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Article Excerpt
This study examines how successful HR professionals address the key challenges they face in their daily work. Semistructured interviews Were conducted with 25 seasoned HR professionals to uncover the key challenges they have faced during their careers and the specific strategies they have adopted to overcome those challenges. Data from the interviews were analyzed thematically. Key challenges involved those often found in staff work, such as having limited position power, balancing multiple allegiances, working with skeptical clients, and being vulnerable during economic downturns. To address many of these required moving out of one's comfort zone constantly. Engaging in new behaviors, learning new knowledge areas and skills, and establishing and developing effective relationships within and outside one's organization were additional common themes expressed by successful HR professionals. Future research should employ a larger and more geographically diverse sample in order to develop and test theory that attempts to understand and explain the critical success factors in managing a successful HR career.
It is widely recognized that the days when people could depend on organizations and managers to assume a parental role in their careers are over. The "do an adequate job here and we will take care of you and your career" mentality has for some time been replaced by the notion that each individual is responsible for managing and developing his or her own career. The concept of career self-management has, at its core, the expectation that individuals take proactive steps to develop their skills, navigate the organizational landscape, and set and ultimately achieve their own career goals throughout their working lives (Herriot & Strickland, 1996; Strickland, 1996). Research has shown that people often buy into the idea of career self-management but are not sure what they should do to enact the idea (Mallon & Walton, 2005).
The concept of managing one's own career applies to people in diverse fields and occupations, and most assuredly is relevant to those in Human Resources. What has the literature informed us about career self-management for HR professionals?
There has been considerable study of how Human Resources as a function or department can be more effective and, by implication, how individuals in an HR function or department can be more effective. For example, Sheehan (2005) has argued that HR professionals need to acquire a broader background in business if they are to be successful. Ulrich (1999, 2000) has called for HR people to de-emphasize transactional roles in order to serve in an advisory capacity on important issues in organizations. There has been a recent call for HR to focus on the organization's external customers and not just its internal customers (i.e., managers and other employees) when developing initiatives and interventions (Ulrich & Brockbank, 2005a, 2005b). Vosburgh (2003), among others, has argued that for HR to be truly effective, it must act as a strategic partner in all of its activities. Although these and other studies clearly indicate how HR as an entity can play a more formidable role in organizations, relatively little research appears to investigate how individuals in HR can be more effective in general and more self-managing of their careers in particular. As Conway (2004) and Roehling, et al. (2005), stated recently, research on HR best practices at the individual level is very limited.
In line with Mallon and Walton's (2005) assertion that many people simply do not know how to manage their careers, what can HR professionals do to be career self-managers? What do they need to do, and how should they go about doing those things, in order to take proactive steps in charting their own success? Much literature (Katcher, 2003; MacLachan, 1998; Meisinger, 2003; Meister, 1998) appears to offer general guidelines on these issues, but little appears to cover specific actions HR professionals need to take to become, in essence, the CEOs of their careers. For example, Stopper (2005) claims that HR people need to know business fundamentals. But how should HR people put this idea into practice? What specific actions are needed on their part to "know business fundamentals?" Likewise, Palmer and Johnson-Bailey (2005) found that keeping up with organizational and industry trends is a critical component to an HR professional's career success. But what precisely should HR people do, or at least seriously consider doing, in order to maintain currency with these trends? How should they go about this task? What sorts of pitfalls should they avoid?
A good deal of work has taken place that attempts to capture the key competencies HR professionals need to possess (e.g., see Buckley & Monks, 2004; Lawler & Mohrman, 2003; Meisinger, 2005; Sullivan, 2005; Worley & Feyerherm, 2003; Yeung, et al., 1996). This is important work that will undoubtedly contribute to increasing the professionalization and stature of HR; however, empirically based guidelines that can assist HR professionals to plan and execute effective strategies for acquiring and developing necessary competencies are lacking.
In sum, the calls for the "what's" in HR (for example, know the business, be a strategic partner, focus on results and not programs) have been frequent and vociferous. Little appears to have been in the way of the "how's" in HR--that is, the what's of the what. What should an HR professional do to know the business? What actions should he or she take to become more of a strategic partner? How can HR professionals become less burdened with routine work so that they can attend to issues that are more critical to an organization's viability (Kahnweiler & Kahnweiler, 2005; Rison, 2005)?
This study begins to shed some light on these critical and not completely answered questions. Specifically, it examined the following issues:
1. What are the most challenging aspects of HR work as seen by those who have achieved and sustained success as HR professionals?
2. How do these HR professionals approach and address these challenges effectively? Which approaches have been successful and why?
3. What initiatives have HR professionals undertaken to manage their HR careers effectively?
Methodology
Because of the lack of research investigating these issues, a qualitative research method was deemed appropriate. Furthermore, unlike many studies that have examined success factors in HR, this study employed semi-structured interviews with successful HR practitioners rather than obtaining survey data from academics, thought leaders, or line executives. Although survey data from these sources can be helpful in uncovering some concepts pertaining to crafting a successful HR career, it was thought that speaking with individuals who have achieved a notable degree of success in the field would provide more fruitful insights into how success in HR is achieved and sustained....
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