5 HR Generalist Skills Every Small Business Needs On Staff

There are several HR generalist skills that you need to have on the staff of your small company. Here are five of the most critical.

HR generalist skills may not be at the top of your to-do list when you run a small business, but they really should be. Hiring top talent is already tough enough when you’re doing everything right. It’s impossible when you’re not.

In the following article, we’ll be discussing five HR generalist skills you’ve got to have on-staff. These are true even if you’re a one-person operation.

1. Effective Communication

Topping this list of HR generalist tasks is the art of communication. An HR generalist must be able to communicate clearly and effectively in emails, texts, phone calls, public speaking scenarios, job interviews, and company training presentations among other forms.

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Poor communication can sink the best companies. Good communication, on the other hand, ensures a quality corporate culture that attracts top talent.

2. Candidate Acquisition

One big role of the HR generalist is in the areas of recruitment and selection. They have to be masters of knowing where to find highly-qualified candidates. From there, they should be able to trigger on the flags that ensure a great hire.

It can cost several thousand dollars to onboard an employee and ensure his training is ready for the position. Failing to hire well can cause a company to hemorrhage money.

3. Cultural Awareness

One of the skills the uninitiated will come across when searching “what does an hr generalist do” is this: cultural awareness. Why is it important to be culturally aware, you ask?

The short answer is that the 21st Century workforce is more diverse than ever before. Maybe not so much in demographics, but in views and expressions.

For example, LGBTQIA, African-Americans, Hispanics, Asians, and other ethnicities have always been in the workplace, but what they valued was not always welcomed with open arms.

The business climate today allows for more freedom of expression than the one 30 years ago did. Therefore, an HR generalist would need to know the milestones, holidays, news stories, and practices that touch at the heart of these communities. A generalist that does is instrumental in building a more welcoming environment.

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4. Institutional Knowledge

Another HR for the small business rule that every business needs to have, at least from the generalist perspective, is deep institutional knowledge. It’s important to know the corporate culture, the events on the horizon, the challenges your company is facing now or will be in the future.

You can never know too much when dealing with human capital. That means workflows, attitudes, demographics. You name it.

5. Administrative Expertise

Finally, the need for HR administrative skills will never leave the CV of a quality generalist. You may not have to do things like they were done 20 years ago, but you will need to learn new tools, resources, and technologies to keep up.

For example, if you’re not aware of how to make your own check stubs using automated templates, you might want to brush up on the topic. This can be done quickly and with integration into existing software systems, but you have to keep up with the trends.

These HR Generalist Skills Will Help You Succeed

HR generalist skills will place you in a better position to recognize top talent when it’s at your door. It will help you make the right adjustments to ensure they want to work for your company, and that will pay many long-term dividends. For more career and business tips, check out some of our additional posts.