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Personnel Professionals have a variety of duties depending on the size of the company. They can specialise or have a variety of roles within several main areas:

• Recruitment and selection - preparing job descriptions and interviewing candidates.
• Employee development - dealing with skills training and appraisals for the development of employees.
• Employee relations - being involved in grievance handling, disciplinary proceedings and redundancy programmes.
• Employee services - looking at the health and safety of employees.
• Reward - administering benefits and payroll.
• Human resource planning - predicting an organisation's future staffing needs.

Personal Characteristics

Personnel professionals deal with a wide range of topics and the work requires accuracy and attention to detail, as well as maintaining a fair and objective attitude. Confidentiality is essential as the work involves dealing with sensitive issues. A personnel professional is not expected to discuss personal details of an employee's life with another member of staff. Understanding and respecting the importance of confidentiality is essential.

However personnel work is not social work and the personnel professional has to try and marry the best interests of tile organisation and the individual. This is not an easy job and it is essential that personnel professionals have the commercial awareness to be able to see things from the employer's perspective. This may mean that they have to deal with grievance procedures, make people redundant or dismiss them.

Personnel professionals should be patient, tactful, diplomatic and approachable. They deal with people who may be under stress and must be sympathetic to them but at the same time keep in mind their responsibilities to the company. They should enjoy working with people - co-operation and teamwork are important. Personnel professionals may have to work under pressure, so they must be able to keep calm in difficult situations