During the festive season focus on the meaningful happiness created by appreciating and celebrating family, friends, and community. This year we think HR professionals deserve special thanks.
You can’t spell hero without HR
Always busy, working across every function in the business, fielding queries and concerns from the basement to the boardroom, HR professionals wear a lot of hats. We know some of the best in the business and recognise that a busy people manager is variously:
- A psychologist
- An events planner
- Diplomat, detective and disaster response expert
- Career planner, coach, and counsellor
- And a whole host of other things, in fact, an all round badass
People managers work in ever-changing environment, they conduct a lot of analytical work, decision-making, language interpretation and they tend to be really great in a collaborative environment. Give them the support, coaching, mentoring, development opportunities and training they need to thrive.
Value your HR heroes
HR, ultimately, act as middle man between top level decision makers and employees on the front line. If staff are not happy with the board they aim their frustration at HR. It’s not fair or reasonable, but it’s how things seem to work. HR staff end up in the middle whatever the crisis, despite the fact that it’s rarely of their making.
Here are out suggestions for gifts for your HR managers from the admin to the director, our top picks:
- All HR people will enjoy gifts that can be set out and enjoyed/shared with others (flowers, candy, baked goods, etc.)
- All people managers thrive on coffee, chocolate and good wine
- Anything that makes fun of HR stereotypes is great by us
- The HR for Dummies book – to be kept on the desk at all times
- The Human Resources Colouring Book, a snarky and humorous HR adult colouring book for stress relief, c.£8 from Amazon but remember they’ll need felt tips too
- An emotional support pickle, a small knitted positive pickle ornament – portable, daft and very cute
- A decision-making pendulum – set the mechanism in motion and wait for it to pick an answer for you, a must-have desk accessory
ChatGPT says HR professionals create a positive employee experience by developing processes to improve communication, collaboration, and feedback. This can lead to a better company reputation with customers, partners, and candidates.
The CIPD says HR ensures employees are engaged and optimised, corporate values are realistic and understood, recruitment and workforce planning needs are attended to and the organisation has a strong strategic view on where it is going and the people who will get it there.
We say, value your people managers, they are instrumental in building culture and enable great leadership from behind the scenes; they build engagement and productivity in the workforce and are key to the success of any business.
