The One Thing You Should Do To Future-Proof Your HR Team

Compared to the pre-pandemic times, HR now plays a more strategic role. Across geographies and industries, CEOs and board members have learned to lean on CHROs and rely on their leadership and expertise. But for HR professionals to solidify this role and make the most of it, they need to do one thing: upskill themselves. Here's how our new T-shape HR competency model can help you do just that and future-proof your career and your company. 

COVID-19 was a turning point for HR professionals 

COVID-19 has written many business stories, but none of the successful ones would have happened without one essential character: HR professionals. From Amazon who, due to surging demand, was faced with a colossal challenge of hiring and onboarding tens of thousands of new workers, IBM who transitioned - practically overnight - almost all of its employees from on-site working to a remote setting, to millions of other small, medium and large-sized businesses, they all shared one thing in common: in their hour of need, they turned to their HR departments for leadership and guidance. 

This new emphasis on HR as essential to business success has completely transformed the way HR professionals are perceived. From being looked down on as mere administrators, HR professionals and CHROs now have a significant impact on how organizations are run, and likewise, board members and CEOs increasingly rely on CHROs' advice and insights when making business decisions. According to Sage People's research, 87% of C-suite executives credit their HR departments with having accelerated change throughout their organizations during COVID-19. 

And yet, HR professionals should not take their newly acquired position for granted! Half of C-suite leaders (52%) believe these new changes to HR are only temporary, and thus, HR professionals will need to keep proving themselves even after the pandemic. 

So what exactly can HR professionals do to reaffirm their new strategic role?

New challenges require new human resource competencies 

The answer lies in three words: skills, skills, and yes, you guessed it, skills. At the time when our economies and labor markets are marred with continued uncertainty, challenged by growing skills gaps (according to the OECD, we will need to reskill more than 1 billion people by 2030), and conditioned by accelerated digitization and automation, the greatest asset companies have at their disposal is their people and their skills. And the more complex issues businesses and organizations have to deal with, the more advanced those skills need to be. 

This is undoubtedly true for HR professionals. As far as they're concerned, the new era of work has emphasized new competencies that were previously not recognized as essential. Namely, general competencies that allow HR professionals to collaborate and innovate across disciplines and their companies' departments so as to not be too isolated from the business – and from themselves. 

HR professionals who have successfully steered their companies through the COVID-19 pandemic share one essential trait: they all have moved beyond their HR specialization and developed these additional and more general HR skills.

Such double-hatting has propelled them to the board rooms, given them a seat at the table and allowed them to partake in the strategic decision-making process. 

Here are the skills you need 

In essence, HR professionals whose skill sets are a combination of both the general (i.e. horizontal) and specialized (i.e. vertical) competencies are T-shaped. That is because the horizontal and vertical skills, when put together, take on the shape of the letter "T", which then represents both the breadth and depth of their HR knowledge.

An HR professional who has T-shaped skills is digitally savvy, data literate, a people's advocate, and they show strong business acumen. 

It is someone who, on top of being an expert in at least one of their disciplines, also:

• understands new technology and actively integrates it into their organization to make HR and the company run more efficiently; 
• is able to read, apply, create, and transform data into valuable information to influence decision-making processes to increase productivity, innovation, and revenue;
• understands that there's no HR without humans, who aims to build a strong internal culture, communicates skillfully, and acts as a trusted employee champion to make HR more human;
• has an excellent understanding of their business, its purpose, mission, goals, and strategies and is aware of significant developments in the broader world of work to help the organization exceed its expectations.  

T-shaped HR professionals benefit the whole organization 

Therefore, this new T-shaped HR 2025 competency model will benefit individual HR professionals by helping them become better at their job. But as they grow to become agents of change within their own teams, their organizations will benefit too! 

T-shaped professionals are leaders. They possess a wide array of soft skills, including collaboration, critical thinking, and problem-solving. T-shaped HR professionals also bring unique added value to the board room, helping their companies make better decisions. Their ability to comprehend their workforce and combine that with the knowledge of both their business and the wider world is indispensable. 

Become an agent of change. Become T-shaped

From COVID-19 to digitization, automation, demographic changes, and globalization - the world of work is changing. And it is changing fast. And with it, the role of HR professionals has also shifted - to become more strategic. But this new role will only last for as long as HR professionals themselves are up to the job and for as long as they have the skills to keep up with the growing demands of the new economy. 

To that end, as an HR professional, if you want to become a positive agent of change within your own organization, you and your team need to become T-shaped. You need to upskill and develop both specialized and core HR competencies such as data literacy, digital savviness, people advocacy and business acumen.

You don't know where to start? Use our assessment tool to see how T-shaped you already are and discover how you and your HR team(s) can develop the necessary skills to become future-proof. Upgrade your and your HR department's skills today and help your organization strive in the new world of work.

This article is a shorter version of the original article published on AIHR.com. To read the full text, click here.