Essential Skills Crash Course for the HR Professional

Pick any industry, and chances are that it looks very different now than it did a decade ago. Without a doubt, companies within any industry have experienced their own unique upheavals unleashing the dynamic trend towards transformation. With such transformative times, change has become a constant.

Although it’s impossible to anticipate the when, what, and where of change, the fact that the business landscape will keep shifting is something HR professionals can count on – and should plan for. As an HR professional, managing change is another vital skill that, when used appropriately, greatly enhances your role in leading and facilitating change – as well as building a capacity for ongoing change within your organization. It starts with understanding how to spot change on the horizon.

Any change effort your organization undertakes heavily impacts corporate communication. At the same time, there are multiple opportunities each and every day for employee trust to be eroded. HR professionals have an opportunity, and a responsibility, to take a more active and strategic role in corporate communication to help ensure that the messages received internally by employees are consistent and aligned with the messages received by those same employees externally. Whether HR is formally a part of the corporate communication structure or not, there are opportunities to better coordinate and align their efforts with those of other communications professionals within the organization.

Today’s corporate environment, more than ever, lends itself to project management as an important tool for the HR professional. Particularly for big projects, unique ones, and projects that require many skills and players. Thanks to rapid change and the pressures of intense competition, more and more organizational work has become project work. Changes in technology and in customer preferences have made work less routine and less repeatable – presenting new challenges for the department geared to daily routines. As HR professionals have played an increasingly central role in generating strategic value for their organizations, their project management skills have likewise grown more essential than ever. In this segment, we review what it takes to deliver vital services on time, within budget, and in line with quality standards.

Finally, we’ll end the three days with another increasingly important skill – developing familiarity with financial concepts. This segment will not make you a financial expert, nor will it qualify you to become a financial guru. But it will explain what you need to know to be an intelligent consumer of financial information. And it will help you use financial concepts to make the wisest decisions for the HR function within the organization.

Areas Covered:

1. Building credibility as an HR Professional… power, influence, and persuasion
2. How to develop the vital skill of strategy
3. The art of Negotiation
4. Managing change and transition
5. Corporate communications & public relations
6. Project management based HR services
7. The basics of Finance and budgeting

Who will Benefit:

• HR Representatives,
• HR Generalists,
• HR Assistants,
• Business Owners
• Managers,
• Consultants,
• Managers,
• Supervisors,
• Self-taught project managers seeking enrichment training and new skills
• Project teams having trouble juggling their tasks and responsibilities

Topic Background:

As an HR professional, you may sometimes find yourself in situations where you have management or leadership responsibility but no corresponding formal authority. For example, perhaps you head up a cross-functional team tasked with developing a new performance management system, and some or all of the team’s members don’t report to you. Or maybe you participate along with your CEO and other executives in the company’s strategic planning process. In these and similar cases, issuing direct orders is not feasible. Nevertheless, you must lead.

Leadership, of course, has never been a matter of formal authority. Leaders become effective when the people around them acknowledge them as a leader because of their personal qualities: their attributes, attitudes, and behaviors. There is no single best way to lead when you’re not the boss. Different situations call for different types of leaders. In this packed 3-day seminar, we will go through those essential skills that are guaranteed to position you as a leader within your organization.