

How many staff should a manager be managing?

It depends on how many staff the manager can handle, and what the staff themselves are doing or
can bring to the table in terms of additional skills (e.g. self-management).
If staff are doing a wide variety of different things and/or self-managed in their tasks and other
activities and are already fulfilling the role and beyond (e.g. finding creative solutions not expected
of the role but is making a positive difference to others and the organization), you can
supervise/manage less staff (but technically you can handle more people under your wing). If staff
are doing similar things but need to be told what to do after completing various tasks (especially if
people might suddenly find themselves facing new tasks and are not highly skilled in themselves),
you will usually have to supervise/manage more staff more of the time. It also depends on you: How
capable are you to be a good manager? Do you receive assistance? Do you like to supervise people
or let them get on with it? How much self-confidence have you got?
How many staff you can manage and what staff are doing will determine your span of
management as the experts would say. The wider your span, the more staff you can manage just so
long as you don't lose out on developing a quality relationship with all your staff. If you are having
shallow relationships with your staff, it is quite likely your span of management is too great and it
should be reduced so that you can keep in touch with your staff (seriously, managers and staff are
human beings too).

Where can I get more information?

Business Insurance Quotes in the US has kindly compiled a list of 15 blog post links
athttp://www.businessinsurance.org/ since 30 August 2011 covering things like:
1. How to be a Good Manager: 8 Quick Tips
2. What Makes a Good Leader
3. People Management Styles
4. How a Good Boss Responds to Mistakes