HR Day: Celebrating HR’s Vital Role

Celebrate International HR Day on May 20th, highlighting HR’s crucial role in driving company success and employee well-being. Find tips for recognizing achievements, professional growth, and self-care for HR professionals.

By Brad Nakase, Attorney

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Table of Contents

1. What is International HR Day?

2. What does International Human Resources Day mean?

3. The purpose of International HR Day celebration

4. Acknowledging HR’s contribution to the company

5. Ideas for marking International HR Day in HR

6. In conclusion

What is International HR Day?

On May 20th of each year, we observe International HR Day. This is our opportunity to highlight the vital and indispensable role that you, as an HR specialist, play in ensuring the success of your company.

Let’s examine International HR Day’s true value, its significance, and your options for celebrating it, including how to advance your HR profession and enhance your well-being to become the finest HR version of yourself!

What does International Human Resources Day mean?

On International HR Day, we honor and celebrate the importance of HR and the good effects it has on the company and its employees. Also known as International Human Rights Day, it is observed on May 20.

The International HR Day theme is announced by the European Association for People Management each year. The themes for 2024 are:

Promoting the Integration of AI and Ethical Technology
Newly Designed Work Environments
Superb People Leadership
Ongoing Education and Skill Development

International HR Day also means putting an emphasis on how you, as an HR professional, can look for yourself and acquire the skills you need to succeed both now and in the future.

The following three years will see the next celebrations of International HR Day:

Tuesday, May 20 is International HR Day in 2025.
Wednesday, May 20 is International HR Day in 2026.
Thursday, May 20 is International HR Day in 2027.

The purpose of International HR Day celebration

Saying that human resources are an organization’s foundation isn’t hyperbole. All of your efforts, from recruiting and onboarding new hires to developing a strong EX, upskilling staff, and handling enormous volumes of personnel data, guarantee that your company has all it needs to succeed. While it may appear straightforward on paper, guaranteeing the success of your company is a challenging task in the current disruptive and fiercely competitive business landscape.

You should use International HR Day as an opportunity to recognize and appreciate the important work you perform to improve and elevate the workplace. It’s also a great time to consider what actions you can do and what resources you’ll need to advance in the HR field.

Acknowledging HR’s contribution to the company

The value that your HR department provides to your company is comparable to rocket fuel. The rocket is your business. It is well-planned and understands exactly where it wants to go. But it need the appropriate fuel at the correct moment in order to get there. Human Resources are the engine.

By managing employee performance, your work in HR guarantees that the rocket can take off, that the fuel composition is proper (by having the right talent), and that there is enough fuel (by having the necessary capacity). In an organizational context, HR’s values manifest themselves in the following ways.

HR as the corporate strategy’s catalyst

As HR, you make sure that your company has access to the right people, with the right abilities, at the right time, so that it can accomplish its plan and goals. Consider the HR efforts you design and carry out: fostering a healthy work environment, expanding DEIB, offering excellent employee experiences, and developing a just compensation structure. They guarantee that your staff members are engaged, driven, and equipped with the resources they need to give their best work.

Plus, business executives can make smarter and more informed people decisions thanks to the people data and insights your team collected. Making decisions based on data helps your company achieve its objectives and ensures that it treats its employees with respect. Here’s how your company can achieve and keep long-term success.

Making sure your company has the personnel and leadership capacity to meet objectives also depends on your HR staff. In other words, this implies that:

You provide corporate executives advice on what to do, how to handle a problem, and how to act morally and responsibly.

In addition to giving your employees the proper environment and desire to perform their jobs properly and take care of their welfare, you also assist them in understanding what is required of them.

HR’s effect on productivity and employee engagement

The organization’s excellent work environment is largely the result of the efforts of your HR staff. You make sure that your staff members feel valued and embraced for who they are and the beliefs they bring to the company through employee resource groups, DEIB projects, and employee appreciation programs.

Happy and contented workers are more engaged, productive, and inclined to stick around your company in the long run. Keeping your staff means your business can stay ahead of the competition in a labor market that is contracting and where it is harder than ever to attract the talent you need.

The part HR plays in overseeing organizational change

Every firm must embrace change on a basic level. This may manifest as the establishment of new departments, the redesign of organizations, the change of cultures, or the use of new technologies. Because of these procedures, workers must change and become accustomed to new working styles, which may cause stress, worry, or even burnout.

You enter the picture now. You are essential in assisting your staff in adjusting to change as an HR specialist. This typically entails training staff members on new procedures and technology, creating change management plans to handle resistance, and explaining the necessity of change to them. Your organization cannot undergo the necessary transformation if ineffective change management is in place.

Ideas for marking International HR Day in HR

Idea 1: Emphasize the importance of HR to the company and important stakeholders.

Raising awareness of all the principles you and your HR team provide to your company is one of the greatest ways to commemorate International HR Day. You may use the HR value chain tool to make it simple for everyone to grasp. The impact, efficacy, and efficiency of HRM operations are the main points of emphasis in this three-step approach. All of your stakeholders will be able to see clearly how HR supports corporate objectives thanks to the HR value chain tool.

In addition, you may showcase HR’s effect through the sharing of success stories and important KPIs. Talk about how your new learning initiative increased the return on investment for your training. Or how the use of asynchronous interviews by the recruitment team greatly reduced the time to hire.

