Meaning of Professionalism in HR - Essay Example

Mouza PROGRAMME START OCT PROGRAMME Developing Professional Practice LOCATION: Dusty Thani Hotal PERSONAL TUTOR: Mr. Tim Doyle ASSIGNMENT TITLE: 5DPP (version 1) SUBMISSION: 2nd DATE OF SUBMISSION: 27/12/2014 Before submitting your work to www.bradfield.co.uk please read the following statements and tick the appropriate box to show that you have understood and completed what is required. 1. I have read my work through and have checked it for spelling and grammatical errors using, where appropriate the spell and grammar checker on the computer. X 2. I have written my name at the top of each page of my work and have numbered each page. X 3. I have read the definition of plagiarism. I realise that plagiarism is cheating and can confirm that the assignment I am submitting is my own work. X The definition of plagiarism is given below. Read it carefully and note what it says. ‘Plagiarism is the act of presenting the ideas or discoveries of another as one’s own. To copy sentences, phrases or even striking expressions without acknowledgement in a manner which may deceive the reader as to the source is plagiarism; to paraphrase in a manner which may deceive the reader is likewise plagiarism. Where such copying or close paraphrase has occurred the mere mention of the source in a bibliography will not be deemed sufficient acknowledgement; in each instance it must be referred specifically to its source. FOR OFFICE USE ONLY Date Received Date sent for Assessment Human Resource Management Meaning of professionalism in HR Professionalism refers to an approach and attitude towards a profession characterized by integrity, thoughtfulness, maturity, and intelligence (Campbell, 2012). It has various building blocks including leadership, independence, honour, integrity, spirit and enthusiasm, service to the public good, and balanced commercialism. Therefore, HR professionalism is a process by which professionals in the human resource field aims to acquire a recognition given to established professionals through adopting or emulating the general qualities of an established professionalism (Losey, Meisinge & Ulrich, 2007). Professionals in HR acquire professional approach and attitude through various ways, but socialization plays an integral part in the adoption of professionalism by HR professionals. Human resource professionals can seek to adopt the behaviours stipulated in the professional map to attain professionalism. Wilson & Wilson (2012) postulates that there are specific standards that should be met and adopted by HR professionals in order to work professionally in the human resource profession as explained in the CIPD profession map. These standards that should be met by the professionals in the human resource field in order to work professionally are that they should be decisive thinker, skilled influencer, collaborative, courage to challenge, personally credible, curious, and role model. The successful adoption of these qualities in the execution of the HR functions would ensure that the managers and employees in the HR department remain professionals and abides by the set standards. The CIPD professional map ensures that HR professionals use the standards and qualities set-out to work professionally and to ensure that they perform their duties efficiently. For example, such qualities helps them to build strong employees relation, organization design, enhance learning and development, employee engagement, improve service delivery and information, enhance resourcing and talent planning, and examine employee performance and reward (Wilson & Wilson, 2012). For a professional in the human resource department to perform their duties efficiently, they must act professionally concerning the professional map in CIPD. There are four concentric circles can be used to add value to the human resource professionalism. The first circle involves the management of oneself through the continuous and daily professional development while the second circle comprises of managing other people through delegation and team leading. The third circle involves management of the higher authorities through good communication and credibility. The final circle involves managing across organizations. The HR professional should be able to manage many functions, which can be facilitated by proper communication across the organization. Exemplifying the principles of ‘professionalism’ and the practices of a ‘thinking performer’ in my everyday actions as an HR Advisor The concept of a thinking performer states that an employee should continuously seek to contribute to the objectives and goals of the organization, which will make them understand the purposes of the organization well. This concept provides reinforcement to the compliance role of the human resources and it challenges the way of performing tasks in the organization. Further, the concept helps human resource professionals to finds solutions to the challenges facing an organization easily. Moreover, it is necessary to the employers because they use the concept to inform the employees about the expectations that are required of them. Furthermore, the concept facilitates good decision making amongst the employers. As a HR advisor, I can exemplify the principles of professionalism in my every day actions by ensuring that I adhere to an attitude and approach characterized by integrity, thoughtfulness, maturity, and intelligence. Further, I can use the principles of professionalism in my duty as HR advisor by ensuring that am a decisive thinker, skilled