30 Key HR Skills For 2025 And Beyond
From adapting to remote working to the onset of the most advanced technological tools the world has ever seen, it’s more important than ever for HR professionals to continue to upskill and help lead the way for organizations in the new world of work.
Here we'll take you through 30 key human resources skills to work on to progress in your career and add greater value to your organization.
24 Key Skills For HR Professionals
1. Communication skills
One of the most important competencies for HR professionals is effective communication.
As an HR professional, you must be able to deliver a message clearly, whether speaking at a company-wide meeting or writing an email.
You will need to conduct interviews, interact with team members at all levels in the company, present information to co-workers and potentially the public, manage labor relations, and have genuine conversations with current and prospective employees.
Taking a communication course can help with verbal and written communication.
2. Active listening
In addition to being a good speaker, being a trusted HR practitioner requires that you be a good listener by deploying the skill of active listening.
Active listening means being present and listening to seek true understanding, not just waiting for the chance to respond or to communicate your point.
It helps both parties learn something new, build relationships, and cultivate trust.
3. Coaching skills
Advising and coaching your colleagues on the various business issues they face day-to-day is a regular occurrence.
On any given day, you may need to serve in this role for a diverse range of people from new employees, to first-level line managers, to executive leaders.
Being an effective coach means not just “giving advice” or telling your coachee what to do, but asking exploratory questions and empowering them to come up with their own insights and solutions.
When done well, coaching supports building great leaders within an organization and is a valuable skill. Check out this resource for advice on how to coach.
4. Data analytics and reporting
According to Harvard Business Review, over 70% of executives consider people analytics a main priority in their organization. Having literacy in this area will make you a more informed and credible HR practitioner.
There’s no shortage of people analytics tools to help organizations get visibility into their HR metrics and data. Even getting to grips with the humble Excel spreadsheet can benefit you greatly.
The trick is learning how to present relevant data in a way that is digestible and actionable. Pulling reports is one thing, telling a compelling story with data is another. HR analytics courses can help here.
5. Business acumen
According to a 2023 HR Trends report from Maclean, “HR’s role as a strategic partner has steadily increased since 2020”.
But to earn our seat, human resources professionals need to speak the language of their fellow business leaders and be knowledgeable about their organization’s operational models, financials, and overall company performance.
This will position HR as a strategic partner and help with creating HR processes, policies, and initiatives aligned with overall company goals and help drive the business forward.
6. Diversity, equity, and inclusion
It’s no secret that diversity, equity and inclusion are top of mind for both businesses and HR teams these days.
This area is important for any business leader, but HR is crucial for leading the charge when it comes to DEI.
Consider taking a DEI certification to become more knowledgeable about DEI work.
7. Conflict management
A primary role of HR is one of business representative. This means having to have the not fun conversations—enforcing a policy to ensure consistency, denying requests, or even conducting a termination.
To deliver such a message compassionately while remaining calm and direct takes some practice.
You’ll have to mediate between disagreeing colleagues one day and lead a group of business leaders to a decision that everyone can agree to the next.
This requires excellent communication and interpersonal skills, active listening, empathy, and influencing.
Well-managed conflict resolution builds confidence among team members, creates an atmosphere of trust, inspires open and honest feedback, and drives high performance.
8. Emotional intelligence
Emotional Intelligence, or EQ, means being able to identify, evaluate, and effectively respond to the emotional needs of yourself and others.
It also involves being able to manage your relationship with yourself and others. It’s a must-have skill for leaders and HR team members alike to be able to manage, motivate, and lead teams.
9. Empathy
Empathy, or the ability to relate emotionally to another person, is a component of EQ. It will likely be a long time (if ever) before AI will be able to understand and share the feelings of another person.
It is incumbent upon us to keep the “human” in “human resources” and remember to relate to and empathize with our fellow colleagues no matter the challenges we face.
10. HRIS expertise
The HRIS (human resource information system) is a key workforce management tool.
In addition to housing employee information and sensitive data, almost all business tasks that involve employees, including managing performance reviews, administering benefits, running payroll, and can be conducted within the HRIS environment.
Therefore, it’s critical to have a well-maintained HRIS with up-to-date data, and an expert on the team to manage the system. Consider an HRIS certification to expand your technical competence.
11. Change management
In life and work, the only true constant is change. By being a champion of change, HR can help support the success of change initiatives, thereby being a business partner in the company’s evolution.
This involves creating project plans for managing a change initiative, thinking through the needs assessments for how to deliver critical timely information to stakeholders, communicating the change to employees, and supporting the team’s emotions.
Liz Lockhart’s article How To Become A Change Leader is a great resource here.
12. Networking
Networking is an important skill for HR practitioners as it opens the door to building relationships with other professionals in the field and supports the ability to keep on top of trends in HR technology.
