Considering a return to work in HR

It’s been a couple of years since I left the world of Human Resources. Following my maternity leave with my youngest son, I didn’t return to the workplace. Whilst I don’t miss the office politics, I do miss the social interaction and challenge of the job and that’s why I’m considering a return to work in HR.

Why I’m considering a return to work in HR

During my time at university studying for my degree in Management, I sat a module in Human Resources and everything made sense. I enjoyed learning about employee engagement (no, not the soon-to-be married kind) HR planning and retention, recruitment and even the procedural and policy work. It was interesting and it really made me want to learn more and discover the real world of people in business.

Gaining experience and skills

Five years on from gaining my BA (Hons) degree in Management, I went back to university to study on a CIPD Postgraduate course. It was the most intense course of my life which saw me studying part-time whilst working a full time job in Human Resources in Education. It was fascinating to see the topics we covered in class in a real-life setting, watching how the people with their wealth of skills and experience handled various cases and workloads. The course made me realise I wanted to be involved in the world of Human Resources and put my skills and enjoyment of working with different people to the test.

With confidence, I took on big projects in my role as HR Officer including the implementation of a new company wide data system with data migration and system administration services, similar to that of ResourceLink, which would have been revolutionary for the business but fell victim to budget cuts and resources being stretched to the max.

Enjoying People Management insights

It’s with hindsight and regret that I stayed in a workplace where I wasn’t valued or given support to thrive. Professional development was something we did for others but not for ourselves and I became demotivated to do well. I should have moved on to experience different approaches to HR in different fields. People Management is one of the areas of HR I enjoyed and would love to work in again.

Having been in the firing line and sat on the sidelines watching poor management at play, I’d love to see it in other professional settings working well for both the employee and the business. Human Resources within education is very different to HR in the private sector. Despite the theories and models they are both based upon ultimately being the same. It would be interesting to see it from a different perspective. Given these insights, it would be interesting to view HR from a different perspective, especially in environments like Registered Training Organisations (RTOs), where a well-integrated RTO Learning Management System could significantly impact employee and student development

Ultimately, I don’t want all those years of hard work at university or years of experience in my various HR roles to have been for nothing. I want to use my professional skills and broaden my HR horizons again one day. I’m not saying it will be this year or the next but I’ll certainly consider dipping my toes back in to the HR waters soon.