influencer, collaborative, have the courage to challenge, personally credible, curious, and a role model. I would uphold the principles of professionalism by ensuring that I carry-out my duties with integrity and intelligence in order to ensure that I deliver and become successful. I can also uphold professionalism through being thoughtful and intelligent in my actions to avoid decisions that may contravene the set standards in the CIPD professional standards (Ulrich & Brockbank 2005). In addition, I can practice the role of an effective thinking performer in my actions as a HR advisor through properly evaluating my options and alternatives before making a decision. I must ensure that during my daily actions, I make informed decisions through consultations and adhering to the set regulations and standards. Making informed and appropriate decisions is only possible after careful evaluation of options and the result of every decision made. A decision is only made after considering the expected outcomes both positive and negative outcome of such decision should be evaluated. Two typical scenarios in which I might expect to become involved as an HR Advisor and how I will act professionally as a thinking performer in these situations A good example of a scenario in which I would be involved as a HR advisor is when a company is faced with massive staff resignation because of lack of job satisfaction and discrimination in their work areas. As a HR advisor and a thinking performer, I would advise the management to facilitate a review of the employment terms and conditions of all the employees indiscriminately without any favour to a specific group of employees. This would ensure that I demonstrate my integrity and the capability as a thinking performer through ensuring that employees plights are considered and necessary amendments are made. I would also demonstrate my collaborative approach to negotiate with the discontented employees and ensure them that their concerns are addressed amicably and in time. The other situation that may require me to act professionally as a thinking performer is when organization employees seem not to follow the instructions or codes of conduct and rules that they are supposed to follow. This situation leads to deviations in the employees work output and may result to massive losses to the organization. This scenario may be as a result of several factors one being miscommunication. As an HR advisor and a thinking performer, before reprimanding or firing an employee based on not following directives, I would conduct a survey to ascertain the real cause of the problem and ensure that all the employees participate in the survey. Afterwards I would evaluate their responses and finally come to the general reason of poor performance based on inappropriate methods used. After ascertaining the cause of the poor performance, I would implement the necessary courses of actions in the organization to ensure that the instructions are properly followed in future. Purposes behind CPD CPD-continuing profession development refers to the practice of tracking and documenting the knowledge, skills, and experience employees have gained both formally and informally as they perform their daily duties (Lawson, 2006). CPD enables employees to keep pace their capabilities with the existing current standards of other employees in the human resource profession. Employees are able to enhance the skills and knowledge that are necessary in delivering their professional service to their customers through maintaining a record of their skills and experience. The CDP helps employees to ensure that their knowledge stays relevant to the changing trends in their profession because the pace at which the professions are changing is faster compared to the past periods. CPD is important to the employees since it helps them to continuously make meaningful contribution to their teams and become more effective in their work places. This enables employees to advance their careers and get promotions to positions they can influence, manage, lead, mentor, and coach others. Consequently, employees are able to develop and improve public confidence in their professions through CPD. Finally, CPD helps employees to improve the quality of their life, sustainability, property, environment, and the economy in general by being more organized and orderly. Why CPD is an essential professional’s toolkit when 20 years ago or more it was not CPD has become essential part of professional’s toolkit because it has various advantages and impacts on the life of the professionals (Human Performance System, 2010). CPD is currently relevant and essential owing to the continuous changing trends and environment in the organizations and the professions in the market. Professionals are forced to keep abreast to the changes in the market in order to become relevant and remain productive. Therefore, CPD helps the professionals to track their experience and skills and make changes where necessary. Since the market is marred by daily changes, professionals must keep updated with the changes so that they can make adjustments where necessary. Top three development needs in relation to my current strengths/weaknesses and career aspirations My developmental needs in relation to my current weakness include possessing the courage to challenge, drive to deliver, and becoming a skilled influencer. Personally, I have a weakness in that l lack courage to challenge. I always find myself in support of decisions without proper considerations of the impacts of such decisions and in case I feel otherwise