The HR Professional Map

In 2009 the CIPD conducted a report on what human resource practitioner’s did, their roles, and activities. They interviewed practitioner’s from a large number of professions across different sectors and the result was the production of the HR professional map, that does not focus on job titles, but instead focused on the skills and behaviours. It is simple, flexible and can be used as a whole or in part. Starting with and including the two core professional areas, it consists of ten professional areas, eight behaviours and four competency bands.

“It describes what you need to know and what you need to do, within each professional area at four bands of professional competence”. There are eight behaviours that need to be displayed by HR professionals; these are, collaborative, driven to deliver, courage to challenge, role model, curious, decisive thinker, skilled influencer and personally credible. These behaviours are displayed in each of the professional areas. There are four bands of competence that define the contribution of professionals at each stage of their career, it details the relationship with client, service to client ,focus of activity and where time is spent.

It also details measures of success and contribution and the relative skill balance between behaviours and technical ability. The two core professional areas that relate to all HR professionals, at all career levels and job roles, these are; Insight, strategy and solutions. There are five activity areas, building a picture, developing actionable insight, delivering situational HR solutions that stick and building capacity and capability that detail tasks that you are required to perform in each capability band. There are also four areas of knowledge.

Business, contextual and organisational knowledge and HR professional knowledge. Leading HR, service delivery and information. There are six activity areas, along with tasks performed at each band level, theses are Personal leadership,Leading others, Leading Issues:HR function design and service delivery,HR resource planning and development, delivering value and performance in HR teams and managing HR budgets and finances. The knowledge areas for this core professional area are Leadership, HR service delivery models, Commissioning services and Resource, Performance and Financial management.

Employee relations is one of the remaining eight professional areas, an Employee relations professional is required to display knowledge of a strong understanding of employment law, or can access relevant,current and planned changes to laws relevant to the organisation. There is also a requirement to identify and act to mitigate risk to the organisation, have the knowledge of employee relations risks, and is able to coach managers to resolve issues, they will also know how to analyse, collate and feedback on communications and messages heard.

Activities completed by an Employee relations practitioner are grouped under the headings, Employee relations strategy, policy and practice. Policy, advice and guidance. Complex casework. Collective negotiation and consultation and Health and well being. When an Employee relations Practitioner is displaying competences in band two they will be reactive in most activities, issue lead dealing with current or near term issues. Behaviours that I consider to be displayed by an Employee relations Practitioner are being a decisive thinker, driven to deliver, courage to challenge, personally credible and a role model.

The activities I consider to be relevant to an ER advisor in the organisation I worked in are to develop comprehensive guidance to managers on ER issues, give accurate and appropriate advice , training and support managers. Work closely with managers, instructing them on their role and required actions, keeping appropriate records and represent the organisation at external tribunals. The skill balance between technical ability and behaviours displayed should be 50:50 and a measure of success would be for issues/ problems satisfactory resolved and repeat business.