2024

5 Essential HR Manager Skills in 2024

HR manager is an essential role of any organization or company. The skills of an HR manager include the ability to oversee employee relations, talent recruitment, and workforce training. But they also take part in conflict resolution, administration, and human resource program development.

Due to the nature of the job, HR managers must possess a diverse set of skills, including communication skills, management skills, and organizational skills, to manage the team in an effective way.

Since it’s a unique combination of hard and soft skills, a good HR manager takes courses throughout their career to hone the business skills they need. If you’re interested in learning more about human resource manager skills via video, then watch below. Otherwise, skip ahead.

Unlike other human resources professionals, human resources managers are the ones responsible for how things work out. Thus, they must keep a cool head to make calculated decisions.

Essential HR Manager Skills in 2024

Besides the usual skills they need, such as leadership, hiring talent, onboarding new hires, and conflict management, we’ll list the essential skills they need in 2024 to supervise successful business management.

1. Empathy as the Key Skill for Human Resource Managers

In 2020, many employees dealt with stress, frustration, and uncertainty due to Covid-19. According to The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities data, the unemployment rate in April 2020 hit a level last time seen in the 1930s.

For human resource managers, that meant handling issues that weren’t as prominent just half a year ago while struggling with similar problems. But by including empathy in their leadership HR skills, many HR leaders found a way to develop a plan to maintain the needed employee performance.

It’s the leader’s job to know what their workers are going through in their careers. Instead of acting like average employers, managers can develop a healthy workplace by sharing their experiences.

This will become even more important for human resources management in 2024 and beyond. As companies recover, they will need HR professionals who can lead and do necessary training and development that’s different from a couple of years ago.

Essential HR manager skills

Candidates should be onboarded in a strategic way. The same goes for conducting a talent interview, measuring performance, and even checking an average resume.

Although managers don’t conduct the interview or do resume checks, they need to have the ability to communicate with the HR assistant or HR generalist doing the job. Human resources managers emphasize with existing co-workers to hire the right, new talent. If the leadership crumbles, everything else follows.

Since all HR professionals work with humans, empathy is one of the essential skills (HR). But this becomes even more crucial for managers leading the team.

2. Emotional Intelligence & Understanding When Things Go Wrong or Right

Although somewhat related to the previous ability, having strong emotional intelligence is more than proper communication with employees. According to a study, managers and employers with strong emotional intelligence tend to have better leadership skills that yield better financial and productive results.

Uncertain times require laser-sharp decision-making and professional management skills. This means that it’s important to have the skill to recognize positive moments, the same as the negative.

When the employee morale is low, acknowledging even the slightest positive bump becomes a vital skill in the leader’s arsenal.

Managers already have countless tasks to deal with, including securing sensitive information, managing HR software, and acting as the communication bridge between the workforce and organization or business higher-ups. But it’s a key part of the job to develop and maintain a productive workplace.

HR professionals need to not only manage their productivity but the efficiency of their employees as well—that’s where emotional intelligence takes a pivotal part alongside other HR skills.

Even before 2020, human resources had to deal with uncertainty throughout their career. But the anxiety ramped up with many jobs moving online, and it will take time to recover in 2024 and beyond. To become successful, human resources management needs to have leaders who’ll lead by personal example.

It all boils down to how long the recovery will last. Will an adapting program, some organizations, and companies will recover sooner than others.

3. Developing & Implementing DEI Policies

Diversity and inclusion are other matters that became more prominent in 2020. When it comes to hiring, compensation, benefits, and overall approach a company has both outside and inside the HR field. If you’re looking to master the diversity and inclusion, don’t forget to check out our top-rated diversity and inclusion certification course:

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Vigorous DEI policies create security for employees, making them more productive and they develop more confidence not just in their career but in the company as well.

With that said, it is tricky to create a strategic DEI program that works for everybody. A young talent knocking on the door with a resume can have a different view than current employees. Similarly, one HR professional can also have a different opinion than another.

But data does show that inclusive companies and employers have 120% more chances to hit financial goals than those that aren’t.

In a way, 2024 is the starting point for refurbishing HR skills towards that. HR professionals who know how to collect sensitive information from their employees will have a much better overview of required tasks. This goes back to solid communication skills and empathy.

