Solution

Task One

1.1 Professional; Meaning of People Professional

Professional

A professional is a derivative of a profession. As evidenced in ACP (2022), a profession comprise people who adhere to ethical standards and hold themselves as and accepted amongst the public as possessing specialised knowledge and skills. Professionals operate in a broad array of areas including research, education and training. They also need to be prepared of using their knowledge, skills and experience to support others. Put differently, a professional is a person being paid/rewarded for pursuing a specific job/responsibility. For their success, Swann et al. (2021) note that their operations are under a regulation of a particular body, profession and occupation. In UK for instance, the National Health Service (NHS) organisation is mandated to regulate operations of the Doctors and Nurses in UK.

People Professional

Considering the findings in the CIPD New Map, people professionals include individuals supporting vision and organisation objectives through strategic individual-backed strategies (CIPD,2022).  The rationale of this is that organisation are made up of people playing a critical role of empowerment in their organisations to thrive individually and collectively. Having their job functions varying, a people professional is important as illustrated in figure 1;

Figure 1: People Professional functions

Also, considering the CIPD Map, it identify people professionals as possessing personalised values. These are;

Fairness- In line with CIPD HR Professional Map, fairness being a core behaviour, fairness include equality and impartiality treating the others in an equal basis irrespective of age, race, gender, religion and protected characteristics (Sezer et a., 2019). In my function, I make sure that people/stakeholders in my entity are fairly and non-discriminated whatsoever (CIPD, 2017).

Honesty- People professionals activities and behaviours need to be identified as being of high-level honesty. As evidenced in CIPD (2022a), this is while adhering on  legislations, rules hence unintended results. Working as a people practice professional, the main mandate is to own to their mistakes made and not blaming the rest.

Exclusivity- This is identified as a consideration of people practice professionals dedicating themselves holistically to organisation roles. This lead to increasing performance and productivity (Forbes, 2018).

Professional Integrity– It is the mandate of the people professionals to initiate, harness and establish holistic employment relationships. In my role as a people professional, I ensure that I work with utmost honesty, mutual respect to all and prioritising on responsibilities for my decisions and activities pursued.

3.1 Role of people professional evolving; priorities

In Personio (2022) CPD is defined as “integration of initiatives, ideas setting and technique followed to assist managing people individually for success in L&D”. Also, people professional is credible of people profession with a commitment to achieving a continuous self-growth.

According to CIPD (2022c), reflective practice is a strategy of thinking about or reflect on what other people are doing. This has a direct correlation with acquiring learning based on experience. Personally, after every 3 months of work, I implement reflective practice informed by a reflection of what I want to do, occurrences and at the end make decisions on best practice of my future practice.

Taking into account of the changing nature of people profession, the evolving areas are;

Transitioning from Admin to Strategy

In line with Forbes (2013)  report, the people practice professional transition from administrative to strategy. Before the pandemic arose, the roles of HR admin strategically was not a common practice. The technology demand increase has a positive impact on support of talent management initiatives and engagement assessment with talents developed. In my job role in Saudi Aramco people practice, I make sure there is a transition to a strategic HR from Admin. The rationale of this is that it align with organisation employees set objectives.

People focused practice and tech-savvy

From year 2010, HR function has transitioned to being people-focused and tech-savvy. This is attained by improving resourcing and management strategy. With the successful transition of technology, innovation embrace is a major investment in doing things. The hindrance in Saudi Aramco for example include people practice professionals missing out on strategies and tools which are critical and game changers. According to Chang-Richards et al. (2022), the examples of this include big data, mobile tools application, integrating social media tools, technological growth and data analytics.

Increase in Specialisation and Job Titles

Taking into the people practice professionals, there are various professionals lacking in the past as a best practice. This is with approximately 50 new job roles having been developed in the past 10 years. One of the specialism is Gig Economy. According to Forbes (2022), job titles and specialism include job analytics, workplace management and flexible working manager. In Saudi Aramco, there are fresh job roles such as CHO (Chief-Happiness-Officer), CHO (Chief-Heart-Officer) and Data Analytics (DA).

1.2 Ethical values; impact on work as people professional

Ethical values is identified as “moral-based compass for people lives and ensuring decisions are made, executing the appropriate practice”. Also, in line with provisions presented by CIPD HR Professional Map, the ethical practice represent a main behaviour evidencing the level of impact on people lives and reputation.

