Question 14
Drawing upon published research write a 1000 word briefing paper for your Director of People on how you can create and sustain a greater sense of professionalism within the People Professional team.
Solution
Question 14
Adopting the definition of Frye et al. (2020), professionalism is identified as a practice of increasing reliability, setting individual high standards, and demonstrating a caring attitude of all job aspects. In support of this definition, Ichsan et al. (2022) identify professionalism as a practice where the people professionals or HR conduct themselves appropriately, conveyed attitude, communication with each other and customers engagement. The rationale of creating a great sense of professionalism within the people professional team is informed by the evolving nature of people professionals over the years. For instance, CIPD (2017) argued that HR has been challenged owing to its characteristic of managerialist hence failing in prioritising on the employees voice and ethical considerations. This is with the people practice focus initially being to demonstrate their value to their organisations, initiating credible relations with senior managers. Hence, as part of people professionals development, it is important to consider transitioning it from traditional people-based practice to an operational performance. The rationale of this is informed by McCluney et al. (2021) which identify on the need for initiating strategic influence which would enable organisations in managing competitive pressures significantly increasing. To sustain this in the professionalism, efforts would need to be made to ensure that people practice professionals are understanding what it takes to make decisions impacting other stakeholders lives. This is as opposed to primarily focusing on profitability only.
A successful creation and sustained great sense of professionalism within people professional teams would also entail ensuring management of all practical challenges compromising practitioners ambitions of making balanced people management decisions. Considering the Saeed et al. (2019) findings, in the verge of people professionals making a win-win phenomenon to organisations and people, they end up encountering pressures from business leadership and fear of losing their job roles. Hence, the best practice ought to entail ensuring existence of a high-level accountability for the people decisions findings. All the identified issues are noted as hindrances to management of application of identified principles into an active practice.
Also, as a best practice, to create and sustain professionalism of people practice teams, can include ensuring they leverage from an increased power in their organisations. Considering the fact that one of the area of people practice professionalism is working within set ethical standards, the constrained boundaries of people practice impact their success in this area. Hence, Leicht-Deobald et al. (2022) recommended on the need of offering an opportunity for people professionals adherence to ethical standards. These are the ones shared by professions, alternative values and restricting practitioners autonomy through application of moral principles. This recommendation is also supported by Metcalf and Moss (2019) which identify people practice professionals are identified as a profession as opposed to a function of organisation. The outcome of this would include a successful management of challenging unethical decisions made in an organisation.
Further, for the sake of sustaining the professionalism, the best practice would entail;
Developing meaningfulness of work–
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