Employees who do not trust employers won’t share the information or, even worse, they’ll share wrong information, jeopardizing the company’s performance and relations.

But a professional human resource manager with the right HR skills will communicate in an effective way and develop a program that implements the data into practice.

Human resources professionals need to sync up with the personal and emotional tides of their employees and the new recruits.

It’s still uncharted waters, so an HR professional doesn’t want to engage in a DEI policy development that might go outdated a year later. But that’s where genuine management and skills take part.

By collecting the correct data, training, and reading between the lines of a resume, everybody can benefit. HR professionals take pride in acknowledging issues before they happen, and employees feel more comfortable, even if they are working remotely and online.

DEI training and development is the key to success in 2024, and creating a strategic approach that benefits everybody will result in more significant financial profit.

4. Using Business Intelligence Tools in Human Resources

It’s the manager who makes key calls and prepares the playing field for employee tasks, recruitment, and sometimes even how substantial an employee compensation can become. Same as managers rip the rewards due to their human resource skills, they also take the hit if, for example, a hire goes wrong.

AI has been making its way into every part of human resource management. AI can accelerate hiring, training, onboarding candidates, resume analysis, and payroll management.

While some HR professionals fear AI’s efficiency, others develop skills that make their job easier. Instead of looking at it as fewer work opportunities, AI-supported decision-making can release tension in management.

Many human resources skills might indeed become redundant, but it is also true that new job opportunities and related skills will arise.

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According to a study on AI’s impact on human resource management, AI will benefit HR professionals because a business will have the ability to make better organizational decisions.

AI allows candidates to present their skills in an enhanced way. Instead of going through perpetual submissions of the same information, both talents and management can become more efficient. It also reflects on creating more transparent communication between the employees and the company.

Furthermore, a company can create a better skill training program, ensuring that a candidate starts their job earlier.

This means for HR managers that the human resources skills they employ will have to change as well. Instead of making decisions based on experience, they will decide based on the mixture of experience and cold AI data.

The key is that although AI has superior information collecting and organizational skills, that isn’t enough to connect with employees. The human resources department must be able to act as a bridge between the data and the employees.

When conducting online recruitment, AI is faster at locating key resume points, but it’s the HR professional who needs to make the hire.

The human-machine relationship redefines how an organization does business, but it depends on the manager’s HR skills and how beneficial the shift will become.

5. Adapting Human Resources Skills to Remote Work

Whether it’s an IT business or a health organization, everybody had to move a portion of their work online. While some organizations struggle, some found a way to make the most out of remote work.

It’s fascinating to think about how remote work changed human resource management. Although an unpleasant surprise, many employers realized that their employees are as efficient from home as they are in the office.

Although required skills are the same in the field of human resources, HR workers need to fine-tune each skill one way or the other. For an human resource manager, it changes the way they engage with employees and communicate. Software that wasn’t necessary before became a required skill.

Technical HR skills

Since remote work is here to stay, an HR professional needs to have the ability to maintain efficiency, even if they can’t interact with employees on-site.

Measuring employee performance and doing recruitment, while still the key to success, is easier to overlook than before. This can leave an unprepared manager lost if they don’t have the skills or knowledge to do their job in an efficient way.

To stay effective, HR managers need to learn how to exploit their existing knowledge in the new environment. Otherwise, they’ll end up overlooking key parts of the new digital workspace.

Conclusion

Apart from the above-mentioned technical skills, here’s a list of what skills are important for success in human resource that a human resource manager must exhibit:

  • Communication skills
  • Organizational skills
  • Finance skills
  • R&D skills
  • Proactive skills
  • Mentoring and coaching skills
  • Administrative skills
  • Management skills

As clear from the name, HR managers need to be able to manage their HR team in a proficient way so no disturbance or disruptions arise in the HR department.

 


If you are inexperienced in Human Resources and are looking to break into an HR Intern role, we recommend taking our HR Certification Courses, where you will learn how to build your skillset in human resources internship, build your human resources network, craft an excellent HR resume, and create a successful job search strategy that lands you a sought-after HR Internship or Job.

 

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Josh Fechter
Josh Fechter is the founder of HR.University. He's a certified HR professional and has managed global teams across 5 different continents including their benefits and payroll. You can connect with him on LinkedIn here.