Professional Membership accreditation

Human Resources magazine caught up with Mackenzie Heaton (Accredited Member) and Stephanie Sharp (Chartered Member) to ask about their paths to HRNZ accreditation and their thoughts about the role of HR in Aotearoa today.

Mackenzie Heaton

What have been your career highlights to date?

Completing my Bachelor’s degree in Business Psychology at the end of 2021 was a great achievement for me to kickstart my career. But the most rewarding part was being fortunate enough to have secured roles both during and following my studies with such incredible mentorship. Being entrusted by my managers to have exposure and real input into as many HR areas as possible has allowed me to complete many small developmental milestones. I’m employed at Craggy Range Vineyards Ltd, and my role as HR Coordinator and now People and Capability Coordinator has given me a wide level of exposure and experiences across a broad range of HR competencies, which I am very grateful for.

What inspires and motivates you in your career and why?

HR’s vast reach within an organisation has allowed me to continue to use my strong interest in psychology. Through using people-centric HR initiatives, I’ve been able to highlight how essential each employee’s unique contribution can be to an organisation’s success. Witnessing employees’ satisfaction and their sense of purpose within their roles is very satisfying for me, personally. Alongside this, contributing to the strategic direction and achievement of business objectives makes the industry incredibly rewarding for me.

What do you see as the challenges facing the industry and HR profession?

Commencing my career in HR post-COVID-19 has meant entering the industry at a unique time. Across the board, organisations are facing the ever-changing landscape of what is considered the new version of ‘normal’, whether that be alternative working arrangements, employment packages or enhanced staff benefits. Although these sudden changes in expectations have encouraged a lot of innovation and ‘big picture’ thinking, equally, they have created an array of challenges for organisations to navigate. It will be interesting to see how these areas continue to progress and evolve to form our new norm.

Once I felt confident in the experience I had gained, the application process was seamless.

How has HRNZ membership helped your career?

As an entry-level HR practitioner, the HRNZ membership has been an incredible resource. It provides an up-to-date platform of knowledge, webinars, templates and articles that can be trusted and relied on to strengthen my knowledge and apply it in the workplace. The other significant benefit is the membership network. I attend the Hawke’s Bay branch Café Connects and recently I joined the Branch Committee. This has provided an incredible network of local HR professionals with diverse skill sets and specialisations within the field to bounce ideas off or liaise with on many topics. As a young HR practitioner new to the industry, this is incredibly beneficial and creates a real sense of community.

Please describe your journey towards becoming an Accredited Professional Member. How was the experience?

The process of becoming an Accredited Member provided the perfect opportunity to selfassess and set goals for the future. The PATH framework provides a logical approach to self-assess your competencies and the expectations of knowledge that should be established within each of them. It was very rewarding to reflect on and recognise how far I have come in my HR journey so far.

Stephanie Sharp

What have been your career highlights to date?

I have been incredibly fortunate to work within both corporate and industrial settings. However, working for a mining company in New Zealand was a unique experience that will be hard to top, not only for the scale and complexity of the operations but also the scope of the work that I was able to learn so early in my career. It was a gruelling environment to be in at times, but it taught me the value of embedding a strong culture and supporting leaders to develop skills to proactively engage their teams. When they say no two days are the same, it really couldn’t have been more true here!

The PATH framework provides a logical approach to self-assess your competencies and the expectations of knowledge that should be established within each of them.

What inspires and motivates you in your career and why?

I’m motivated by the opportunity to be innovative and dynamic within our industry. For a long while, I think there was a very traditional and narrow view of what an ‘HR’ function performed for a business. However, the appetite from companies to expand on this more recently and to look to their People teams to help shape an organisation into a thriving business is really inspiring. It creates a much more extensive scope for the skills and tools we can develop as practitioners.

What do you see as the challenges facing the industry and HR profession?

Although many businesses are looking to adapt and accept innovation, I think one of the critical challenges for our profession is creating flexibility in work and balancing this with maintaining strong and engaging cultures. This is particularly true as more and more of our younger generations enter the workforce and challenge the traditional mindsets and markers for work ethic we are used to seeing. In addition, our senior workers look to achieve more of this balance for themselves as well.

How has HRNZ membership helped your career?

The HRNZ membership has been an integral part of my learning journey both with access to local events in Otago as well as national training seminars. The training offered has always aligned well with the stage of career I am entering and ensured I was prepared to address new situations with confidence.

Please describe your journey towards becoming a Chartered Member. How was the experience?

I developed my application over a couple of years following encouragement from my managers and colleagues.

I would describe my journey as a bit of a slow burn initially as I gained access to a broader scope of work and, more recently, in my current role, to lead the initiatives being developed. Testing these skills and experiences against the HRNZ framework for competency was a great sense check as I progressed in the areas of continued development too. Once I felt confident in the experience I had gained, the application process was seamless, and, before I knew it, I was interviewed by the panel and accepted!