Building a Thriving HR Career: Becoming an HR Business Partner

Building a career in HR is not something that you do by accident. You have to be intentional about what you're doing, and today, we're talking about the things you need to keep in mind when building your HR career.

Hey hey! It’s Bryttani Graddick, CEO and Founder of Talented Teams Consulting, and I am back today talking about all the things you need to keep in mind when you're building your career in HR. We're covering strategies, techniques, and maybe even some pitfalls you want to avoid. The goal is to create a fruitful, productive, and lasting career – whether you landed in HR because you knew exactly what you wanted to do or you landed in HR because you are “good with people” or good with payroll or good with something else.

Either way, now that you're in the role, you want to make sure you continue to build along those skills, build upon those skills.

First things first, you want to make sure you understand the HR industry as a whole. Now, when you say you work in HR, that could mean anything. You could be a team of one. You could be part of a 20-person team. You could be a talent specialist. You could be an employee relations coordinator.

There are so many HR disciplines, but you must first understand how the landscape continues to change. Over the last 3-5 years, expectations and workplaces have changed significantly. The demands of not only maintaining organizational effectiveness but also meeting the shifting needs of employees continue to grow.

So, where will you find resources to keep you up to speed? Are you tuning in to SHRM? Are you connected with your local employer association? Are you working with a mentor or a coach?

You want to make sure you have resources at your disposal because the world is continuing to change. Historically, the work that HR professionals did was more transactional. Now, however, if you're not looking forward to being more strategic and transformational, you will be behind the curve.

To stay ahead, you need to keep updated on trends that are happening within the HR industry but also look forward and know especially what's important to your organization.

Understanding what makes sense to your organization and employees is critical. It's a non-negotiable. What matters to my team might not matter to your team and might not matter to the next team. But that's why you have a really intuitive finger on the pulse of what's happening within your organization: What are their biggest pain points? What is the skills gap? How can you really support them where they are? In what ways can you develop your employees?

Again, making sure you stay up to date on all these industry shifts is non-negotiable. You've got to go beyond that. Being intentional with your time and how you use it is going to be super helpful to make sure you meet that goal.

Knowing all that foundational knowledge and understanding what the industry requires of you, you also have to ensure you're building yourself up individually.

I got asked in an interview not too long ago what is my best advice for a new leader who's getting ready to be a manager for the first time. This will typically garner advice about making sure you support your team and making sure you're visible as a leader (and all those things are very, very important), but my advice was a little different.

My advice was that the same amount of time that you spend leading others and making sure they have what they need, make sure you spend that same amount of time to build yourself up. Fill your cup, so to speak.

I believe one of the biggest mistakes that a leader could make is not to build yourself up. There is no pinnacle that you ever reach where you don't have anything else to learn, and I feel that as a leader (even if you don't have any direct reports), as a leader as a person who is influencing things around you, you have a responsibility to keep your own cup full.

Your responsibility is to make sure you are consistently getting better and better and better. Some of the skills you want to develop are communication, time management, problem-solving, and big-picture thinking.

In my business, I work primarily with HR Department of One professionals, and even if you're working by yourself, you are still a leader. John Maxwell is famously quoted as saying, “Leadership is influence. Nothing more, nothing less.” As you build your HR career, you must build your leadership skills consistently.

One mistake that I see HR professionals make is trying to wait until you get “there” to build those skills. By then, it’s too late. If there's anything that you're aspiring to, you’ve got to work on that right now.

My next piece of advice would be to build a strong network of professionals. When you're working as an HR Department One, you want to make sure that you are not trying to do everything by yourself. You literally can’t (and should have to) do it by yourself.

In a prior video, I talked about the four team members you need, even when you're working by yourself. You've got to have a network around you because if you only go by what you know as a professional or even in your personal life, you will be consistently behind. You have to be able to pull different resources from other people because that will help you build your own experiences.