Networking is not just something to practice externally, but internally in your organization to build relationships and deepen your understanding of the business.
While networking may not be the first thing that comes to mind as strictly an “HR skill”, it’s a skill and a competitive advantage that can help you grow professionally at an accelerated rate.
13. Strategic planning
Strategic planning is crucial to aligning human resources with the overall business strategy, ensuring that the organization's workforce can meet current and future business challenges.
This approach enables effective talent management, workforce planning, and helps in driving organizational growth and adaptation to changing market conditions, ultimately contributing to the long-term success of the company.
14. Management skills
If you want to be an effective HR manager and competently advise other managers in the organization then management skills are a must.
Key management skills are resource allocation, delegation, making project plans, financial acumen, and process optimization. Liz Lockhart’s article on people management is a fantastic resource here.
15. Leadership skills
Yes, leadership and management are different. While management is directive in nature, leadership is the ability to inspire and influence others toward a certain goal.
Anyone can be a leader, regardless of their job title. It’s about seeking to understand others, what motivates them, what their skills are, and then getting the best out of them.
Strong leadership plays a key role in driving employee engagement, motivation, and retention.
16. Project management
As a strategic partner of the business, you’re going to be heading up complex initiatives and strong project management skills will come in handy.
These include project planning, scheduling, managing budgets, documentation development, task management, and prioritization.
These project management certifications are a great place to start.
17. Teamwork
As a strategic partner, you’re going to participate in cross-functional teams to share knowledge, pool resources, and approach issues from diverse perspectives.
It’s also important you help foster teamwork within the wider organization by helping to break down silos and bring people together by facilitating mentorship programs and employee resource groups.
18. Influencing skills
Influencing skills such as persuasion and assertiveness are vital for HR leaders as they help them guide stakeholders and employees toward shared goals.
These skills help when working with senior leaders to help drive organizational change and ensure adherence to best practices.
19. Confidentiality skills
As an HR professional, you’re going to be trusted to handle sensitive information and ensure legal compliance.
Mastery in maintaining confidentiality upholds the integrity of HR processes, protects employee privacy, and fosters a secure and respectful workplace.
This ability is crucial in building and maintaining trust, preventing data breaches, and adhering to legal and ethical standards, ultimately reinforcing the HR department's credibility within the organization.
20. Administrative
Although HR technology and automation have reduced the administrative burden on HR professionals and freed up time for more strategic work, admin is still part of the job.
Strong administrative abilities in HR contribute to operational efficiency, accuracy, compliance, and the provision of timely support and services to employees, which are essential for the overall functionality and success of human resource management.
21. Decision-making
Being able to make decisions critically and objectively is an important skill for HR practitioners.
As we’re heavily involved in the recruitment process and workplace investigations, being able to minimize bias from our thinking and the thinking of others will lead to better decision-making and the fair and ethical management of personnel.
22. Adaptability
Working in HR is rolling with the punches and adapting to changes in the work environment, especially in startups and SMEs.
Being adaptable fosters resilience, encourages innovation, and helps maintain alignment with organizational goals despite external and internal changes, ensuring the continuous relevance and effectiveness of HR initiatives.
23. Problem-solving
A lot of the time, people are going to come to you with their problems. As such, problem-solving skills are vital in HR because they help you to identify, analyze, and resolve any issues efficiently.
"What remains beyond the reach of outsourcing is the impact of creative problem-solving and the authentic connections with individuals," says Keri Ohlrich, CEO of Abbracci Group and author of "The Way of the HR Warrior. "The ability to approach challenges with creative flair is an advantage that can't be replaced."
Problem-solving will be important for managing employee disputes, adapting to organizational changes, and implementing effective HR solutions.
24. Learning and development
Being a good learner underpins developing new skills to help you in your role.
Additionally, as learning and development is a function of HR, if this interests you then you’ll need to develop expertise in facilitation, training needs analysis, and training program design.
Taking a specialist learning and development certification is a good place to start here.
6 HR Skills For The AI Era
In the not-too-distant future, HR professionals will be expected to manage a workforce made up of People and AI and we need to be ahead of the curve in order to effectively and efficiently manage this future workforce.
In order to keep up with progress and stay ahead of the curve, it’s now more important than ever for HR to hone their AI Skills and Knowledge.
It isn't just about how to use Co-Pilot, ChatGPT, Gemini etc, it's also about having deep knowledge and capability of AI models.
To help, I'veve outlined some HR skills necessary for success in the AI era.
1. Technical aspects of AI
AI is a wonderful tool that is revolutionizing the way we work. However, to get the best out of AI, HR professionals should also have a grasp on what AI is and its technical nuances e.g. concepts such as “Hallucinations”, “Machine Learning vs Deep Learning”, and “Supervised".
