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How to become an HR Trendsetter and Influencer - read the full article about 2021 HR trends, Human Resources and Recruitment, Staffing, Payroll from Tom Haak on Qualified.One
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so its all well and good keeping up with the latest hr trends but what should you do with the information in this episode well explore how to become a trendsetter in hr people and culture rather than just a trend watcher welcome to talking hr trends with natal and tom im natal dank and im thom hack and we explore the latest hot topics and business challenges impacting the people side of organizations stick around to the end for our practical top tip and if you find this discussion valuable please subscribe [Music] okay tom so recently we looked at the essential skills of a hr professional and we pointed out that actually staying up to date with the latest trends and having the latest case studies at hand was very vital and this was because you need to know your customer you need to know the problem to solve but then you need to draw on all the information at hand to apply an evidence-based approach to actually solve that problem and this is quite essential if youre going to be seen as sort of a thought leader in your hr domain in your business so whats your tips uh for people on how to stay up to date and know the right trends to sort of have on hand when theyre working in the business yes and then we we we often talk about you could say the hr architect role exactly yeah and the hr architect well he or she needs to know the material and whats new and whats developing and so thats very important and and what i often see is i i get a lot of questions from hr people and they ask me hey tom what are other organizations doing yes and i i think thats already a little bit too narrow because if we only look in the hr field what all our organizations are doing well you know we dont get a lot of inspiration at least i dont get a lot of inspiration so yeah one tip is look just broader than just hr field and what are other big companies or the usual suspects as the googles and apples we all know them what are they do look broader get inspired by other disciplines marketing i.t sales etc get inspired by other fields biology politics art so there are many fields that can inspire us and get inspired by other type of people and so not not only the corporate business type of people but but by people who work in in other areas so thats what broaden your horizon secondly and that should maybe be the number one on the list dont go just yeah i want inspiration i need to know whats going on i need to know the trends it works a little bit better if you know a little bit what type what is the problem youre trying to solve yeah exactly because then you are more focused and you are sharp so you youre looking for things that can help you with your problem yeah instead of well you and i get a lot of conferences and often at this conference there are many people saying well im here to to get inspired to know a little bit more whats going on well you you can be overwhelmed and if you dont know what what to do with it yeah if you know that youre making your kitchen and you know that you want really something nice for your kitchen then you go out there say that might fit and that might fit so thats number two connected to one of the problems youre working on and number one was look a little bit broader theres more to say but yeah no i think thats really um thats really key because its not just about going and seeing what other people are doing in hr and particularly what the big companies are doing so i often say to people what if you werent google because most of us arent google so if you didnt have all the money and all the people what could you do in your organization to solve the problem um so actually go and get inspired around how to do it differently within the constraints that you have i think thats really important yeah thats about the architect using knowing your material but then using it in a creative innovative way in your specific situation exactly and not just replicate what others are doing because well in that yeah then we get all the back best practices and those type of things that does not lead to innovation and transformation and we have talked about that you should be willing to really make a splash and and do something innovative with your issues and you can do it in a safe way by doing it in a kind of controlled experiment way you could do it small to begin with you just prototype and test you know uh do it sort of mock it out in cardboard or lego first to show it to people and get feedback before you actually roll it out so theres lots of ways that you can test the idea before you implement to make sure its safe to do so because i think sometimes people think oh but thats so risky isnt it to go and do something that hasnt been done before i think also context is always different so youve got to know your own context and youve got to test for your own context and thats kind of cultural culturally and values of the organization but just the actual situation of your industry at that time so do you have any recommendations of what people should read or anyone that they should follow in terms of keeping up to date with the trends everybody has her or her his own style and preferences how to how to uh uh i get approached sometimes by people who say hey tom i have can you can you talk with me for uh 10 minutes half an hour and i i do a lot of these zoom calls so some people prefer to to talk i im a reader myself so uh uh i i follow things like the strategy companies have often nice magazines and mckinsey quarterly and bcg and and kennedy fitch and those type of companies they have nice material i i always follow it and read it uh of course there are very good people to follow we all know that the burst in and then and the dave green and the hr curator there are many of those people follow them they are good creators and good content providers yeah i have an i use a nice tool which is called stoop s-t-o-o-p okay newsletters i i i uh uh register for newsletters and i send them all to stoop so now and then i sit behind stoop and there i get all my newsletters and i go through the articles uh very quickly yeah and and grab the information uh so so theres numerous ways to do it again it helps a little bit if if you know what youre looking so im writing lets say im writing an article about trends in performance management well then my my lens is performance management and im going to look for first things around that scene yeah but i think you need that kind of focus dont you so um because otherwise youre just there is so much information out there and i can i personally can spend hours on linkedin and other blogs looking at all the the latest ideas um but i i think youre right youve got to know what youre trying to solve otherwise youre just kind of awash with lots of information probably ones that i would mention is a culture amp that the website is fantastic for lots of resources definitely following our newsletters from hr teams like spotify i think its really good because they talk about actual case studies um and then following people like david james um whos great in the world of learning in the flow of work um so there would be a couple of people i would add to that um and also definitely go go beyond your discipline so i follow a lot of agile newsletters and websites because that actually informs me uh around whats happening in the business area with agile ways of working just as much as what i could do in the hr field um so what does someone do with these trends weve sort of talked a little bit about it but how do you become a trendsetter in your organization not just this trend watcher so someone might ask you to have a zoom call but what should they go and do with the information tom yeah so i sometimes use a little grid for that in in workshops and and the grid has three elements uh one on top of it is what is your problem youre trying to solve yes then you have your hr disciplines recruitment uh a compensation and reward organizational design we all know those and then you list the trends yes so then you can start working say okay solving this problem can we do something in recruitment and can we use the trend technology or speed or personalization so in a collaborative way you can start looking at your trend map and then of course make a selection and choose the most uh uh impactful intervention yeah no i like that the user trend map that would be good great so thanks so much again tom for that insightful conversation and i think its really important to not just follow the trends but actually do something with the information so lets take that into our practical top tip why dont you use our episodes to get that conversation going so we get contacted by a lot of hr leaders who actually use our episodes as a way to generate learning and discussion in their hr team so you can see it as a type of book club so choose one of the episodes link to a certain topic that youre interested in and do that on a regular basis maybe every couple of weeks or once a month and then get everyone to listen or watch the episode and then have a conversation around that and in particular think about what problem can you solve in the business with this information you could even do it the other way so what problem are you trying to solve and then what episode should you go and watch to actually investigate that further and then all have a conversation of what is the one step we can take with this information go and try something out test it experiment and then look back and see how that went just by taking those small steps youll get a lot more confidence and courage to now try something new in the workplace youll also just be more well informed which is always good thank you for your time today this is talking hr trends with natal and tom if you found this discussion valuable please subscribe have a great day
Tom Haak: How to become an HR Trendsetter and Influencer - Human Resources