The personal values examples are;

Equality– Basically, according to AIHR (2022), this include managing the employees similarly with equal opportunities granted. Equality is assured irrespective of employees possessing varying ages, genders, and demography.  Working in Saudi Aramco for example, as part of my recruitment initiatives, the employees are provided with equal amount of time to execute their roles as a core area for resourcing. This influence a feel of appreciation in their functions and readiness in joining the resourced functions. This is at the same time increasing the employees retention.

Valuing others–  In CIPD Map, this is identified as a practice of core behaviours. This entail valuing the rest and critical to ensure people perspectives are included in organisation decision making. In my position in Saudi Aramco, I make sure that I value others by improving decision making by being dedicated in offering clients with services expected. The outcome of this is sufficient organisation support. I ensure that I empower all employees and encourage them to use knowledge to implement their functions. In Saudi Aramco for instance, after a feel of unappreciation, reduced performance was evident and impacting organisation practices.

Fairness– A process of treating all people in a fair manner is a strategy of balance of stakeholders interests and support. For example, in my role as a people professional for Saudi Aramco, I pursue the process to ensure entire policies and initiatives for reward management fairly pursued. For example, issue employees with rewards, I make sure men and women who work in same job roles are paid the same. This is while gender pay reporting being provided as part of their practice. Through a fair treatment of employees, trust levels in the organisation is harnessed, morale increase, loyalty increased with performance. In cases where fairness is lacking, employees possess less productivity and engage in unwarranted activities leading to increase in their turnover.

1.3 Professionals contribute confidently to discussions

In my role working in Saudi Aramco, after COVID-19 pandemic occurred, my roles involved implementation of a program where the employees would be working from home. This was meant to reduce the rates of infection amongst the employees, manage the performance level and enhance consistency in working.

Informed

To successfully implement the program, I utilised peer reviewed journals and various articles to obtain quality information on strengths and weaknesses of working from  home for an organisation. Further, I embarked in benchmarking process where I acquired insights and data on how other organisation have been implementing home working arrangement. As explained in CIPD (2022), by implementing remote working successfully, it is possible to improve employees voice and engagement level. Therefore, through being informed, I  was able to obtain sufficient evidence on the importance of working from home. This included application of quality data and narratives. The best organisations which had succeeded in this area included Walmart, Google plc, and Tesco which are core for success of flexible working plan.

Clear

Working on clear discussions include implementing detailed communication, working in confidence and with courage (Fernandez & Gallardo, 2020). Therefore, as part of implementing working from home plan in Saudi Aramco, I managed to evidence my capacity for implementing effective communication by evidencing and with concise participating in a discussion and content development. The importance of the clarity obtained is ensuring various players are engaged in a discussion appreciating used content and clear message shared amongst all the stakeholders. Further, through an integration of verbal and non-verbal cues, I was able to ensure non of the messages were distorted but were received in their original form.

Engaging

This include a practice where capacity for being patient and offer an opportunity for others to share their possessed ideas, prioritise on them and eventually come up with the most appropriate decision (CIPD, 2022g). In my practice implementing working from home arrangement in Saudi Aramco, I made sure that I obtained the overall appropriate information and data for success in making decisions. At the same time, I managed to note on existing detailed information which detail on the issues encountered in implementation of working from home arrangement. I also engaged the teams in L&D, Finance and management to understand how the process would be best implemented with less challenges being encountered.

1.4 When and how to raise concerns

While I was working in Saudi Aramco, I was able to identify a concern which conflicted with the ethical values and legislations set by the organisation. In particular, there was an evidence of pay disparity of people who were doing the same job. Also, some of the employees had noted that they ended up receiving their payment late while others were receiving it on time.

The identified concern was against Saudi Labour Law and the Equality Act 2010 which require all employees not to be discriminated in pay due to possession of protected characteristics. Also, irrespective of the job position, it is unethical to delay dispersing of an employee salary as this would lead to a negative implication on their lives.

After working on obtaining detailed information and data to support the concerns raised by the employees, I used in-depth communication process. Having managed to obtain sufficient data, information and evidence I utilised good communication channel. For example, considering whistleblowing on the issues of payment offered to the employees despite of executing similar roles, it is important to designate their operations such as suggestion box and assure anonymity. The process which I used to communicate was also made successful since I used social media platforms and technology to communicate effectively.

To solve the concern, in implementing the contract for the executives I ensured an adherence to the Saudi Labour legislations which are under Saudi Aramco area of operation. The staff in my organisation despite of the gender ought to be paid/rewarded in an equal manner. Therefore, representing the most appropriate strategy, whistleblowing and ensuring an aligned CPD Values and Code of Conduct put into account to ensure zero discrimination owing to possessing protected characteristics.

1.5 Ethical people practice; business and human benefits of included, valued and fairly treated

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