Unsupervised and Semi-Supervised Learning” and “Natural Process Language” are used in everyday AI talk. These AI terms are important for HR to understand so that they have a certain level of understanding of how AI works and the different types of AI that are available.
2. Ethical AI
AI is already starting to show signs of bias. This happens when the AI system reinforces harmful stereotypes.
Human biases are well known and are extensively studied, but these have now been shown to cross over into some AI systems. When this happens, certain groups, based on gender, age, race etc, can be unfairly treated or denied opportunities.
HR professionals need to be mindful of possible AI Bias, especially if AI is being used to automate or make decisions in HR processes and procedures.
AI should support HR hand in hand to create more effective and efficient processes that employees can be confident are transparent and fair according to policy.
3. Data literacy
As mentioned in a previous section, having strong data analytics and reporting skills is important for any HR professional.
This goes for AI too. AI is a great tool for collating and analyzing large data sets, but you will need to be skilled in extracting and gaining insights from this data set.
AI can do a lot of the leg work, but it will be up to the HR professional to use their knowledge of the organization and data insights to derive trends from the data sets.
4. AI updates and news
Staying informed about the latest AI developments and updates is crucial. AI as a concept is always evolving, especially with the big AI players (Google, OpenAI, Meta, etc) competing against each other to release the most advanced and fastest AI model at any given moment.
The easiest way I've found to stay up to date is to set up a news alert for AI-related topics via Google Alerts. Once set up, you will be sent an email when there are new results for your searches (in this case for AI).
There are also some useful AI-related newsletters. Some of the well-known ones are: Axios AI+, Ben’s Bites, Tech N Trendz, etc.
If you want to go deeper than just high-level information, you can also review the latest academic research papers and publications on platforms such as Google Scholar and arXiv.
Keeping up to date on the latest AI developments can seem overwhelming, but having the right strategy and access to bite-sized information at a given time can help to make it less daunting.
The idea here isn't to read every update and publication, but to get an idea of what the thought leaders are saying about AI and where it's headed.
5. Human-centric design thinking
For HR professionals, our main focus is our employees and their needs should be central to how we design processes and procedures. Therefore, human-centric design principles should be considered when AI tools are implemented for HR solutions.
At a recent event I attended related to AI’s use in HR, the speakers outlined how they successfully implemented AI solutions for HR processes and procedures.
One recurring theme throughout the process was that they didn't “Automate for automation's sake”. They started the AI journey by looking at what processes were there already and, once they’ve collated this, they used the following flow:
| Eliminate | ➠ | Simplify | ➠ | Automate |
| Remove all processes that were ineffective and inefficient. | Use AI tools to automate manual processes where possible (and where it makes sense). | Use AI tools to automate manual processes where possible (and only where it makes sense). |
We should not use AI just to make it look like we are ahead of the curve. AI is a tool and should only be used where appropriate for ourselves and our employees.
6. Prompt engineering
You may have seen the job “Prompt Engineer” being advertised at a number of major companies. A Prompt Engineer specializes in crafting and optimizing text-based prompts used in Gen-AI models such as Chat-GPT, Bard, Co-Pilot, etc.
Prompts are the instructions that we as users give to AI systems as a guide for specific outputs. Based on the phrasing and words that you use in your prompts you may get different outputs from the AI. Two examples are outlined below to illustrate this:
| Bad Prompt | Good Prompt |
| “Write a Poem” | “Write a 75 word poem in the style of the Irish poet Oscar Wilde about the changing seasons.” |
| This is too vague and doesn't specifically provide information on what you want the poem to be about or how long. Without specific instructions, the output may be random or nonsensical. | This prompt is specific, clear, and provides a well-defined task for the AI to perform. |
There is an art and science to prompt engineering that can only get better with trial and error.
Using phrases such as “Don’t lie to me…..” “Write in the style of a captains log……” and “Act as my Job Coach and …….” can increase the accuracy and provide more relevant outputs from the AI model that you are using.
Mastering this skill is a sure way of being able to get the best out of any Gen-AI model and will put you ahead of the curve.
AI is still in its infancy and as such there are still lots we dont know about AI and how it works.
Developing Your Human Resources Skills
It pays dividends to invest in yourself and evolve your toolbox of hard and soft skills.
- Professional certifications: Obtaining an HR certification is a great way to gain skills and knowledge, try out potential new career paths, and connect with the wider community. There are even HR certificates for beginners.
- Networking and industry events: Joining HR communities and attending industry events such as HR conferences are great for exchanging ideas, learning from peers, and staying informed about emerging HR challenges and solutions.
- Mentorship and coaching: Seeking mentorship from experienced HR leaders or engaging in coaching can provide personalized guidance and insights into personal skill development (not least how to mentor and coach).
- Cross-functional collaboration: Working closely with different departments on cross-functional projects helps you understand various business functions and challenges, broadening your perspective and enhancing your ability to contribute strategically.
