Don’t tell me HR is Boring

Today I Googled ‘most boring job’, and guess what wasn’t on the list? – anything related to ‘Human Resources’, ‘People and Culture’ or ‘Talent’. Some jobs that did make the list, though, were: taking the temperature of frozen peas; throwing dirt onto packaged organic potatoes (to make them more organic looking?!); and stapling hundreds of papers per day.

A recent encounter with a retail assistant at an Apple store prompted my search for what is widely accepted as a ‘boring’ job. In the process of buying my new phone I was asked what I did for work. I said I was a HR Advisor and her response was “Ugh, I used to have a boring job too”. It was one of those situations where I thought of lots of great things to respond with, about 3 hours later, but in the moment I just kind of laughed (only one ‘ha’) and nodded.

Having been exposed to HR professionals from a young age I am always interested to find out how little understanding there is of what HR functions actually do. Thankfully, like many industries HR has been getting a bit of a shake-up over recent years as ‘talent’ has become a major focus for so many organisations. By giving HR a focus, a seat at the boardroom table and a budget HR professionals are able to really impact workplaces in a positive, proactive way.

Some of the least boring things about my job in HR are:

• Helping CEOs, founders and/or senior management teams to realise and articulate their company’s vision, mission and values
• Developing and implementing frameworks that facilitate meaningful conversations between managers and their staff
• Empowering managers to develop themselves to be able to get the most out of their staff
• Ensuring sticky situations are dealt with in a clear, fair and supportive manner.

Basically, I get to contribute to making great workplaces!!!

I know that not everyone will get as excited about these thing as we do at wattsnext, but if someone’s got to do it – I would love for it to be me!