HR Standalone role

Hi Danielle... here's a well-visited thread that is worth your while reading!

Standalone HR, how do you cope?

You always have the Community here to turn too.

Thank you!

Hi Danielle

I took on my first stand alone role in October. I must admit it was quite a daunting thought at first as I had always worked with brilliant people who I could turn to for advice. I also made the step up from HR Administrator to HR Advisor.

Although it's still early days, I am really enjoying it. Every day I get to test my knowledge and I am learning so much from it. There is the doubt for me that sometimes I am doing something wrong - but I am hoping that will disappear as I get more confident (and read more of these discussions!).

"Although it's still early days, I am really enjoying it. Every day I get to test my knowledge and I am learning so much from it. There is the doubt for me that sometimes I am doing something wrong - but I am hoping that will disappear as I get more confident (and read more of these discussions!)."

Love your attitude towards your role, Nicola :)

Hi Danielle,

I'm in a standalone role. I see the pros and cons as follows:

Pros
I get to set the HR agenda. I'm lucky that my MD is happy to be lead by me.
You learn to be a true generalist.
You truly feel valued by the business

Cons
It can be lonely. I like my job, but really miss working as part of a supportive team.
I look after 200 staff and end up getting bogged down in admin rather than be able to do the more 'juicy' HR stuff. I'm already about 2 months behind my People Plan for 2018 as I'm tied up doing recruitment and pay reviews.
If your Manager isn't supportive I could imagine it being particular tough. I previously worked in a standalone role with a manager who thought they knew about employment law, but didn't, which was particularly tough.

I hope that helps! I imagine a lot depends on the company.

Well done on being offered your role. I am a standalone manager and have been in post since October 2016, the company that I work for didn't previously have a HR Department so I am very busy. I enjoy most days as every day is different and challenging. You learn quickly and you are always learning, if you enjoy a challenge it is a great role.
You do question your self a lot that you are making the right decisions but there is so much support available. I agree some days can be lonely, but on days like today - interviews - your feet do not touch the ground.
I agree it can be admin heavy , I am still working on the answer to that!

This is very similar to my own experience, though I have never worked in an HR team so I don't know what I'm missing out on there.

My 1st HR position was the sole HR in a company employing 500... and eventually 1,000 staff.

Pros:-
You learn loads more. Sink or swim.
a) I wasn't carrying too much HR past experience - and thus, "this is the way you do it" around with me.
b) I was free to do what I wanted in line with what the company wanted to happen.
c) I'd had several years in the oil/construction/offshore industry. So time wasters, hangers on, the long term sick, micky takers, malingerers, the idol and those that got disciplined more than once didn't last more than my few months in post.

Cons:-
a) No one to turn too
b) Decision making took longer (for me!)
e) I often didn't know whether I was doing things the 'right' way.
f) I sometimes thought I was an imposter (syndrome)

Although stressful at times I don't regret it for a moment.

Another Pro is increasing your general business knowledge and understanding. This again probably depends on the business, however i get to hear everything that goes on and have a much better understanding of sales, engineering, H&S, technical etc than i did in my previous role in a larger organisation.

Hi Danielle

Can second the excellent points made by colleagues. Like David, I got thrown in at the deep end and (mostly) swam, but inevitably made mistakes. My manager told me to go ahead and trust my own judgment, he'd back me to the hilt unless I made the same mistake twice!

So in a company with a culture of treating mistakes as learning tools, being a standalone is an excellent opportunity, and can be fun, exhilarating and very satisfying.

In a company with a blame culture, it can be a nightmare. I've worked in both, the latter experience made me desperate to join a team (which is why I now spend time on here which I had not been allowed to do previously :) ...) I also struggled with Imposter syndrome for a long while.

One thing maybe not mentioned is that after a few years it does become quite hard to measure yourself against your peers: you have no idea how well your approach, knowledge, way of doing things etc stack up "in the real world" outside your organisation. I made things up as I went along and then went and joined an HR team, where I found (thankfully) that the way they organised things was not so very different to how I would have done it myself. I learned a bit more and went back to being a standalone.