Who is who: HR professions and their differences

Now HR management is actively developing, new functions, systems, departments appear. It would seem that recruiters, headhunters, HR managers, HRD, People partner - they all deal with personnel, why not just use one term?

Who is who: HR professions and their differences

The HR department has also affected the trend, and a person who is not from this field, and sometimes an experienced HR manager, can break his head thinking about the difference between Human Resources Manager and People Partner. So we decided to tell in more detail what roles, responsibilities and specializations exist in the HR department. They can be performed by different people as well as by one person. So who is who?

HR manager or HR Generalist

Multitasking position in the HR department, which includes various roles for working with people in any combination. More common in small companies where different positions already exist, but the main tasks, personnel issues or recruiting, are assigned to the HR manager.

HR Generalist is responsible for the development and implementation of the entire personnel strategy. Accordingly, constant interaction with the CEO of the company and its management. One of the most important competencies of the HR Specialist is the ability to communicate and build business communication in order to act in accordance with the goals and development strategy of the company as a whole. On this basis, all subsequent activities will be built.

The main task for generalists is to outline the question, which is always relevant. Because they occupy 50% of the employee’s working time. Specialists already distribute between the processes aimed at adapting newcomers and conducting lengthy consultations of specialists.

Career Adviser

Main task is to work with project / account management and work with IT specialists and their teams. This is important, especially at the stage of onboarding of new specialists. Each specialist has a Career Advisor to speak with and get a recommendation. Career Advisor is an assistant and partner in administrative and organizational matters. A Career Advisor is a person who timely notices any alarm signals in the team and together with the manager finds the most correct solution.

Help managers close the trial period to a person and monitor that everyone gets quality feedback about their work on a regular basis. Organizer and facilitator of such meetings. The main goal is to create an atmosphere in which each participant in the process can express their point of view, and speak out expectations and goals for the future, discuss existing achievements and wishes for development, both from the management and the employee.

To notice the first signals of inconsistency or unjustified expectations is a very important point. Therefore, we sit down and talk about all this.

A very important part of work is to help an employee realize his potential, develop professionally and move up the career ladder.

People Partner

A person who in the HR department deals with issues of employee motivation, stimulating development on the project and in the company, catches and works with dissatisfaction. This is the best friend for every employee who acts as a buffer between the interests of the company and the individual.

The responsibilities of People Partner is to become a universal assistant for employees who are able to solve all organizational issues and be a friend at work. In other words, People Partner is an intermediary between an employee and a company, designed to maintain the necessary balance in a working relationship. The specialist in this position combines some of the responsibilities of HR, a recruiter and an event manager.

The concept of "People Partner" in foreign countries has existed for a long time. The reason for the emergence of a new position in the HR department was the need to pay more attention to retaining specialists, focusing on employee satisfaction and motivation. Motivation is a complex concept, and the task of People Partner is to find an individual approach to each employee, determine what motivates / motivates him and discuss this with management in search of a better solution.

Training Manager, L&D Manager (Learning & Development)

The training manager analyzes the technological need of the projects, who works on what technology, who can share what, what upcoming trends can be interesting and generates requests for training or knowledge transfer:

• Developing and implementing learning strategies and programs

• Designing e-learning courses, career plans, workshops and more

• Maintaining budgets and relationships with vendors and consultants

Learning and development managers are responsible for the creation and delivery of bespoke training programmes. Designed with leadership, management, business and personal progression and best practice in mind, the intention is to expand on the talents and skills across all employees at all levels within an organisation.

Knowledge of the company, its clients and business strategy are all key, as these will be taken into consideration when establishing the training and performance programmes.

The role of the learning and development manager is to fundamentally assist in the organisation’s success, by coaching and developing its people.

Business Partner

HRBPs are HR specialists who work closely with senior management, focusing on the missions and tasks, processes requested by the organization. The main focus of this position is strategic planning and scaling up processes in the company.

In professional HR-communities, HR Business Partner positions are increasingly found. Companies introduce such specialists into their organizations, based on the experience of others who are already successfully working in the HR business partnership system.

HR Business Partner is a specialist who has many years of successful experience in the HR sphere and is able to solve complex issues. Position implies a deep knowledge of all aspects of work in HR. What does HR Business Partner do:

1. Establishes interaction between the HR department and business, prepares and implements a development strategy, manages changes.

2. Optimizes and automates HR processes.

3. Becomes a mediator in conflict situations between employees and managers.

4. Together with business, it solves non-standard cases, such as product entry to new markets or crisis situations.

Marketing + HR = MarHR

Responsibilities include working with the company’s career site, accounts on social networks, referral programs to attract new employees, e-mail newsletters for the internal and external world, writing expert content on sites where potential CA is present. MarHR also sponsors events and works with company reviews. In fact, MarHR helps to build an effective recruiting process (to assess engagement and conversion, help build a funnel of incoming resumes from different channels, create key company messages to the outside world), but tasks to increase the involvement and loyalty of employees within the company can also be the responsibility of the march.

You may have a fair question: how does the HR Business Partner differ from the HR Director? We agree, their posts are somewhat similar. The HR Director is engaged in the main tasks of personnel management and is more focused on the development of the company according to internal indicators: training and motivation of employees, organization of an HR department, formation of relationships in the team. HR Business Partner does not build HR processes, but rather oversees them and optimizes them to achieve business objectives.

HR-Director

HRD is a top manager who implements, supports and develops the company's strategy by taking tactical steps in personnel management. HRD is the only person in the company who needs to build interaction with each division, with each leader, since the implementation of the HR strategy and, accordingly, the business development strategy depend on the level of understanding with top managers.

Therefore, HRD is essentially the second person in the company after the CEO. As a rule, HRD is a member of the board of directors and influences the adoption of key business decisions. Although this effect is largely dependent on the scale of the HRD personality. In the same position, different people have completely different approaches to the implementation of their functions, even within the framework of the same job responsibilities.

In addition to knowing the full functionality of the HR service, HRD must have strategic and systemic thinking, professional courage and perseverance to implement the HR strategy throughout the business. You must learn to look at the business through the eyes of the owner. It is necessary to be able to organize processes in order to provide the business with an influx of new qualified specialists, build systems of adaptation, motivation, training, development regardless of the region, time of year, or cataclysms of the external market. You need to be prepared to prove to the company management that the decisions made by HRD are correct and benefit the business. Otherwise, the company will not have HRD, but the head of the personnel department. ”

Employer Brand Manager

More and more often you can find a vacancy of Employer Brand Manager, a specialist responsible for the internal and external brand of the company as an employer. The main difference, probably, is that this person should be a good marketer, a good PR manager, and somewhere deep down, a talented HR. ”

Event manager

Event manager - the organizer of events, both large (conferences, corporate events), and less large-scale (meetups, team buildings). The event manager is a communicative person who is almost a member of the What, Where, When? Event club reacts quickly to changes and uses its creative potential. The event manager creates the structure of the event and fills it with wow-effects, creating an atmospheric mood.

At the moment, there are a huge number of HR positions. And the roles that HR performs can vary, from a specific pool of tasks to a full range of work. It all depends on the scale of the company and the level of development of the department. The variety of positions varies depending on the roles in the HR department. Therefore, the main thing in any position in the HR department is loving people, communication, positive attitude and constant development.