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HR Leader Spotlight

May 5, 2021 Diversity & Inclusion, Human Resources, Leadership

Your name, job title and place of work?

My name is Masruba Tasnim, and I presently work as a Diversity and Inclusion Lead at Enei

How would you describe your career?

My career has been varied and exploratory. I started off in Corporate Social Responsibility and moved into working directly with young adults, managing employability and social mobility programmes. After several years of experience working in the third sector, I moved into Learning & Development in the private sector and made conscious choices to expand my skill set by making horizontal moves into Diversity and Inclusion and then HR Operations.

What would you say are the 3 key strategies organisation should focus on in 2021 to support their workforce?

  • Mental health and wellbeing
  • People development
  • Belonging and inclusion

What would you say are the key skills required to be a true leader?

  • Interpersonal communication and empathy
  • Change management
  • Interest in developing others
  • Delegation
  • Authenticity and honesty

What are you most proud of in your career to date?

I’m proud of my resilience and adaptable attitude to change. I am eager to continually learn and have made conscious efforts to upskill myself whether it is by taking up a qualification whilst working full time, making a move to work in a different division or securing an internal secondment.

What would you like to see organisations do more of to promote Equality, Diversity & Inclusion?

I’d like to see companies review their recruitment techniques at point of entry to the organisation starting from where they promote their roles and what kind of target audiences they may be missing out of the recruitment pool. There is also both conscious and unconscious biases at shortlisting and pre-recruitment stages so I’d like to see this be openly addressed through for example by using software that filters out gendered wording on job descriptions and removing the need to disclose one’s university degree or place of study.

I’d like to also see companies focus more on the use of dynamic data to track how promotions, compensation and remuneration are distributed across their workforce.

It’s well known that informally being sponsored and more social experiences outside of work can lead to more opportunities in the workplace and this leads to certain staffs missing out on opportunities for growth and unfairly creates disadvantage for certain groups.

I’d like to see companies creating for equitable and standardised routes into being offered opportunities for growth internally.

How do you relax in your free time?

I enjoy practising yoga in my spare time and writing as a form of journaling and stress- relief.

Pre-pandemic, I enjoyed travelling to immerse myself in new cultures and visiting the theatre and art exhibitions.

What advice would you give to a young professional starting a career in HR?

Always keep yourself in learning mode; there is so much to learn in HR and you can never know everything. Learn from your peers and colleagues by shadowing, asking questions and making clarifications. The more you know, the more you will be able to identify your preferred areas of interest and learn how your skill sets suit you for those areas.

The CIPD is a great resource to have on hand, whether it’s reading topical articles, attending webinars or taking part in mentoring.

Moreover, keep your finger on the pulse; the landscape and employment updates are ever-changing and we saw how quickly we all had to adapt to working from home in a short space of time. Always keep learning and stay up to date.

What are your wise words in business?

Networking is crucial to stay connected and linked to upcoming opportunities. Whether it’s to find a job, seek a mentor or find out more about an industry – seek out the people that you look up to and would like to learn from.

Don’t take things personally – if you’ve done your best, you should be proud of what you have achieved – extraneous circumstances and unprecedented times will occur but this doesn’t reflect any shortcomings about you personally.

Be your authentic self – it may sounds cheesy and not always the easiest thing to do when all you want to do is ‘fit in’ but you deserve to work somewhere that you can be yourself (how much of yourself you show is of course up to you). Particularly when we may stand out because of the identity we inhabit i.e. our gender, ethnicity, sexuality etc, those elements of our identity hold value and our experiences matter.

How can our members connect with you?

I can be contacted on LinkedIn – just search my full name Masruba Tasnim 😊

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