Can ‘just anyone’ work in HR? It’s a burning question that has long driven Tanya Hammond FCPHR’s career and research. Here’s what she’s learned so far.

For Tanya Hammond FCPHR, CEO Chief Collaborator at Tailored HR Solutions, the recent rise of data-driven HR is a welcome and long-overdue change.

“I realised pretty early in my career that I had a knack for analysing complex problems and finding creative solutions. It was and still is my passion. I always liked to understand the ‘why’,” says Hammond, who is also the former Chair of AHRI’s Research advisory panel. “So, working in HR, I really wanted to understand what draws people in and what keeps them in an organisation.”

Hammond’s 35-year career as an HR practitioner, consultant and academic began with a graduate recruitment role. It was a valuable stepping stone for Hammond’s career, as it gave her a critical understanding of talent pipelines and the importance of creating a safe and inclusive environment. However, later in her career, she began to learn that her skills were more suited to the big-picture side of HR and workforce strategy.

“HR has to be really proactive and responsive – that’s just life,” she says. “As a practitioner, I found I was often being drawn into putting out fires. But if you’re doing that, you’re not as involved with [large-scale] employment issues and trends, and how they link to the organisation.

“What I started to realise was, I wanted to spend time looking at the workforce as a whole and understand the risks that might be encountered. It was the nerd in me wanting to use that data and take an evidence-based approach to finding risks and solutions.”

HR need to become data storytellers

It was Hammond’s knack for turning data into solutions that led her to workforce planning. Since leaving her role as an HR practitioner, she has worked with a number of organisations in the finance sector, a large consulting firm and subsequently her own firm, Tailored HR Solutions. 

This firm predominantly works with clients across the Australian government sector, leading HR-related initiatives involving strategic workforce planning, capability development, people analytics, strategic analysis and workforce strategy design.

One of the biggest lessons she has taken from her academic and professional experience is that effective workforce planners need to be able to tell a compelling story with data.

“HR are the keepers of so much data and information about the workforce,” she says. “[It’s about] taking that data and connecting it to the business at an organisational level – being able to tell a story about trends, insights, potential risks, and subsequent impacts [now and in the future]. To succeed, HR must partner with the business to establish an understanding of the high-demand and necessary workforce skills and capabilities, required capacity and performance and take action to influence these outcomes – that’s an incredibly important skill.”

In today’s world of work, it’s not just the HR field where data storytelling is a coveted skill. According to research by Robert Half Australia, data analytics was the second most sought-after capability by CIOs in 2022, cited by 64 per cent of respondents. The only skill more in-demand was cybersecurity (65 per cent). CIOs were willing to pay an additional salary premium of 30 per cent to secure data analytics skills.

Hammond’s experience in workforce planning has involved plenty of myth-busting when it comes to employers’ perceptions of the labour market. Often, leaders assume that essential capabilities are in short supply at their organisation due to unavoidable skills shortages, whereas in fact the issue is more related to the attractiveness of an employer’s offerings and its market reputation, she says. By demonstrating these truths to management through concrete data and examples, workforce planners can influence not only strategy, but also the quality of the employee experience.

“One thing that is really important for HR professionals [in this field] is cultivating that deep curiosity to understand both people and the organisation, because we have to be a voice to both,” she says. 

“We need to be able to take critical thinking skills and business acumen to the problems that we encounter in HR, and, importantly, we need to learn how to be consultative and comfortable in data and the translation to insights and action. We can’t shy away from that anymore, particularly in our volatile world, and in the face of rapid advances in technology and capabilities [like AI].”

Can ‘just anyone’ work in HR?

Since Hammond entered the HR field in the 80s, she has noted a significant amount of change in the way HR is widely perceived.

This is in part due to the increased credibility that HR has gained through the advent of professional certification via AHRI, she says. Moreover, HR’s increasing visibility was accelerated during the COVID-19 lockdown period.

“HR gained a lot more credibility in that time. It showcased what HR could really do. We leaned in and helped to solve some very complex problems very quickly, and the role of HR got elevated through that process to a whole different level. I think we’re still seeing that being played out in organisations.”

“Being good at cutting things up isn’t enough to make you a good surgeon, and watching Law and Order doesn’t make you a good lawyer. You need more than that, and it’s the same in HR.” –  Tanya Hammond FCPHR, CEO Chief Collaborator at Tailored HR Solutions

Hammond has recently undertaken research at UNSW, Canberra, exploring whether ‘just anyone’ can do HR, which she explains was a relatively widely held view in the early stages of her career. However, the results so far have indicated that this assumption is off the mark.

“Being good at cutting things up isn’t enough to make you a good surgeon, and watching Law and Order doesn’t make you a good lawyer. You need more than that, and it’s the same in HR,” she says. 

“There are certain behaviours and capabilities and knowledge required to be able to do it effectively. Just liking people is not going to make you a great HR practitioner. 

It’s much more complex than that.”

UNSW’s research has also uncovered some interesting findings on the common traits of successful HR professionals.

“The big surprise for me was around the journey of an HR practitioner and how we come into HR from lots of different avenues. And more often than not, the people who were identified as high-performing practitioners were people who’d fallen into the field.

“However, another thing that most of the high-performing individuals [had in common] was that they recognised the importance of actually learning the trade. For example, by undertaking further study, having a good mentor and knowing the importance of networking.

“That was very interesting, and really concreted in my mind the importance of HR certification and having a very clear idea of what good HR looks like.”

Hammond intends to draw on this research to contribute to her role on AHRI’s National Certification Council.

How can HR use data to measure its own impact?

As our world of work grows more data-centric, maintaining HR’s credibility will require tangible ways to measure its success, says Hammond. As the employment landscape has evolved over the past few decades, so has the way HR gauges its own effectiveness.

“HR has changed so much in terms of what we do and the way we frame things,” she says. 

“From my perspective, HR used to be run and led with a [focus on] homogeny. Now, it’s completely flipped to leading with business context and a focus on the individual employee experience. 

“From a workforce planning perspective, that’s really an opportunity to look at the data through that lens when we think about how we measure the impact of what we do, and how we know the plan is working. One of the key measures now has to be the engagement and commitment of people in your organisation. And that’s a big change.”

Since so much of HR’s efforts are concentrated on influencing others, another way to measure its efficacy is to assess whether managers feel confident leading their people, she says.

Hammond also stresses the value of professional certification to maintain the heightened credibility that HR has built up in recent years. A standardised qualification like this helps to cement the understanding that HR is a complex field that not ‘just anyone’ can enter. 

Undertaking further study can also help HR professionals approach their work with a more holistic understanding of the field of HR and the employment landscape. 

As Hammond puts it: “It’s not like a qualification gives you all that knowledge, but what it does is help you start to understand and develop critical thinking around the different aspects of the field.”

More importantly, qualifications that can measure and demonstrate HR’s effectiveness are the only sure-fire way to ensure quality and consistency in an organisation’s HR services.

“I got into this field and I’ve stayed in it because I really believe there’s some significant value we can create – and, with respect, harm if it’s not done well.” 

This article was originally published in the June 2023 edition of HRM Magazine.

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