A career in HR can be challenging, but also very rewarding. There are lots of different areas you can specialise in or stay in a generalist role and get a lot of variety. At Elephant we not only plotted out an HR career path, but also have options for your learning if you do specialise.
Here is the career map. The green row is if you follow an academic career, the blue row a generalist HR career, the orange are specialist areas which you can move into a various points from a generalist role, or vice versa. You may also work in operational roles that have HR responsibilities (the bottom row). It’s fantastic to see that CEO’s are now starting to be appointed from having an HR or people and culture background!
Check out this video by Elephant co-founder Angela Atkins, about the different paths, what skills or experience you’ll need and what the challenges of working in HR are!
To help you with your career, we offer a range of HR workshops, as well as our Certificate programmes. These are practical, useful and fun and designed to really help develop your skills and knowledge in HR (or people & culture, PX, people & capability or whatever your company calls it!). Here’s an overview of our programmes:
If you are newer to HR:
An 8 month programme to learn to deliver HR in real life – building on theory you might have learned at University.
A 9 month programme for those with HR and Talent, with specialist modules on employment law, job scoping, candidate management as well as HR and recruitment policies and metrics.
How to deliver all the key areas of HR effectively.
The legislation and how to apply it in real life.
If you are moving into dealing with disciplinary procedures, find out how to do it right.
For those with 2 – 5 years experience:
An 8 month programme with specialist modules on HR and payroll legislation and processes if you work in both HR and payroll.
For those with some HR experience, this Certificate in will give you the skills and knowledge to deliver in all operational areas of HR.
If you need to focus on a particular area of being an HR Advisor, our master classes will give you some new tools and techniques to try out!
How to plan and run a workplace investigation. What and who to ask, and how to comply with law.
Restructuring law but also how to deal with all the people issues fairly.
How respond to a PG, deal with a Settlement and attend Mediation.
For those moving into senior or specialist roles:
For those preparing for an HRBP role or wanting to hone your skills to add real value to your organisation.
Our HRBP Master Classes focus on specific challenges and skill areas to take you to being a high performance HRBP.
Our OD Fundamentals Certificate covers key areas of organisational development if you are expanding your HR role.
If you want to specialise in Employment Relations but not train as an employment lawyer, this Certificate is for you!
For those with senior HR experience but now working in OD at a strategic level, this Certificate covers key areas, theories and tools to use.
Our Strategic Learning and Development Certificate is for those moving into an L&D Partner level role.
Other areas:
If you’re responsible for payroll with HR, our payroll workshops or Certificates might help.
For those with recruitment or Talent Acquisition in their role we have some specialist training for you.
If you’re moving into Learning and Development or OD, we have several Certificate programmes.
To learn how to manage a team, we have Management Bites modules that you can purchase off the shelf or have our team run.
Meet our team
We have a team of HR and employment law specialists who support our training and certificate programmes around the world!
Our three principles:
Get in touch
The best way to get in touch is to email us and the right person from our team will come back to you.
Elephant News
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Read the blog
For musings on HR and people management, check out Angela Atkins popular blog. Click here to have a read. Or check out the Elephant blog.
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