READER ADVICE UP CLOSE AND PERSONAL FEATURE
READER ADVICE UP CLOSE AND PERSONAL FEATURE
MY HR CAREER
AHOW-TO GUIDEFORTHE ASPIRINGHR SUPERSTAR
To become “HR superstars”, practitioners have to tap into these three attributes, writes RAYMOND SOH, People Operations Lead for Publicis.Sapient in Southeast Asia and Japan
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Developing depth and breadth of skills As HR, what “repairs” are most urgent for the function right now? To answer that question, we’ll first have to examine what a specialist and a generalist are. In the words of Jennifer Arnold in an article for the US Society for HR
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Management, “HR professionals must be ready for anything and skilled in many things”. As an HR generalist, you may be someone who has experience handling many aspects of HR, but you might not have specialist knowledge in one particular area, which results in having skillsets that end up looking like a straight line.
Generalist/Broad Knowledge
Specialist
n the last decade, we’ve all experienced a myriad of changes in our lives, and how we perceive the future. Throughout the 2010s, the word “disruption” has gained significant traction in Silicon Valley, particularly among the start-up community. Since then, it has evolved to become one of the most used business buzzwords across the globe. In the late 1990s, the Harvard Business School professor Clayton Christensen defined “disruptive innovation” as a principle whereby entrenched, dominant product or service providers could be replaced by smaller rivals who offered solutions that were better or cheaper. The famous quote from Heraclitus, “the only thing that is constant is change”, has become increasingly embraced by business leaders and innovation leaders across the globe. In a recent interview with CNBC, Alibaba Executive Chairman Jack Ma, said: “When we see something is coming, we have to prepare now. My belief is that you have to repair the roof while it is still sunny.”
T-shaped model By investing time to develop the depth of a skill in a specific matter, your skillsets are shaped more like a “T”. The vertical bar represents the depth of related skills and expertise in a single field, whereas the horizontal bar represents the general and broad knowledge that individuals possess. ‘T-shaping” of skills isn’t new in HR. Many organisations such as KPMG Singapore have embodied this concept in their learning and development blueprints so as to ensure their people are well-equipped across disciplines.
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