Skills That Make Great HR Managers Part 2
Human resource managers get a bad rap sometimes. While they are often portrayed as distant and ineffective, they are actually at the heart of companies, making it possible for those companies to thrive and move forward. They wear many different hats within their single occupation, and it gives them the power to effect truly impressive change for the people they impact. In our last blog, we shared a few of the skills that fantastic HR managers usually exhibit, including organization, communication, and multitasking. In today’s blog, we have a few more skills to discuss. Read on!
Skills of Great HR Managers
Flexibility
Companies are growing, changing entities, and their HR managers have to be able to keep up. Teams spring up and then disband, hierarchies develop and then go topsy-turvy, and people of all different generations have to work together. People often struggle with change, and they will often turn to the HR manager for help. It can make for an incredibly stimulating and challenging situation for any manager!
Discretion
As an HR professional, you are the conscience of the entire company. You are also the keeper of confidential information. Handling confidential information properly is a bare minimum here. You also get to monitor the actions of both upper management and employees. Is the upper management treating the lower management correctly? Are the employees doing what they should for the upper management? You have to be able to push back on both levels, which isn’t always easy. However, it is an extremely important job.
Dual Mindset
As we said in our last point, you are a meeting place for upper management and employees. You have to be able to advocate for employees, but you have to enforce policies put in place by the upper management at the same time. It may seem impossible, but it’s more of a delicate challenge. When done correctly, balancing both sides of the company will earn your trust from both.
That being said, you won’t always be popular. Sometimes, you’ll have to make decisions to protect the culture of the organization. Other times, you’ll have to make decisions to protect the individual. Your decisions will not always be understood, and you won’t always be able to explain them without violating confidential information. You will just have to move forward.
Conflict Management
When you’ve got a bunch of people all working together, conflict is inevitable. However, the company needs to be productive in order to succeed, so people need to be civil. You get to work with them to figure out how civility can happen so that people can move forward even if they don’t become best friends. At the end of the day, people generally do want to be productive and do their jobs. You can make it a bit easier for them by giving them tools to navigate their office.
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