Supercharge Your HR Team’s Skills

      3 strategies that can compliment existing reskilling and upskilling efforts

Tomorrow’s new hires and today’s employees have one thing in common: they need to stay competitive in an ever-evolving workplace. How they do that is the stuff of HR leaders’ dreams, and it often looks like upskilling, reskilling and continuous talent development. This is where many of us shine.

But HR leaders sometimes drop the ball when it comes to own teams. And who can blame us? HR leaders, pressed from all sides and straining to be more competitive by the day, often fall behind in upskilling their own teams.

Every HR team member has unique skills. We should work hard to develop our own people with training that works to their strengths. Here are three strategies that can complement existing reskilling and upskilling efforts, but this time, aimed at your HR colleagues.

1. Boost HR Employee Development

Want a better HR team? It all comes down to fostering employee development. And we all know it’s not a “one and done” activity. To help develop the right skills for the future, organizations need to strive to offer excellent learning content with the right technology.

Some companies may decide it’s better simply to hire what they need, especially in hard-to-fill roles, but this comes with a significant cost. According to the Society for Human Resource Management’s (SHRM) 2016 Human Capital Benchmarking Report, the average cost-per-hire is $4,129 – and it takes an average of 42 days to fill any given position.

So, shelve those thoughts of just hiring the HR talent you need, and instead, craft strong employee development programs. It will send a positive message to your HR colleagues, boost morale, productivity and engagement. In short, give your teams a reason to believe in their own innate talent and potential.

2. Hone Ongoing Skills

Most employees want to improve their skills. And they are willing to stay with companies that make skills development a priority. Recent research points to career development programs as a key factor for engaging employees, turning them into loyal and dedicated workers (rather than bolting for the competition). The Saba 2017 State of Employee Engagement Report found that 86 percent of millennial employees (who have been perceived as job-hoppers) are more inclined to stay at their current company if they’re given access to quality training and development.

One way to help fellow HR colleagues gain valuable skills

• and show them that you care
• is to assist them in developing transferable skills. These skills differ from job qualifications. Rather than degrees, experience or certificates, transferable skills are the qualities you bring to the job, such as a willingness to learn or leadership.

What skills are good ones to start with? LinkedIn named the five “soft” most in-demand skills:

• Creativity
• Persuasion
• Collaboration
• Adaptability
• Emotional intelligence

Offer support to HR colleagues by providing them with the course offerings, mentors and resources they need to develop these transferable skills. When learning is done well, the outcome is behavior that drives performance. Make sure upskilling opportunities are personalized and ongoing for greater impact.

3. Coach for Growth

It’s up to managers to help employees envision their future with your organization. When managers do this, they provide an enormous boost to employee engagement and retention. But if employees aren’t intrinsically motivated to improve their current skills, manager coaching can be a huge game changer. Teach your HR managers to coach so that your people feel as if they are receiving guidance in a helpful, non-critical manner.

Encourage HR managers to provide ongoing coaching and feedback so their direct reports can develop new skills, reach their goals and improve performance. One-on-one meetings are a fantastic way to facilitate coaching objectives. Use these tools for regular check-ins about goal progress, roadblocks and successes, and career growth.

Does your organization embrace a culture of feedback? As organizations increasingly shift and change in an era of digital transformation, employees are becoming subject matter experts. By using 1:1 meeting, your HR employees can share new ideas and give upward feedback that benefits the organization.

Two quick questions can kick off a 1:1 meeting. Managers can ask “What have you done really well since our last meeting?” and “What, if anything, would you have done differently?” These two questions offer the HR colleague a chance to trumpet their successes and reflect more deeply on any missteps or failures that may have occurred.

Identify, Then Develop

In the uber-competitive race for talent, we would be negligent to consider the people we already work with day after day. Given the opportunity to upskill our workforce, we need to pay particular attention to our own HR teams.

As the workforce and workplace changes with an almost dizzying pace, we need to lean on employee development and coaching to enhance our strategic footprint in our organizations. Leverage your HR team’s talent and embrace the same skills-building process that benefits the overall company. Your HR pros deserve nothing less, so help your people upskill, adapt and thrive