One way that you can build your network within the HR industry is to get connected with different HR associations. If you're a part of the Society for Human Resource Management, whether nationally or locally, attend the meetings, webinars, lunch and learns, and conferences to network and meet new people. It's going to be uncomfortable. You're going to be nervous you might not have much to say. But the more you do it, the better it'll become for you, and the easier it'll get for you.

And, believe it or not, these connections you develop will benefit you years and years down the line. I'm 15 years into my HR career, and my contacts are continuously building into me, helping me to do more things and inspiring me to be a better leader.

I'm only saying these things because I know that has helped me to have my career go as well as it has, so I hope that's helpful for you.

If you have not already downloaded my free guide “How to Thrive as an HR Department of One,” pause reading, download this resource, and then come right back. It's going to help you figure out what you need to focus on as you're building your career as an HR Department of One.

It can be challenging, it can be difficult, and it can be lonely, but I make this blog and record my free videos because I want you to understand that you are not on your own. You're not doing it alone, and you have a resource out here to help you get better and better and better.

Another factor to consider when you're building your HR career is being able to navigate HR challenges. When you're dealing with people, people are always going to “people,” so there are certain things you can't anticipate. Whether it's an employee relations issue, an employee development issue, a strategy issue, or a talent acquisition issue, when you involve people, there is always going to be some form of unpredictability.

Use this to build your HR muscle, use this muscle to build your experience, and use this experience to build your credibility. The way you approach these challenges says a lot about the way you're going to be able to come through them because if you approach them consistently with a defeatist or pessimist attitude, you're going to continue to feel like you're behind. You must be the positive one in the bunch when everything else feels like it's crumbling around you. You must be calm in the middle of a storm. Being calm doesn’t always come naturally or easily, and it's much easier said than done. But the more you do it, the easier it will become for you.

Strategies for overcoming these challenges, ironically, don’t necessarily involve the challenge itself. Most importantly, you must make sure that you are in tune with who you are personally, understand what makes you stressed out, ensure you can navigate your day correctly, and have appropriate ways to respond to curveballs.

If you’d like my help navigating these challenges, feel free to book a call with me. I am happy to work with you to help you work through any of these challenges that you have. I understand how lonely it can be when you're working as an HR Department of One, and I’ve created this blog as a resource to remind you that you don't have to be alone.

As you’re optimizing your department and navigating your challenges, to build a successful career, you must set and achieve career goals. Setting career goals is important because it helps you to know exactly where you're trying to go. It's easier to get to where you know you're trying to go.

You want to know exactly what you have in mind – whether it's a new title that you're striving for, whether there’s a new initiative you're trying to implement, or whether it's a new organization that you have your eye on. Whatever your goal is, you must make sure you have that goal, but write it down. The Bible says, “Write the vision and make it plain,” and it's been my experience when I write my goals down, it makes it that much easier to accomplish them because I know exactly what it is I'm striving for. Also, I know whether I’m on that path or not, including any objectives within those goals.

When setting goals, a great question to consider is, “How will you know that you’ve gotten there?” You must be super intentional, and if you work with me, you'll get that word (intentional) a lot. Being intentional about what you do, why you're doing it, and how you're going to get there will be so impactful to your career because you'll know exactly if you're on the right path or if you're not.

Sometimes it's challenging to stay motivated when you're building your career, and while you're tackling different things, you have a lot of ideas and opinions coming at you from multiple perspectives, but you've got to stay motivated, and there are different ways to do that.

I often talk about your self-care and ensuring you are attuned with who you are as a person, but also, you must understand that you are more than your HR title. You've got to understand you're a whole person, and your whole person deserves to be happy as well.

If you're serious about building your career, some of my biggest tips include asking for more responsibilities once you have perfected or created a system around what you do every day, figuring out ways to add more value and new ideas and new perspectives to your organization, and working closely with their senior leadership team so you can figure out how to position HR along with the business needs.

Working in HR requires a specific combination of skills development and forward-thinking, and to be successful requires each of these things.

I hope you found this blog post helpful! if I could assist in any way or serve you at a higher level, please feel free to book a call with me to connect.

Until next time,

~ Bryttani