Today in South Africa, one can set up a private consulting practice to do training, completion of SETA forms, career
path analyses and development, and many other functions. Career analysts expect the number of Human Resources jobs to increase in the future.
If you choose to work for an organisation, a career in human resources involves helping an organisation manage its people. This includes recruitment, mediation, holding disciplinary hearings, training, compensation, administering benefits and handling the informational side of people management.
Human resource managers are frequently in top management roles and are critical to the success of any company.
With the fourth IR changing skills requirements in companies, this field is increasingly known as Talent Acquisition, and Talent Management, showing the reframing of seeing people as TALENT rather than employers. This simple word greatly enhances the value that employers assign to the people who work for them.
What type of person should I be?
Human Resources is a professional career that demands:
- integrity,
- confidentiality,
- and a high level of interpersonal interaction
- sensitivity,
- big picture, team-orientation
- extroverted personality
- and honesty
There are a number of areas of specialisation within HR, depending on the size of the company you may specialize in one area or work in some or all of them. They include:
- HR Planning: Anticipate and make provision for the movement of people into, within, and out of an organization.
- Training and development: Design and deliver training programs using a variety of methods to develop an employee's knowledge, skills and abilities.
- Staffing: Locate potential applicants, encourage them to apply for existing or anticipated job openings (recruitment); choose individuals with relevant qualifications to fill existing or projected job openings (selection).
- Organisational Development: Improve jobs through technological and human considerations in order to enhance organisation efficiency and employee satisfaction.
- Performance evaluation: Design and develop programs and tools which help managers and employees establish performance standards, identify ways to improve performance, and assess and document work performance.
- Compensation & Benefits: complete pay rolls each month, create policies, develop programs to fairly compensate employees for work performance and meet strategic objectives of organization. Includes wages, salaries, incentives, bonuses, and commissions and benefits provided to improve employees' quality of life.
- Employee & Labour Relations: Design and develop HR policies and practices to maintain harmonious working relationships between departments, managers and individuals (includes employee communications, managing organization change, absenteeism, sexual harassment, employment equity, diversity).
- Workplace Health & Safety: South African companies have to comply with the rules and regulations of the Occupational health and safety Act. Policies and procedures must be designed to ensure compliance with this act, and to ensure a hazard-free workplace; inform employees about health and safety, enforce safety rules, and keep comprehensive company records.
- HR Information Management: learn to operate and maintain a computerised data information system.
What type of person should I be?
- Good communicator
- Good listener
- Handle pressure
- Handle rejection or anger of interviewees not selected
- Attention to details
- Patient and observant
- Assertive
- Motivating
What will I do on a day to day basis?
- Recruit and select and interview staff
- Payroll
- Deal with mediation and arbitration and labour disputes
- Liaise with staff and management
- Create reports, complete workplace skills plans and annual training reports, be part of training committee
- Skills and training development path planning
- Training , orientation and induction of new staff
- Signing of new contracts
- Problem solving and decision making
- Create staff policies
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