Why the Human Resources Role is Important in Business?

The Story Of An HR: How To Make Employees Happy

Your people are your biggest asset. One way to ensure that your business will succeed is to take care of your employees.

Treat your employees fairly, manage them well, and provide them with opportunities and they will help you to achieve your goals. Treat them badly or with mediocrity, and they will underperform or eventually leave.

It is as simple as that!

Human resources managers are the lifeblood of a company. Their role is to ensure that the business gets the most out of its employees.

At Sales.Rocks we understand the correlation between the role of human resources and business success. Our HR manager Anja ensures that our co-workers are motivated, happy, personally engaged and contributing to company’s success.

Moreover, Anja helps the development of our organizational culture and climate in which employees have the competency, concern, and commitment to serve our customers well.

In this article, Anja reveals what it takes to be an excellent Human Resources Manager.

Proactivity, eagerness to learn and desire for personal and professional development are the key factors of employee motivation.

As an HR manager, you simultaneously handle tasks. How does a typical day look like for you?

Well, every day is a different story. I start the day by going through my tasks, but I have to admit that when you work with people, sometimes it’s really hard to stick to your schedule.

In the morning, I usually coordinate the administrative functions, because there are deadlines that cannot be missed. After that, I am available to handle all of my colleagues’ queries, requests and needs.

What is the secret behind motivating employees in a company?

The biggest motivation is self-motivation, I would say.

Proactivity, eagerness to learn and desire for personal and professional development are the key factors of employee motivation.

In addition, you have to enjoy your work and love your job responsibilities, be happy with the working atmosphere, and get along with your team and your colleagues. Of course, the management team plays a significant role in each of those aspects and the company as well, which is here to surprise us with some social and team building events, workshops, trainings and conferences throughout the year.

HR professionals have to earn the trust of company employees. This is a challenging process, but you manage it efficiently. How do you do it?

My biggest challenge at the beginning was getting close to people and earning their trust, so they can see me as a friend and be able to come to me at any time, ask for help, some advice or simply for a casual talk.

How do I do it..hmm well, to be honest right from the start I didn’t have any plans, nor strategy. It all came spontaneously and with time. All I do is be myself.

It’s really important that you truly care about your people, because it’s one of the crucial things if you want your business to be successful. At the same time, it’s not an easy job, since it’s something that cannot be acted out, you really have to love your people and look after them.

I can say that my biggest achievement so far is the relationship I built and I’m constantly building with each one of my colleagues. I try to be there for them as much as I can, and show them that they can always count on me.

That’s why the HR department it’s called department with personal touch, where we deal with valuable resource — people.

How do you resolve conflict situations at work?

Managing conflict situations effectively includes creating an open communication environment in the company by encouraging employees to talk about work issues.

It’s really important to understand what employees are saying by asking questions and focusing on their perception of the problem.

First, we are defining the problem, then letting individuals express their feelings. Next is determining underlying needs, and in the end finding common areas of agreement.

Honesty and clear communication plays an important role in the resolution process. The goal of conflict resolution is not to decide which person is right or wrong. The goal is to reach a solution that works for everyone.

As an HR Manager, I always tend to be on employees’ side, but of course there has to be a balance between employees’ needs and expectations and company’s needs and priorities.

Your role is at the core of a company’s success. In your opinion, what are the top 3 qualities of an HR manager?

Empathy, strong sense of ethics, extroversion, resourcefulness, patience, strong follow-up skills, excellent communicator… it’s definitely a long list.

Part of your job is conducting interviews with job candidates. Can you reveal which characteristics are required for a candidate to be a perfect fit in our team?

Recruitment is never an easy process, believe me. Sometimes a 30-minute interview is not enough to figure out which candidate will turn out to be a good fit and which one won’t.

We follow no specific criteria in case of a job vacancy, but it’s really important to hire individuals who fit our company culture. They could be the most qualified candidates, however if the work environment and team dynamics do not suit their personality and working style, they are unlikely to stay with the organisation for a long period of time.

We try so hard to find candidates with the qualities we are looking for, but at the same time we focus on those who culturally fit in our company.