Many years ago, when HR professionals used to reach the pinnacle of their careers they used to just sit on the corporate throne and march the bands around without worrying about their own professional or personal development. This trend carried on for almost two decades in the 90’s and in the 2000’s.
The position of HR manager, HR head, CHRO’s and peoples leader were some of those which were mouth watering for any professional HR lead. An enviable position, since it meant very less work and rallying your troops – recruitment head, training head, the HR team basically – to do your bidding.
Out of nowhere we witnessed the era of Covid-19, with that came the extreme push to develop analytics, everyone jumped on the data bandwagon and so the concept of HR analytics was introduced, those few lucky HR bosses who were somewhat familiar with software like MS Excel were able to somehow save face, but the rest of the HR fraternity was left grasping at threads to survive, and now with the era of remote working in full fledge it is incumbent upon HR leaders to familiarize themselves with technology.
With the introduction of remote work, practically everyone from wise university professors who were born in the era when TV colors were black and white and there was no concept of internet or automatic cars, to the young teens who were born in the era of Facebook were forced to use software like Google Meet, Zoom etc.
These software and online tools require some, although not advanced, technical familiarity and know how, and guess who faced the most heat from the fire this time: HR leaders who were comfortably perched on their cozy thrones, they had to save themselves from drowning and started learning these remote tools and software. The point of giving our readers a detailed analysis of these circumstances is to inject the idea that learning doesn’t stop, not even at the top.
Many HR leaders and top HR professionals are now looking at tech-savvy methods and learning paths to update their human resources skills and knowledge. An MBA in HR, or a certification gained in human resources is now a must. Your human resources armory is only complete if you have a relevant human resources certification to boot.
HR certifications are also another pain area with the most famous bodies like SHRM, HRCI and CIPD making it more difficult to attain and retain-the cost is super high and you have to keep upgrading your certification-HR heads and the overall HR body is moving towards more tech efficient and easy to attain and maintain online human resources certifications like HRAcademia.
This nascent platform that only started eight years ago in 2016 has gained widespread popularity in the USA. It was by sheer coincidence that covid-19 happened just three years after their launch and they found countless people from around the globe (80+ countries, as per the last update in January 2023) signing up for their 100% online learning and testing modules.
We came across HR Academia when we heard that a lot of US based HR Professionals are using it as option # 1 to gain their HR credentials. This is also another stark reminder of the fact that HR leaders need to upskill their professional skill set, so that they are able to easily use online learning platforms and maneuver these portals without any assistance. As the world is advancing towards newer methods of learning and professional development, the HR leader has to adopt as well to survive.
While the HR leaders were snoozing off the button for adopting to online learning and gaining online HR certifications another revolutionary concept has taken seed in their own backyard. The introduction of chat GPT is surely going to rock the foundations of the HR industry and the HR field as we know.
Chat GPT is known to significantly reduce the administrative time spent on clerical HR work, emails, document creation and policy building, there is still more to come as the parent company of Chat GPT – OPEN AI – keeps on rolling out newer versions with advanced features a lot of HR jobs will be definitely be doomed.
Software like Zoom and remote meeting tools do not require a plethora of IT knowledge and any one can get familiar with them within a couple of hours. However, learning to use data and drive analytics requires skills and mastery over statistical domains to produce actionable results that can be converted into roadmaps for entire organizations to focus on.
The term Human Resources Business Partner has never been as relevant as it is today. HR leaders need to actually come out of their HR-domain-only shell and start impacting businesses and organizations in as many ways as possible. Although this might seem like gray skies for the HR top body but the silver lining is always the fact that they will be exposed to multiple technology situations, the word for the present is that everyone including the bottom HR guys to the top ones need to update and keep updating to stay with the current, else they will be washed away.
The point of all the word churning above is that it is high time for the HR leaders to understand that they need to be ready for any type of situation in this fast changing world, only in the last half a decade two major world changing unrelated events have already happened – Covid-19 and OpenAi – HR leaders now have to take out their noses from personal development books and take a holistic view of the situation they are currently in. The only solution to get out of this rut is to approach and meet these learning and adapting challenges head on at the door.
Two examples given above are a fitting assessment of the current situation, the success of completely online HR certifications portal like HR Academia and the completely annihilating technology like OpenAi should be an eye opener for the overall HR body worldwide. The message here is that start using Open AI, start using zoom and other remote software, start enrolling in HR analytics courses and classes, get online HR certifications and courses to stay relevant.
HR Future Staff Writer
