I am fed up with reading about how HR needs to become more ‘commercial’ and ‘business-minded’ to be taken seriously as a profession, but at the same time, trying to get a job in HR is like trying to get into an exclusive country club.
As a highly commercial business manager who has a passion for people and wants to move into people development, I am continually treated with suspicion because I don’t have the badge of honour of having worked my way up the ranks in the HR department.
Wake up, HR. We are in 2007, and very few people have one career their whole lives. Imagine what you could learn from people from different parts of the business who could add value and raise your profile.
Being more open and realising that skills and expertise are transferable both in the function and out of it will go a long way towards HR being taken seriously by the board – rather than being treated as the ‘fluffy people-lovers’ who don’t know anything about other parts of the business.
Also, shouldn’t HR be setting best practice when it comes to flexible working practices? Why is part-time working only offered on positions that are administrative rather than managerial or strategic? And why do senior HR managers make it known that career progression will be impossible until such stupidity is knocked out of the flexible worker and they get back to working full time?
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Surely HR should be showing the benefits to the business of retaining talented working mothers or carers who still want career progression, rather than replicating the glass ceiling that is evident elsewhere?