Idea 2: Consider your own successes.

Review all of the things you have done in the last 12 months. This can include accomplishments pertaining to your professional or personal development, networking, or anything else you have accomplished in the last 12 months as an HR professional.

Maybe you received a promotion or finished a new HR certification course. Or maybe you felt it was time to go in a different direction because you had gained all the knowledge you could have in your previous position. Any accomplishment is something to be proud of, and you don’t have to confine yourself to what society considers successful to do so.

Idea 3: Make contacts with other human resources experts

People are sociable beings. Relationships are something we all yearn for, and they extend beyond your personal existence. Making connections with colleagues to exchange best practices and insights is always beneficial for professionals in any area, including HR. The easiest way to accomplish this is to connect with thousands, if not millions, of other HR professionals worldwide by becoming a member of online HR communities.

For instance, the Evil HR Lady Facebook Group offers nearly 30,000 HR workers worldwide a secure forum for asking questions, celebrating accomplishments, and exchanging tales about problems they may encounter in the HR department. The future of work, people transformation, and HR innovation are the three main focuses of hacking HR. Within the AIHR community, you may participate in frequent live events, exchange ideas and opinions with other like-minded colleagues, and talk about the newest subjects in HR.

Idea 4: Give your professional development in HR top priority.

Investing in your growth is the best gift you can give yourself, not just on International HR Day but every day of the year. Our business environment is extremely turbulent and unpredictable, if there’s one thing we’ve learnt over the last few years. Consequently, the only way to guarantee your success in the future, regardless of what may transpire, is to upskill.

These are some of the things you can accomplish:

Organizing your future in HR:

The first thing you should do is chart your HR career path so you can see where you want to end up and what skills you will need to acquire to get there. You could acquire a million abilities, but you won’t have the time, energy, or means to hone more than a handful. Having a career plan helps you concentrate on the abilities that will really help you achieve both your personal and professional objectives.

Remember that there is more to an HR profession than just moving up the corporate ladder from a junior to a senior one. You cannot advance to the greatest level by using every role you take on as a stepping stone. Instead, the positions you have held in the past are a compilation of significant learning opportunities that have helped you develop new abilities and capabilities.

How to become a T-shaped HR specialist:

You must expand your HR competencies beyond your area of expertise in order to ensure that you can move smoothly into a new position. Put another way, you have to develop a T-shape. This implies that you must become an expert in at least one HR-related field and acquire expertise in the following five core competencies: people advocacy, digital agility, business acumen, data literacy, and execution excellence.

Building HR competencies that will last:

By 2025, work-related skills will have changed by 40%. HR expertise is no different. This implies that you will need to concentrate on future-proofed HR abilities in addition to traditional HR talents.

HR will need to adapt quickly to support organizational shifting demands and goals as business needs evolve and the workforce becomes more and more necessary for the business to achieve its objectives. To drive this transition, HR will need to devote a significant amount of time to upskilling themselves.

These are the top 13 future abilities you should focus on developing for your HR profession:

Getting certified in HR

You can increase your earning potential by up to 44% with the help of certifications. Additionally, earning a certification will help you acquire the most in-demand HR skills, stay current on employment regulations and best practices, and broaden your knowledge and competence in your HR specific area.

Organizations like AIHR, where you can browse a catalog of 11 distinct HR certificate programs, are options to explore if you want to earn HR certificates. This covers Learning and Development, HR Business Partner, Compensation and Benefits, and People Analytics. Additionally, a lot of organizations recognize credentials in SHRM-CP or SHRM-SCP. The HR Certification Institute offers certifications that you can view as well.

Following industry updates and trends in HR

It’s also very beneficial to your professional development to stay current with developments and trends in the HR industry. Factors like employee expectations, industry norms, and the state of the market will all change over time as technology progresses, often quite quickly. These adjustments have a significant effect on how our organizations operate and how we work.

What knowledge and abilities you’ll need to succeed as an HR professional will also depend on these developments on an individual basis. You may thus predict the skills you need to acquire to stay competitive in the job market by staying up to date with industry developments and HR trends.

Idea 5: Make time for HR to practice wellbeing

One of the most crucial abilities you have as an HR professional is unquestionably self-care. It’s a fact that you are under a lot of strain. You probably feel like you’re in crisis mode all the time, what with volatile labor markets and rapidly shifting employee expectations.

It also implies that you need to be more deliberate than ever about taking care of your welfare, even though this may be the catalyst HR needs to innovate and expand more quickly than it has in the past. Since you can only support the growth of your company and its members when you’re in the finest possible health.

The following advice can assist you in controlling stress and burnout:

Realize you need assistance and encouragement.
Set up sensible limits
Recognize the sources of your stress.
Locate a local HR group.

In conclusion

That’s the point of International HR Day! We’ve covered the definition of International HR Day, the benefits HR offers the company, how to advance your HR career, and self-care in this post.

On International HR Day, we take a time to reflect on the value that HR adds to the company, even though you deserve appreciation for the hard work you do every day. Thus, make sure to set aside some time on this HR Day to recognize your accomplishments and think about how you can keep aiming high.

Have a quick question? We answered nearly 2000 FAQs.

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