Human Resources (HR) is increasingly becoming one of the most critical departments of a company. With the proliferation of digital technologies and the services sector in India, human capital has become the most important asset of a company. The companies that can retain the best talent cost-effectively will beat their competition by garnering higher revenues, and profits. In the process, they will also gain market share and start compounding their free cash flows (FCFs). They will be in a better position to reinvest this into the business to enable it to attain scale and operational excellence.
Hence, human capital management is extremely critical for the growth and sustainability of companies. Onboarding, retaining, and nurturing human capital is invaluable.
A career in human resources can be rewarding, especially in companies that deal in industries such as IT products, IT services, banks, insurance etc.
Have you Completed your MBA or PGDM in HR?
Here’s a list of career choices that you may want to consider:
HR Manager: An HR Manager connects the prospective candidates to employers. They oversee and manage the recruitments and address employee grievances and issues. They create the framework for reviews, performance appraisals, and compensation enhancement. They also maintain records as prescribed by the regulatory and compliance authorities. In essence, they supervise the company’s human capital and its requirements from all perspectives.
However, it would be difficult to start as an HR Manager on the first day at work. You will have to first learn the ropes of the entire HR function before donning the managerial hat.
You are highly likely to begin as an HR Generalist.
HR Generalist: As the name suggests, this is normally entry level talent, fresh out of an MBA or PGDM course in HR. They must learn to handle multiple HR tasks simultaneously. They get exposure across areas such as:
- Candidate screening and shortlisting
- Interview Process and Onboarding
- Employee Induction
- Attendance Tracking and Payroll Management
- Performance Reviews and Appraisals
- Regulatory and compliance-based reporting
- Creation of operational reports for the leadership Team with information on key parameters such as attrition, revenue per employee etc.
- Employee Engagement and Retention
As you gradually gain a year or two of work experience after an MBA in HR or a PGDM in HR, you will graduate to more focused roles. A few of these are as below:
Staffing and Recruitment:
Technical Recruiter: Their job is to gauge the technical skills of the candidate and understand if he or she is the right candidate for the position. These roles are apt for people who come with technical and domain knowledge and know the process of recruitment too.
C-Level and Executive Recruiter: Such recruiters come with good communication and interaction skills, and they play the role of recruiting executive vice presidents, heads of department, CXO level leadership etc.
Head of Staffing and Recruitment: The head of staffing and recruitment works across the entire gamut of recruitment, training, and creation of organizational policies around these areas. In such a role, the person is also in-charge of enforcing the same and ensuring that the best talent is onboarded, retained, and upskilled.
The next key area is Attendance and Payroll Management.
After an MBA or PGDM in HR and relevant experience, you could graduate into a manager of attendance and payroll. Such an MBA or PGDM in HR would be responsible for ensuring that the salary roll-outs at the end of the month is commensurate to the attendance of the employee. They would also manage or oversee the leave policy, encashment of leaves, calculation and credit of Provident Fund, and other benefits. They may also be entrusted the responsibility of managing compensations, mapping the employee salary costs, and ensuring that it is within the budget. Employee costs form a critical part of the expenses and keeping a control over it is vital to ensure profitability and growth of a company.
Employee Relations and Engagement
A person with MBA or PGDM in HR and relevant work experience may progress in his career to become an Employee Relations and Engagement Manager. Such a professional is responsible for handling and resolution of grievances of employees, resolving disputes between employees, forming policies in areas such as anti-sexual harassment etc.
They are also responsible for ensuring that the employee morale across the company is high. To do so, they may initiate various celebrations on festival days, run contests for employees, plan team building activities etc.
Training and Development:
A company that can generate the maximum value from its human capital will succeed. One of the key aspects of ensuring this is to constantly train and upskill its employees. This can happen with training across new-age technologies, domain, and soft-skills. An MBA of PGDM in HR can graduate into a Training and Development Manager in an organization. They are responsible for identifying the training needs for employees across the organization, creation of training programmes and calendars, and ensuring that all trainings are conducted as per schedule. They may also liaise with external training consultants or organizations to create short courses that can enable the employees in their company to upskill, re-skill, and enjoy seamless career progression.
Wrapping Up
There is no doubt that an MBA or PGDM in HR is the first step towards handling critical roles that impact the most important assets of a company – its employees. With the right experience and exposure, students with an MBA or PGDM in HR can firstly gain practical experience across all aspects of HR and subsequently hone their skills in one or two of those areas. They will be well-poised to handle a strategic HR role too – which has and will always be in great demand if we have employees coming in to work (or even working from home) every day.