The era of transactional HR is not coming to a close but is rather shifting to encompass more strategic and relational activities in the future of HR function. Today’s HR professionals are becoming specialists who master new and traditional areas of the people department.  As we approach 2020 at a fast pace, new emerging roles seem to be redefining the way the HR function is perceived, opening the door to business opportunities that create further competitive advantage and differentiation between organisations on the global and local stage.

So the question is simple. What are you so passionate about that you could turn it into your specialty? Explore the 15 specialised HR profiles below and see what your next role could be in just a few years if not months!

Strategic Hats

HR strategists have the ability to adopt a global vision and leverage the opportunities that are brought by the future.

1. The Futurist

You develop a global vision in collaboration with high-level management. You know how to orientate the strategy of the company to take advantage of the opportunities that appear in your surrounding environment. You take your HR to the cloud and digitalise the delivery of your department’s services. Your reading and interpretation of what will happen tomorrow dictates your vision and the way you communicate today.

Your role for tomorrow: VP of Human Capital Strategy

2. The Networker

Creating relationships is your forte, you navigate the social sphere effortlessly both on a global and local level. You can be found knitting alliances and animating the community you’ve developed with suppliers, entrepreneurs and freelancers. Your objective? Creating strategic relationships and affiliating talent. You know how to identify high potential candidates and masterfully navigate social media to develop and maintain relationships with this online community you’ve created.

Your role for tomorrow: VP of Strategic Partnerships

3. The Change Agent

You talk and breath agile methodologies and it’s all natural that you play the role of social innovation manager within your organisation. You work on accompanying your business to adopt best practices that align with the principles of the lean start-up and lean manufacturing to make the most of limited resources. Promoting continuous improvement, change and innovation, accelerating the recruitment process, developing leadership and sharing a global vision are some of the activities you are committed to.

Your role for tomorrow: Director of Social Innovation

People Movers

HR professionals with a people mover profile are natural influencers. They have the power to engage crowds while always keeping an attentive ear to the needs of their people.

4. The Storyteller

Establishing a compelling communication and marketing strategy plan that amplifies your employer brand is your strong point. You have a flair for developing valuable content that targets your different employee segments, potential candidates and business partners. Inbound Marketing and Content Marketing have no secret for you, allowing you to approach multi-channel campaign management with success. You use micro career sites, pay-per-click ads, online banners and virtual communities to attract talent, share your business culture and communicate about the latest social initiatives and opportunities available to your employees.

You role for tomorrow: Director of HR eMarketing

5. The Mobiliser

You devise strategies with line managers and other leaders that help create a better workplace – from simply improving the office environment and all the way to getting the employee engagement needle up on the scale. You take at heart the wellbeing and happiness of your employees and work to make sure they find a purpose to it by creating a practical leadership framework to engage, recognise and shape a strong team spirit. Of course, you understand that to achieve your ideals you need to create a solid base. To do this, you act as a coach and mentor, training the managers of your organisation and give them the tools to actively contribute to talent management.

Your role for tomorrow: Director of Engagement

6. The Curator

The Curator defines the employer brand in distinctive traits that together compose the organisational culture. You animate communities through social networks with individuals from all walks of life: students, professionals, women, retirees and expats. You support causes in relation to your organisation’s values and measure the social impact your company has on its surroundings.

Your role for tomorrow: Director of Culture & Sustainable Ethics

7. The Composer

Your approach to HR individualises the delivery of HR services. You attempt to offer tailored programs that are competitive and adapted to the needs of your existing and future employees. Everything that you do is personalised, from work conditions to wellbeing, training insurances and career plans. Thanks to Big Data, you are able to adjust the variables that compose individual and organisational performance to create effective development programs that boost business.

Your role for tomorrow: HR Mix Director

8. The Protector

You create awareness around the importance of a well balanced professional life and promote health, stress prevention and wellbeing using external resources and adapting your internal processes. You drive your campaigns through content, initiating prevention activities and encouraging employees to value a break and a healthy lifestyle. Confronted to an ageing workforce you implement a personal learning and development program to prevent age-related issues and extend the length of service of your employees. You shadow your employees with a protective wing to support them through harder times and help them find adapted care solutions to bring more autonomy to their family.

Your role for tomorrow: Work-Life Balance Advisor

9. The Insurer

You compose bespoke solutions to finance your employees’ life transitions, their projects and help plan for their retirement by ensuring a continuity in their career evolution. The system that you build increases engagement by anchoring employees in a financial system that guarantee the stability of their future – and so even if they happen to leave the company.

You role for tomorrow: Remuneration & Financial Planning Advisor

HR Engineers

HR engineers work on new ways to develop the HR function in 2020. These tech-savvy profiles know how to leverage technology to bring a refreshing take on how to recruit, manage and grow people.

10. The Gold Digger

Like a miner, you’re constantly digging for new ways to source new recruits. From mobile to crowdsourcing recruitment, none of the latest trends can escape your radar. You build programs to increase the attraction power of your organisation; including referral programs that you establish in partnership with universities, communities and online networks.  These programs not only consist in bringing awareness over your organisation, but also qualifies individuals with the skills that your organisation needs to grow by providing training, mentorship and internship opportunities to future talent.

Your role for tomorrow: Talent Sourcing Director

11. The Geek

You design larger-than-life work experiences using the best of what technology has to offer. Recruitment and employee evaluations are done in real-time, using augmented reality, from anywhere, anytime. Competencies, personalities and abilities are measured in relation to the positions to be filled and an immediate response is provided to participants. Gamification is your second nature, you know all about 3D videos, avatars and virtual environments that use voice and movement recognition. Like a screenwriter your turn training into a learning story that support effective development plans.

Your role for tomorrow: Director of Interactive L&D

12. The Architect

You know how to identify the best job and leadership-related content and can recognise the most suited Intranet, e-Learning and m-Learning (= mobile learning) platforms to make it accessible. The training plans you develop are modular and can be easily managed internally to perfectly adapt to the needs of your employees and organisation. You pride yourself in your ability to design interactive content that encourage continuous learning and knowledge development. Collaborative sharing is at the heart of your enterprise and you know well how to build the system needed to support this approach in the way business is done internally.

Your role for tomorrow: Learning Solution Designer

13. The Match Maker

You understand the values, interests, experiences and career wishes of your employees as well as the ones of external candidates. You role is to work on facilitating their advancement towards the roles that correspond best to their profile. This role is multi-faceted. As an internal job market facilitator you know how important it is to stay in touch with employees who’ve already left the boat to contact them again when a suitable opportunity has arrived to maturity. And as an integrator, you accompany employees during their transition in a new role to ensure a complete success of your operations.

Your role for tomorrow: Professional Mobility Advisor

14. The eProf

You orchestrate and schedule learning opportunities by streamlining the flow of knowledge and allocating learning times for your employees. Enforcing a culture of collaboration between employees, partners and suppliers is your key to facilitate exchanges. Providing instant feedback matters as you thrive to create a dynamic learning environment that uses active and open pedagogical practices to evaluate training participants and incite them to be involved in their personal development.

Your role for tomorrow: Learning Community Manager

15. The Magician

You have defined a framework to collect information through the various data points available to your organisation HRIS, career site, performance reviews, company stats, surveys, sales figures, etc.). Like a magician you have the power to pull the right metrics out of your hat to reveal actionable insights and give a pulse of your organisation’s performance, engagement, sales, efficiency, loyalty, wellbeing, reputation and much more… As you introduce artificial intelligence and algorithms to help in the treatment and interpretation of data, you grow your capability to accurately predict answers to business questions.

Your role for tomorrow: HR Intelligence Manager