Reflection On Professional Development And Career Goals

Professional experiences and skills development

Question:

Discuss about the Professionalism in Human Resource Management.

Reflection is considered as the most basic instrument that is most influential for the continuous development of professional attributes and abilities. In the current context, I would be focused on reflecting my previous experiences and understandings, which have effectively assisted to improve my professional skills. The professional experiences have been most crucial factor for shaping my current skills and abilities. In addition to that, I would like to reflect on my forward agenda for coming 5 years in this current reflective paper. I believe that this reflection activity will most beneficial for understanding my flaws. This particular understanding will be most critical to recover my shortcomings and transform them into my strong suit. Moreover, I would be able to identify the existing strong suits and implement them to attain greater success in my career and personal life.

Looking back to my early life it has been revealed to me that I have been always attracted towards dealing with people. It was my greatest attraction to engage in communication with various people. This particular inclination has greatly influenced me to take the career in Human Resource sector. I joined the company born out of ABB in the year of 2010 as a HR Centre Manager in Southern Africa. I have also acted as senior HRBP for Discreet Automation and Motion Division.  I have been responsible to implement projects, programs, policies as well as strategies at ABB. In addition to that, I had to contribute to the implementation as well as development of strategies related to the local human resources. Moreover, I had to interpret the HR policies and strategies in regards to their effectiveness. I needed to provide the approvals to the complex HR transactions and solutions of escalated issues. Furthermore, I had to implement the HR strategies in line with the global and national HR strategy so that ABB can control the costs in an effective fashion. These implemented HR strategies also need to motivate, retain as well as attract employees in an effective fashion.

At the same time, I have been able to learn a great deal of human resource Management practices at the time of working at ABB. I have been able to track the progress on all HR center initiatives including quarterly KPI tracking. It has effectively enabled my monitoring abilities within the organization. I also learnt to define the HR service delivery model with focus on value added HR services and implemented it. I also learnt the intricate details of individual roles and responsibilities for each HR centre staff, as I had to define the roles and responsibilities for HR centre staff and manage the performance of those HR staffs. I also came to know the key deliverables for sub regional HR Management. I needed to keep updated with the latest market solutions. Therefore, I learnt to maintain a constant market research in order to identify the market trends in an effective fashion. In addition to that, the work experience in ABB has successfully assisted me to know how to identify and develop common or global HR processes. I also learnt to implement the automated HR processes supported by the regional and global HR organization. I came to know how to drive the development and implementation of organizational activities and HR related projects while supporting the business functions and ensuring compliance with local tax and labor laws. In this context, I have been able to grasp an evaluated knowledge and understanding of tax and labor laws. I was able to advise and support the HR Business Partners on all HR strategic initiatives. This work experience immensely helped me to lead local HR excellence and the HR group tools project with the help of ABB blueprints. I have been able to drive various BEE related initiatives as well as the implementation Employment Equity and Skills development initiatives. I had also come to know the local legislation regarding the employees’ health and safety, as I had to drive wellness program for ABB. I had also learnt the essence of punctuality, as I had to lead qualitative and timely administration of data and processes for people management within established guidelines and agreements whilst maintaining higher quality data and services. I had to determine external market competitiveness, ensure evaluation of best practice tools and frameworks and assist in the establishment of budgets and accruals, which helped me to understand trends and condition of the entire market. In addition to that, I also learnt how to implement effective communication channel, as I was responsible for ensuring efficient communication with other ABB divisions.

Learning in Human Resource Management at ABB

Currently I am working in Quant Service (Pty) Ltd as Regional HR Director and Director in the South Africa business. I learnt how to focus on company mission at all time in order to ensure most effective organizational activities. I understood that the importance of the business in a bid to support the success of such whilst at the same time ensuring robust HR policies and procedures. In this context, I came to now that HR function plays an instrumental role in facilitating realization of our values. I had effectively understood how to implement the HR strategy within their designated region; dissemination of all global HR policies and procedures within the countries of their region and to support the local adaptation and implementation of said policies and procedures. I had been able to know the inner workings of the strategy process, planning, change Management and people management areas, as I had to act as the business HR partner. I had to ensure that the results are relevant, cost effective and quality. The work experience has been able to infuse the entire business operation into my work ability, as I was bound to support the business across the life cycle.  I have learnt the sales process; feasibility studies; partnership development; new site start-ups’ and ongoing operations within their nominated region. Moreover, I have been able to develop a competent site organization, provide industrial relations support as well as negotiate on collective bargaining. The work experience greatly helped me to attain continuing professional development. My personal and professional development is discussed here with the help of CIPD profession map (Weerakkody et al., 2016).

