By Alvin Aloysius Goh
Every decision we make lands on someone’s life. That is reason enough to keep getting better.
Think about the last person you hired.
Before they met their manager, before they saw the office, before they understood the business, they met HR. The job advertisement. The interview. The offer call. The first-day welcome, or the lack of one.
Now think about the last person who left.
Whether they walked out feeling respected or discarded, that impression was shaped by HR as well.
HR is often the first and last face of an organisation. In between, we touch almost everything that matters to a working person: their pay, their growth, their safety and their sense of being treated fairly.
That is not “just a job”. It is a responsibility.
And a responsibility like that demands that we keep learning.
All of us desire to know
Perhaps it is the history geek in me again, but when I think about learning, I find myself going much further back than the latest management book.
More than 2,000 years ago, Aristotle opened Metaphysics with a simple claim: “All human beings, by nature, desire to know.”
I believe that.
I see it in young HR professionals who join our profession curious, eager and wanting to make a difference.
But I also see what happens a few years in.
The desire does not necessarily disappear. It simply gets buried under payroll cycles, headcount requests, employee issues and the next urgent escalation. We go into firefighting mode.
We spend our careers building other people’s capability, yet rarely protect enough time to build our own.
As Peck Kem often says, HR professionals can sometimes be like the cobbler whose children have no shoes. We look after everyone else’s development and neglect our own.
That has to change. And it requires a deliberate commitment to our own growth.
Knowing begins with noticing
Centuries after Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas built on the idea that what reaches our understanding first passes through our senses.
Put more simply, before we can understand something deeply, we first have to notice it.
For HR, I think there is something important in that. The resignation that surprised everyone. The manager who keeps losing good people. The AI tool that was rolled out but never used. The employee who stopped speaking up in meetings.
Each of these is data.
Most of us walk past these signals because we are busy solving the next problem. Learning begins when we stop long enough to ask:
What is this telling me that I do not yet understand?
Why this matters especially in Singapore
In Singapore, HR carries a weight that is easy to underestimate.
We work within a tripartite system where employers, unions and government are expected to solve workforce challenges together. HR professionals sit right at that intersection.
When we handle a restructuring well, with fairness, proper notice and genuine redeployment support, we strengthen trust. When we handle it badly, the consequences can extend well beyond one company.
The environment around us is also changing.
Fair employment practices are moving from guidelines towards legislation. Employees are more informed about their rights and expectations. Mature workers want to remain relevant. Younger workers increasingly expect growth and meaning alongside a payslip.
And then there is AI.
It is changing how jobs are designed, how talent is assessed and how decisions are made. Many HR teams are being asked to guide organisations through that change while still learning about it themselves. For HR practitioners looking to understand how technology can transform their work, SHRI Academy’s Emerging Technologies for Excellent Human Resource Service Delivery and Operational Excellence course explores how emerging technologies can improve HR service delivery and operational efficiency.
As a nation, we have invested heavily in lifelong learning through SkillsFuture and workforce development initiatives.
It would be a quiet irony if the profession responsible for developing the workforce were the one that stopped developing itself.
Learning is not the same as attending
I want to be careful here.
Development is not about counting the number of courses we attend.
I have seen HR professionals with impressive training records whose practice has barely changed in a decade. I have also met practitioners with fewer certificates who think more sharply than almost anyone in the room.
The difference is not enrolment.
It is whether learning shows up in better judgement, better conversations and better outcomes for people and the business.
Because in HR, the path to a decision is rarely a straight line. That is the test I would ask every HR professional to apply to themselves.
Not: “What did I attend this year?”
But: “What can I now do that I could not do before?”
What learning looked like for me
Last year, I joined the Global HR Leadership Experience at the Darla Moore School of Business Executive Education with Dave Ulrich, Patrick Wright and Dick Beatty.
I went in as a senior HR and business leader with more than 20 years in the profession.
I came out reminded of how much I still had to learn.
There were many moments when I found myself thinking: if I had understood this earlier in my career, how much more value could I have contributed?
One idea from Dave stayed with me.
The value of HR is defined by the people who receive it, not by those of us who deliver it.
It is a simple idea, but a demanding standard.
Our good intentions count for little if the employee, manager, external stakeholder or business does not feel the difference.
What struck me just as much was the room itself.
HR leaders from different countries, industries and stages of their careers were all asking essentially the same question:
How do we do this better?
None of them saw learning as finished.
That was when something landed for me.
The desire to know should not fade with seniority. If anything, it should grow.
The more responsibility we carry, and the more people affected by our decisions, the greater our responsibility to keep sharpening our judgement.
Three questions to start with
If you want to take your own development seriously, start here:
- What did I get wrong this year, and what did it teach me? Our mistakes are often our most honest curriculum. A badly handled exit or a policy that backfired can teach us more than a workshop, if we are willing to look at it.
- Which business conversation am I not yet equipped to lead? Finance. AI. Workforce planning. A union negotiation. A difficult board discussion. Name it, then close the gap deliberately.
For HR professionals looking to strengthen their strategic capabilities, the Postgraduate Diploma in Strategic Human Capital Management offers a pathway to develop business partnering, workforce strategy and decision-making skills. - Who is sharpening my thinking? A mentor. A peer circle. A professional community. Nobody grows alone, and HR can sometimes be a lonely seat.
Be proud to say it
There is a quiet embarrassment in some parts of our profession.
We introduce ourselves with “I’m in HR”, and sometimes seem to apologise for our function before we have even explained its value.
I would like us to stop doing that.
The work we do shapes how people experience their working lives. It affects careers, families, businesses and the reputation of the organisations we serve.
That deserves pride.
But that pride also asks something of us.
It asks us to keep learning, to keep sharpening our judgement and to keep earning the trust placed in our profession.
I hope we reach a point where an HR professional can say with confidence:
“I create stakeholder value through HR.”
Or simply:
“I am proud to be an HR professional.”
Professional certification can be part of that commitment too. In Singapore, I hope more practitioners will be proud to say that they are IHRP-certified HR professionals, because certification should represent an ongoing commitment to the standards and development of our profession.
To me, that is what being a passionate HR leader looks like.
Not having all the answers.
Having the curiosity, discipline and desire to keep getting better for the people and organisations we serve.
At SHRI, this is why we exist: to help HR professionals in Singapore keep growing, so that our profession keeps growing with them.
More than 2,000 years after Aristotle wrote that we naturally desire to know, perhaps the challenge for us is simply to make sure we never lose that desire.
So let me ask you:
What is one thing you want to learn about your craft in the next 12 months, and what is stopping you?
Keep Learning. Keep Growing
Learning is an ongoing commitment. Whether you are building your HR foundations, strengthening your strategic capabilities or exploring new ways to work, SHRI Academy offers programmes to support your professional development. Contact us for more details.
