Developing a Professional Plan for HR Officer Role at Asda

This document presents a professional development plan focused on securing an HR Officer role at Asda. It includes a project portfolio analyzing a relevant job advertisement, a personal SWOT analysis identifying strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats, and feedback from colleagues obtained through the 'Ask 5 People' exercise. The plan further outlines a professional network profile, assessing its strengths and weaknesses, and details specific steps to address identified gaps. Strategies include performance benchmarking, 360-degree reviews, employee assessments, and leveraging university resources such as employability schemes, career fairs, and academic support systems. The plan also addresses enhancing digital identity and improving industry knowledge within human resources.

Professional
Development Plan

Table of Contents
MAIN BODY...................................................................................................................................1
Project Portfolio......................................................................................................................1
Your personal SWOT.............................................................................................................2
5 completed questionnaires from the “Ask 5 People” exercise..............................................3
Your Professional Network Profile........................................................................................5
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................7

MAIN BODY
Project Portfolio
Job Advert
About Company: Asda is a British based super market chain founded in 1949 and headquartered
in Leeds, England. The organisation offers groceries, clothing items, insurance, home decor and
various other products and services.
We are looking for a skilled HR Officer who will develop, recruit and support talent through
managing procedures and developing policies. You will be mainly responsible for the
contribution and administrative tasks in order to make the organisation a better and healthy place
to work.
Person specifications
Physical Characteristics
In order to perform duties, the employee is required to walk and stand. He or she must move up
or lift frequently up to 10 pounds. Special vision abilities required by this job role comprises of
depth perception, close vision, ability to adjust focus and distance vision.
Psychological Characteristics
Candidate should have the special aptitudes or psychological characteristics such as judgement,
manual dexterity, ingenuity, mechanical aptitude etc. Other characteristics should involve
emotional stability, personal appearance, and submissiveness, good and pleasing manners.
Educational characteristics
 HR Credentials( e.g. PHR from the HR Certification Institute)
 Knowledge of HRMS and MS office skills
 Additional HR education and certification will be a plus
 Decision making and Problem solving aptitude
1

 BA or BSC in business administration
 Proficient in computer basics
 Deeply understand various laws and disciplinary procedures regarding employment
 Knowledge of various functions of HR such as Training and development, recruitment
and pay and benefits etc.
 Proven experience as HR administrator, HR officer or any other HR position
Emotional Characteristics
 Patience and Integrity
 Sympathetic Attitude
 Formal Authority
 Social Responsibility
Remuneration: It will be totally based on the skills and experience of the candidate.
Additional Benefits:
 Skill based Training
 Participation in professional organizations
 Increased responsibilities and duties
 Approaches to professional development
Geographical Location: Candidate need to be based out of UK.
Your personal SWOT
Swot Analysis
Strengths:
 I have good communication skills and can effectively communicate with my
team and clients. I am highly dedicated towards my job role and committed in
2

order to help organisation to succeed.
 I am quite innovative and always introduce new ideas and often appreciated by
my clients.
 I have the ability to solve various queries and problems( Fletcher, Gunter and
Mitchell, 2019).
Weakness:
 I have poor presentation skills as i get nervous while sharing my ideas and thoughts
to the clients. I lack in team working skills, as an individual i can show results but
working as a team makes me conscious and results in stress. I lack in organizing
skills, i am not able to divide my work into small task which results in impacting the
quality of my work (Horace and et. al., 2021).
Opportunities:
 With the help of attending training seminars it will help in boosting up my skills and
learning a lot regarding my job role and improving my performance in the
organisation.
 Performing the tasks delegated by my superiors and doing them effectively has made
me more responsible and depicts that i can work at greater responsibilities and duties
too.
Threats:
 Due to the current economic situation it resulted in slow growth and the
chances of organisations laying off employees is the biggest threat.
 I am facing tough competition from my colleagues and which will result in
creating a big threat for seeking my dream job role in the organisation.
 Due to employee shortage, many a times i have work over time which
resulted in affecting my quality and creativity level of work (Gao, 2021).
5 completed questionnaires from the “Ask 5 People” exercise
3

