Welcome back to our series on the 5 Levels of HR Development. If you have not already, I encourage you to go back and read last week’s blog: Level 1 HR, and while you are there, go ahead and sign up to get email notifications when I post a new article – it is far more interesting than those Old Navy ads you are getting, though maybe not quite as fashionable. If you stumbled here through one of my many (meaning 2) Social Media accounts, the website is hrforyall.com.

The Level 2 HR professional knows the mechanics of what they are doing. Level 2 pros generally know their job and how to do it, or at least the mechanics of it, but they don’t know the why behind it. In other words, at this level, you are processing your tasks from a checklist but do not understand why. “First you do X, then you do Y.” Why X comes before Y is not relevant at this level. You can be very efficient at Level 2, but can you be effective? Efficiency gets the job done quickly, but effectiveness gets the job done right.

Sadly in my experience, this is where many HR Pros settle in – and I cannot blame them; these routines make for a comfortable place – they can be like a nice comfy blanket that we snuggle up in and feel secure, but are we really secure? Routines can often be easily outsourced or codified into an algorithm; if you stay at Level 2 too long, you are little more than a commodity – not bringing that extra value that cannot be outsourced easily or replaced with an app.