How many hats do you wear and how do you decide which one’s the most important?

If you follow me on twitter you might have noticed that I’ve been doing Dry July. This means that I have had much more time in the day over the weekend so I thought I might spend some time catching up on some reading and one I have been meaning to spend some time on is the AHRI people@work 2020 White Paper.

It come’s as no surprise that the report articulates that “the issue of talent attraction, development and retention remains the number one priority in Australia, and projections of skills shortages through to 2020 by Skills Australia (2010) confirms this is still likely to be the top issue for HR professionals in business and government over the next decade”.

Later it then states that “Skills Australia reports that by 2025, 45% of the workforce will change employer every three years”.

In a HR generalist role there is often the competing pressures around what you should focus your time on, because lord knows there certainly is not enough time in the day for the average HR Generalist/Business Partner/Manager etc.

Do you do all the small, urgent requests or requests made by senior management/partners in the business? Or do you put these behind the more strategic things, knowing that things like talent attraction, development and retention will continue to be a high priority for the better part of the next decade?

Do you commit to long term planning because you think it will pay off for the business overall, or do you jump in and get the quick wins under your belt knowing that you’ll probably only stay 2-3 years and move onto a better opportunity if it comes your way?

It’s a delicate balancing act, and a debate in which many in the profession would probably argue differently.

Something to consider in terms of where to focus your efforts to be as effective as you can be, is the CLC research which talks about the four roles of the HR business partner:

The Strategic Partner collaborates with the line leader to create HR solutions for business unit needs. In this role, you might need to help your business leader surface talent gaps or identify important HR metrics.

The Emergency Responder fixes acute problems when they arise and, finally, the Employee Mediator helps to manage through conflicts and politics that arise in the organization.

They all seem important right? Which ones do you normally place as your first responsibility though?

The interesting thing about the research is that although most of us probably find ourselves in the Emergency Responder and Employee Mediator a great deal of the time and while we may be able to get quick wins or impress senior management in the short term, it’s actually not the place that we can be the most beneficial.

The CLC research proves that the Strategic Role provides the greatest impact to HR-Line support effectiveness. In fact, strategic partner activities, such as developing the next generation of leaders, understanding your business unit’s talent needs, and identifying HR metrics, have an average impact of 33%. This is three times higher than the next largest category, the Operations Manager.

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What this means is that while you can’t completely ignore any one of these four parts of your role, it does put things into perspective when you think about where most of your time and effort should go in order to maximize your effectiveness.

Which roles do you mostly work in and does the fact that you might be moving on in 2-3 years impact your thinking around this?