1. What one word or phrase describes me best?
The one word that describes you the best is “Dedicated”.
2. Which keys skills or traits do i have that you value most as my
colleague/employer?
The traits or skills which describe you the best are “Creativity” and “Self
management”. As one of my colleague, you are highly dedicated towards each
task which is assigned to you. When it comes to team tasks who are highly
creative and always comes up with new and innovative ideas and thoughts which
really help the entire team to work in a effective and efficient manner (Paltiwale
and et. al., 2020).
3. What one aspect of my work performance could I improve on in order to help
my career progression?
As a colleague you are highly dedicated towards your work but the one thing you
can improve or actually work upon is “Presentation skills”. In order to make your
ideas and thoughts more clear to other members of team it is very important to
share ideas with a sense of confidence and avoid getting nervous (Ryan and
McAllister, 2020).
4. How would you rate me on the following:
1- Excellent 2-Fairly Good 3- Competent 4- Needs Improvement 5- Needs
Attention
Self Management - 1
(The ability to work without Supervision)
Team Working - 3
(Gets on well and works collaboratively with others)
Business and customer awareness - 2
(Understands the industry and the customers’ needs)
Communication and literacy - 3
(Both written and oral communication)
Application of Information Technology - 4
(Able to use work related technology effectively)
4

Your Professional Network Profile
Assessment of its strengths and weaknesses
In order to secure my chosen career, following steps i will taking to close these identified gaps:
Performance Benchmark: With the help of measuring and comparing my past performance with
the current performance it will helps me in enhancing my level of productivity and will keep me
motivated and helps in improving my skills. I realised that in order to fill the gaps, it is important
for me to start observing and paying attention to each and every activity. This factor is also used
as a short term and long term strategy in order to succeed in an organisation and by this
employees also get self-satisfaction. By this factor an entire employee cycle can fill their skill
gap in an effective way in order to achieve their individual and organisational goal. It will help in
filling the gaps in a effective manner that will help in achievement of organisational and
individuals goals (Bindels, 2021).
360 Degree Review: This method will help me in seeking continuous feedback from my peers,
leaders and managers. Moreover, i will constantly keep an eye on reviews provided by the
clients, vendors and customers. With the help of actively participating in group discussions and
working on my presentation skills will help me in boosting up my confidence and having better
interaction with my colleagues. Sometimes some reviews also included vendors, customers and
clients. This also involves an appraisal approach which can be done by data gathering method
and it sees the performance issues by the employees and these reviews can help in identifying the
gaps and overcome by training sessions.
 Employee assessments: This approach will help me in identifying the skill gaps and also
working on my weakness for achievement of organisational goals and objectives. These
are the assessments which are done on the real based seniors in an organisation and by
which gaps are analysed and overcome by giving effective training and by this new skills
5

can be learned and previous one will get easily overcome. There are many knowledge
gaps which is found in an organisation which can also be fulfilled by training
sessions.With the help of attending training sessions will help in enhancing my skills and
overcoming my areas of weakness (Turalba, 2019).
Opportunities created through the university in terms of the Employability Scheme
Join societies and Clubs: In order to provide opportunities, students at universities should join
societies and clubs offered by the University. It is important to helps the students to learn new
skills, providing them free time with hobbies, experiencing new things etc.
Going to Careers Fairs: In context to Universities, students to go out for career fairs that are
hosted by the universities. For a student, career fair are considered to be a good source that helps
in hearing about work experience opportunities, knowledge regarding different industries and
building contracts.
Academic Strategies: In context to universities, there are various effective strategies that can
result in improving the knowledge and skills of a student. For a student, it is very important to
write down the information and details shared by the lecturer in the class room in order to
remember the things taught during lectures.
Academic Discourse: In context to students, it is very important to ask follow up questions in
order to understand that each student in the classroom had understood the lecture. It is very
important for teacher to focus on each and every individual( ElFiki, 2019).
In context to digital library and Career Zones, all these resources helps a lot in strengthen my
academic knowledge and skills set. In context to digital libraries, these are becoming the norms
at the universities and colleges and that allows in remote access to educational content which
further helps in breaking down the physical barriers. With the help of digital libraries it helps in
access to various contents and helps in accessing enormous amount of content and knowledge to
the students. With the help of simple internet connection, it provides students with all type of
online videos, books, videos and images without going to a physical library. With the help of
various digital library and Career Zone, it helped me a lot in improving my knowledge and also
6