about a decision, I have no courage to come forward and air my opinion to the decision maker. I also have lack the positive drive to deliver results and I lack the skills to influence others and decisions. My development needs in relation to my strengths include having collaborative skills, becoming decisive thinker, and possessing integrity. The strengths I have highlighted above needs to the developed and perfected so that I can be a good performer. I need to develop and sharpen my integrity and collaborative skills so that I get to realize increased output and success. The opportunity I have is having the time to sharpen my skills and develop my strengths and to work on weaknesses to ensure that I fit well in my profession. The other opportunity is that I can get to be trained and learn from my tutors and colleagues in order to develop my skills and enhance my knowledge. The threats that I face is in regard to the continuous changes in the profession with the potential of rendering the knowledge and skills I have acquired outdated if I do not keep my CPD updated. The areas I need to develop include having the courage to challenge, drive to deliver, and becoming a skilled influencer, which are my weaknesses of which I need to make a comprehensive plan on how I will work on my weaknesses and improve my strength using the opportunities at my disposal. My personal development plan for the weaknesses and the strengths is geared towards ensuring that improve in my weaknesses and develop my strengths so that I can be successful in my profession. I intend to improve my courage to challenge by regularly practising on my confidence and having all the necessary and relevant information before challenging a certain situation or a decision. The actions I am taking in order to satisfy these development needs I plan to work on my collaborative skills through working in a team rather than working on individual assignments. Working with a team will ensure that I get the avenue to develop my collaborative skills and to become a team player, which will propel my success. Collaborative skills are essential in professional growth and development as they help an individual to work in a team towards the attainment of the set goals and objectives. The resources that I need to develop this skill are the team members and time (Piskurich, 2009). Further, Idesire to develop my influencing skills through training and continuous practice that will help me understand how others think. This will in developing my empathy and listening skills so that I can get to listen to other people’s opinion and reactions towards a decision before influencing them to take certain actions. In order to develop my influencing skills, I will need to work on my communications skills since it is an essential element in successfully influencing other people. For a successful completion of this plan, I will need a tutor or guidance on how to develop the skills associated with being a good influencer. Reflecting my performance against the plan I will often reflect on my performance against the personal development plan I have set to ensure that I have attained my objectives in my development plan. I will use a self-evaluative approach whereby I start by keeping my CPP updated in order to track my development and areas that need to be improved. I will also request my tutors to evaluate my progress based on the learning that I have undergone. I will reflect on my development through using a pre-test and a post-test in order to compare results (Saks, Haccoun & Belcourt, 2010). This will help in evaluating the level of skills that I had before implementing my personal development plan and the skills that I will have acquired after implementing my PDP. I can also evaluate my performance through ensuring that I practice the skills I have gained from training with my work group and ensuring that I make changes to improve where necessary. Conclusion Human resource profession requires the experts in the field to act according to the standards set out in the CIPD profession map. These professionals need to keep an updated CPD to help them keep track of their experience, knowledge and skills. This will help them to keep abreast with the changing trends in the profession. The skills of the professionals in the human resource field can be developed through proper inception of efficient personal development plan, which would guide them on the areas of their weakness and strengths and possible ways to develop them. . References Campbell, D. (2012). Employee selection as a control system. Journal of Accounting Research, 50(4), 931-966. Human Performance System, Inc. (2010). Instructional Systems Design: ISD Models. Retrieved from: http://www.hpsi.bz/HPSI_ISD_article.html Lawson, K. (2006). New Employee Orientation Training. Lonon: Routledge. Losey, M., Meisinger, S., & Ulrich, D. (2007). The Future of Human Resource Management: 64 Thought Leaders Explore the Critical HR Issues of Today and Tomorrow. Hoboken: John Wiley & Sons. Piskurich, G.M. (2009). Rapid Training Development: Developing Training Courses Fast and Right. New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons. Saks, A.M., Haccoun, R.R. & Belcourt, M. (2010). Managing Performance through Training and Development. Boston, MA: Cengage Learning. Ulrich, D., & Brockbank, W. (2005). The HR value proposition. Boston, Mass. : Harvard Business School Press. Wilson, J. P., & Wilson, J. P. (2012). International human resource development: Learning, education and training for individuals and organizations. London: Kogan Page. Read More