Working in HR? If you could start again, would you?

I always wanted to work in HR and feel very lucky that I managed to get a 'Personnel Trainee' role in retail not long after I left High School without having to go to university first. My managers at that role were fantastic and really made me enjoy working in HR.

Looking back, I wish I hadn't been so demanding - I wanted to do everything right away, I needed experience first!

Having only worked in HR for a few years, I am really grateful that I can always look through these discussions and read some really good advice and read different opinions from people much more experienced than I am (especially now that I am standalone!).

I always wanted to work in HR and feel very lucky that I managed to get a 'Personnel Trainee' role in retail not long after I left High School without having to go to university first. My managers at that role were fantastic and really made me enjoy working in HR.

Looking back, I wish I hadn't been so demanding - I wanted to do everything right away, I needed experience first!

Having only worked in HR for a few years, I am really grateful that I can always look through these discussions and read some really good advice and read different opinions from people much more experienced than I am (especially now that I am standalone!).

Like many others, I just happened to drift into HR and liked it and stayed and got given more responsibility and joined CIPD and suppose did well and largely enjoyed it all.

So part of me emphatically says ‘ no regrets ‘ but part of me does speculate about what might have been.

With hindsight / knowing what I know now but didn’t all those years ago, I think I’d have done okay in academia or the law and perhaps had to endure far less work-related stress. My late mother always said I was far too sensitive to be happy as a ‘Personnel Manager’ and with hindsight again she was probably at least partially right - she was very clever and perceptive herself and rather well-placed to know about such things.

Having to be instrumental in changing - and very often (eg via the incessant redundancies) shattering the lives of so many colleagues never came easy to me and took its toll in all kinds of ways. But at the same time I suppose I enjoyed it and derived great satisfaction from getting pretty adept at damage-limitation in this regard. However, in reality / if truth be known I was probably happier as a solitary thinker, planner and problem-solver but seemed always to get caught in, swept along and buffeted by the turbuent currents of industrial and workplace change.

In danger maybe of killing the plant by pulling it out of the pot and trying to inspect its roots, so I’ll stop rambling now....

Yes, Nicola... I know many many people here use the forums to validate or get a different perspective on their own views - especially those of you in standalone roles.

I'll actually be showcasing our community to a few dozen CIPD colleagues later today. I'll tell them how the discussions often call out the worst in employers... but bring out the best of HR!

20,000+ posts later... the rest is community history. Thank you, David.

I think Elizabeth pointed out the key factor about HR (when practised or allowed to function properly) earlier, when she referred to our ability (and need) to be present in every sector and every decision of our employing businesses. We can (and should) have enormous influence; not just in "people processes" and administration, but in the whole structure and mechanism of how people are both utilised and treated within commerce and industry.

It is a tightrope, an ever-changing balancing of unpredictable factors and events, and one often walked alone. (As both reflected in and demonstrated by this Community).

If I can pinch David's mantle as "Community Poet" for a moment.

Kipling summed it up in a line from the poem,"If":

"....If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster, and treat those two impostors just the same...."

...You'll be HR, my Son....

(or of course Daughter.... But Kipling was pre-SDA).

If you want a quieter life: Choose accountancy ...Or bomb disposal! :-)

I think the "when practised or allowed to function properly" is a key qualifier. Clearly this is not always the case and has led to me considering downshifting to secretarial work in the past as the pay differential at past employers was nowhere near sufficient to outweigh the additional responsibility.

If I could 'love' as opposed to 'like' this message Peter, I would. Thank you for all your contributions too, it makes the world of HR that little bit easier.

I can think of no adequate reply Emma, except a very sincere: "Thank you".