supported in enhancing my academic skills set and saved a lot of time.
As per the feedback, i received from my peer in the above Ask 5 people surveys, it helped me a
lot in motivating and also identifying the skills i need to improve in order to achieve my goals.
With the survey, i got to know that when it comes to skills such as customers awareness, self
management and team working i am very good but i need to work upon my presentation skills in
order to effectively share my ideas and thoughts with my team which will help me in not getting
nervous and boosting up my confidence in front of the team.
One aspect of the university support system that you plan to use to enhance an academic
skill.
In context to enhance my academic skill in the university, i will be joining clubs and societies
which will help me in enhancing my overall skills, it will help me in thinking in a creative
manner, will help in boosting up my confidence and always will provide me time to pursue the
things i wanted to do and hobbies( Sibaja, 2020).
One step you plan to take to improve the effectiveness of your digital identity.
Before starting my career, it is important for me to research and have deep knowledge regarding
different social media platforms that will help me in attracting the various organisations and
developing my online personality.
After getting effective ideas it is important to look over various contents and learning how to use
different platforms in order to boost my digital identity.
A step to improve your knowledge of the industry you seek to work in
In order to improve my knowledge in the human resource department, it is important for to have
deep understanding and information about the various areas of human resource and also having
deep understanding of various employees. In human resource department, it is important to
identify the aims and objectives of the organisation. With analysing the objectives, it will help
me in understanding my job role in a better way and following up human management policy.
7

REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Bindels, E., 2021. Doing well, getting better: facilitating physicians’ reflection on their
professional performance.
ElFiki, T.M., 2019. A case study of the perceived effectiveness of administrative professional
development (Doctoral dissertation, Grand Canyon University).
Fletcher, S., Gunter, A. and Mitchell, J., 2019, March. Let’s Get Digital: Developing an Online
Professional Development Platform for Faculty and Staff Nationwide. In Society for
Information Technology & Teacher Education International Conference (pp. 829-832).
Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education (AACE).
Gao, Q., 2021. Professional development and ICT literacy of college teachers based on FPGA
and image target recognition education. Microprocessors and Microsystems, 80,
p.103349.
Horace, A. and et. al., 2021. Aiming student pharmacist organizations toward professional
success: Mapping student activities to a professional development program. Currents in
Pharmacy Teaching and Learning, 13(4), pp.346-352.
Paltiwale, S. and et. al., 2020, January. Use of Community of Practice for In-Service
Government Teachers in Professional Development. In Open Conference on Computers
in Education (pp. 73-77). Springer, Cham.
Ryan, C. L. and McAllister, M.M., 2020. Australian clinical facilitator professional development
needs: A cross-sectional study. Nurse Education Today, 94. p.104590.
Sibaja, M.E., 2020. Professional Development for EMI Faculty in Mexico: The Case of
Bilingual, International, and Sustainable Universities. Routledge.
Turalba, J., 2019. Qualificationand Preparednessof Technology and Livelihood Education
Teachers in Carsigma: Basis for Professional Development Plan. Ascendens Asia Journal
of Multidisciplinary Research Abstracts, 3(2M).
8

9