Business Part 5: Is Human Resource Management the right career for you? (0:00-4:13)

Warm Up

**FOR NEW STUDENTS**———————————————–

What industry do you work in and what is your role?
Can you describe to teachers the function of your workplace/company?
What are your responsibilities in your role/position?
What is the Minimum requirements for employment? i.e Education or Experience?
How many opportunities are there to ‘move up the ladder’?
What is the process for changing job roles i.e Interview? Test?
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General discussion about your workweek; Current projects? Deadlines? Opportunities? Anything of interest happening? Can you describe a particular day?

Listening

Every single business issue ultimately becomes a what?
What do Human Resource managers need to motivate people towards?
Can you name 3 things a HR Generalist works on?

Key Words & Phrases

Understanding how to manage Human Resources will be key to your success as a business leader believe it or not many business people with great business strategies, plans and products fail because they do not fully grasp the importance of human resource management.
Thomas J Watson the founder of IBM said you can get capital and erect buildings but it takes people to build a business. Managers use a lot of words to describe how valuable people are to their organizations;
human resources
human capital
intellectual assets
and talent
all imply that people play a vital role in business success no matter what part of the business you’re dealing with, whether it’s figuring out where to put a new plant, designing a new product, formulating your strategy or developing a cost structure. every single business issue ultimately becomes a people issue. At the heart of it, you’ve got to have people with the right skills, opportunities, and motivation to face those challenges and achieve business success. This is the essence of human resource management to manage people in a way that drives business success. To drive success human resource management involves a wide variety of activities.
Including analyzing a company’s competitive environment and designing jobs so the company’s strategy can be successfully implemented this in turn requires selecting the right people, developing their skills to meet strategic objectives and motivating them toward a common goal. So if you enjoy bringing people together for a common purpose, coaching and training people to succeed in an organizational setting and making sure people are properly rewarded and recognized for the work they do then Human Resource Management may be the career for you.
To provide additional insight on whether HR management is the career for you we’ve gone out to ask some experienced managers questions about why they chose HR as a career we’ve got some pretty interesting answers
What do you love about HR?
I love the variety in HR I am an HR generalist which means I work in organizational talent and training and hiring and recruiting. I work in an organizational structure helping to reorganize companies and restructure them or bring in companies that are being acquired.
It’s actually an interesting field I had a great mentor once that talked about why he went into the field of OB and HR(M) after doing undergraduate work in finance and something resonated really well with me basically it said that no matter what business or organizational issue you’re dealing with;
that could be entering a new market
that could be designing a product
that could be solving some analytical challenge or technical challenge
every single business issue or organizational issue ultimately becomes a people issue. At the heart of it you’ve got to have someone with the right skills, capabilities to face that challenge and so it’s how do you find those people? how do you get them into the right roles? how do you motivate them? How do you help manage and unleash their performance? but ultimately every business issue is a people issue and the one function HR and OB is one that touches every aspect related to people there are so many reasons why I love the field of Human Resources and it’s actually hard to sort of figure it out and if I go back to what drew me into the field of Human Resources it’s really sports I was a big jock in school I played three sports in high school I, played two in college and everything I loved about sports I find is translatable to the world of organizations
such as organizing to win, just as if as when you’re on a team and you’ve got to try to figure out what’s the right way that we can organize the skills and talents we have to achieve our goal the same thing is true in an organization when you’re in organization development and human resources you’re getting a chance to figure out how do we assemble the people and the resources and the assets we have to win in the markets that we want to win in to put the best people in the best roles that amplify their skills and their strengths and so I found over the years the more got into human resources the more I love it because everything I love about sports is what I loved about human resources
FINISH 4:15

Discussion

What do you think makes a good HR worker, What qualities? Discuss
How has the department changed over time? (in your career)
Have you ever worked overseas? how does HR differ from Japan to Abroad? Discuss
Tell me about your experiences with HR/OB in your current or previous workplace
– How often do you have meetings?
– What are the common topics?
– Is there a particular focus or sensitivity? for example casual language, workplace relationships, shifting cultural norms
– Have you ever needed to use HR to intervene on an issue with a coworker
Some criticisms:
Office Politics
Company and Management’s Interests in Mind
“In a work dispute, you are compelled by their rules and by other government organizations (like state Human Rights that seem to insist that you report your complaint to HR for it to have legitimacy. You do this only to find later that they will (of course) lie to these organizations that you ever even reported it at all”