In future, I am planning to develop myself focusing on communication skills (interpersonal skills, learning alternative languages such as Spanish and French), management and leadership skills, management skills, analytical and observational skills, technical skills. In accordance to my vision, I have developed appropriate development plan. I have targeted to improve my communication skills within the next 4 months. I will try to improve my communication by making proper interaction with people. When I will be able to understand other, I will be able to easily communicate with the. I will work as an indicator of my success. In order to improve my language proficiency, I will read newspaper and various magazines. It will improve my vocabulary and help me to understand different languages.  I will learn different languages like Spanish by taking crash courses from various institutions. The resources that will be useful for my communication development plan are such as newspaper, magazines, online blogs and others which can provide me enough understanding related to the language.  I hope to improve my communicational skills within the time period of 4 months.

My next target will be to enhance my leadership skills. I am targeting to improve my leadership skills within the next 5 months. I will read magazines and articles related to leadership strategy. I would follow business journals at a regular basis. In addition to this, I would follow my seniors at my workplace that will help me to improve my leadership skills and strategies. I will read biography of successful leaders such as Abraham Lincoln, Mahatma Gandhi and Nelson Mandela. They will help me to understand how to interact with subordinates in appropriate manner and influence them to complete job in more effective manner. I also need to learn how to stay calm in critical conditions. In a workplace, I came across different people from different cultures and different point of view. Quite often I have to face conflict while working with people from different cultures. It is one of the major responsibilities of a leader to handle conflicts and improving team spirits within the organization. Leaders have to respect the religions and point of view of others. However, in reality, it is quite a tough task to do. It requires years of experience, dedication and patience of leaders. Hence, effective leadership is tough to achieve. For this reason, I have developed a month’s development plan.  In future, if I will be able to control a group of people and manage them efficiently then I will consider that I have improved my leadership quality. I hope 5 months are enough to improve my leadership skills.   

Current work experience at Quant Service (Pty) Ltd

The next step of my plan is to improve my observational skills. Observation can be considered as whole brain skill. In order to make proper observation, I have to use my sense at the fullest capacity. I have to pay close attention to small details. Being observant means a people has to watch people, situations and events. After that the person has to think critically about what he or she founds.  For this reason, I will spend more time in order to understand a particular situation. It is important to keep the observation on a particular matter efficiently that the results can be gained properly. I would maintain a proper chart for my observation. It is important to mark the things that I would keep under observation. It is on the basis of the following chart, I will be able to understand my development. It is only when I will be able to understand the situation deeply I shall consider that my observational skill has improved by large extent. I hope that 8 months are long enough to improve my observational skills.

In the next stage, I am planning to improve my cultural knowledge. I am planning to improve my cultural knowledge within the next 7 months. From years of working experience, I come to understand that cultural diversity is an important part of an organizational workplace. For this reason, it is essential to understand different cultures of different people. In order to improve team spirit within a company, we have to respect cultures and aspects of others. In order to understand about the cultural difference, I would try to build better reputation with people from different culture and would try to know about the cultural perspectives. In order to gain knowledge about different culture, I would have to meet people at a regular basis and would try to interact with them as much as possible. In addition to this, I expect to carry out research on different cultural aspects of people that will help me to know and understand people easily. If I would be able to interact with people easily and understand their lifestyle and their way of living, I think I would consider that I have gained much knowledge about their culture. I hope 7 month is good enough to improve my cultural knowledge.

The next phase of my development plan is to improve my technical understanding. Personally, I find myself a bit technically backward because at times I have to face with certain issues related to technical understanding. In order to improve my technical knowledge, I have thought of doing a course on the subject that it become ease for me to understand and operate the technologies easily without any kind of dilemma. The resources required are technical support related to computer equipment. In addition to this, I would require a teacher or a guide to support me to understand the technicalities of various software and other related things.  If I will be able to operate the basic software and other technical goods easily I will consider myself as a master in technical understandings. I planning enhance my technical understanding within the next 10 months.

My last target is to improve my social welfare. I think that I have a number of bad habits and addictions that I need to control. In professional field we often have to meet lots of people and this require to present own self in the right way. I think I need to improve my social welfare with people. I think that regular monitoring of self is the main resource required for the sake of understanding development. I think changes in my personality can be pointed out by others with whom I would be interacting. If I would be able to lead a life without taking any help of the substances that I am addicted to, I would consider that I have done certain development in myself. I think that 6 months are good enough to improve my social welfare capability.

Reference List:

Harrison, L. (2015). Professionalism in Human Resource Management: Evolution of a Standard. People and Strategy, 38(4), 9.

Weerakkody, V., Osmani, M., Waller, P., Hindi, N., & Al-Esmail, R. (2016). Situating Continuing Professional Development in Life Long Learning in Qatar. International Journal of Business and Management, 11(11), 81.