Becoming a Cultural Curator: Online Courses for HR Professionals

Cultural curator, head of people operations, human resources manager, director of culture, DEI program lead—whatever the verbiage, there are plenty of job opportunities in the HR field these days. That may not surprise you, given the zeitgeist of pandemic-era work life. It probably also won't surprise you that there are plenty of online resources that can help you make a career pivot into the field or narrow your culture and benefits role from generalist to specialist.

One of the specialties seeing growth? Cultural curators and other culture-focused titles.

What is a Cultural Curator?

These HR professionals ensure that everyone at a company is happy and taken care of, whether they are working in the office or remotely. This has a lot of moving parts, but some of the big ones are:

• Sourcing the brightest people who are the best cultural fit for a company
• Selecting equipment, arranging workstations, keeping supplies stocked
• Keeping the office space pleasant with temperature, lighting, music, cleanliness—and snacks 
• Celebrating birthdays and company successes 
• Planning social events ranging from virtual scavenger hunts and trivia contests to regional beach volleyball to full-team happy hour

Of course, doing all of that plus managing or supporting a team is a ton of work and isn't necessarily something anyone can just jump into. It can be especially tough for new HR professionals. That's where apps and online courses can swoop in for some of the heavy lifting, saving time and energy on the job. 

A Little HR Training Goes a Long Way

Does anyone innately know how to give feedback in a way that doesn’t sound scary? Probably not, so it’s good to review. Check out some great tips on following up with employees, performance management, setting up goals, and perhaps most important, that feedback we were just talking about. If you need a refresher or confidence boost on some of the top HR practices, we've got a few suggestions.

• HR Management Bundle: If you want to review the fundamentals of human resources, this training covers three essential topics.
• HR & Leadership Management Complete Diploma Course: Study a wider range of topics with this bridge course that doesn't go quite as in depth as our next suggestion.
• The Ultimate HR Management Bundle: For more experienced HR professionals and students who want to deepen their knowledge, this is a great option. 

Tools You Cannot Over-Use

It may sound silly, but remembering someone’s birthday or work milestone can be a big moment for them. That doesn’t mean you have to memorize everyone’s start date. Save your brain space for the most important HR tidbits and lean on some of the awesome productivity tools out there—one being the humble calendar. 

Did you know you remember things better if you actually write them down? Don't just type them. Break out the ol’ pen and paper and write down some of those really important notes and appointments in addition to using your digital calendar. It can really help you keep track of things, from big meetings to action items resulting from those meetings. As a bonus, this opens up the opportunity for color-coding your cal with fun pens! 

You’re probably so used to seeing Microsoft Office icons that you don’t even think about how useful every program in that pack can be. For HR jobs, one of the best of the bunch is probably Microsoft Teams. Need to be in quick contact with a lot of people and you don’t want to search through endless email threads? Teams! Want to collaborate on a presentation about some fun workplace events coming up? That’s Teams too! Need to share formal documentation about company policies? You can do that with Teams of course, but MS Outlook is great for more official occasions. 

Haven’t used much of the MS software suite outside of typing up school papers? There are some great training courses out there to help you out. And if you don’t have it on your home computer and want to be reachable when you’re remote, Microsoft Office for Mac or Windows is available on sale. 

What's really cool about an app like Teams is how it can be integrated with other helpful tools to supercharge so many aspects of human resources and cultural curation. One such tool is the top-rated Standuply. 

Trusted by 50,000 companies, including IBM, Intel, Walmart, Adobe, and Google, Standuply is an HR and employee engagement tool that saves time and improves team communication by automating routine tasks—and allowing staff to focus on more important work.

Connect it with Teams, Asana, GitHub, and more to help with project management, daily standups, administering surveys, and other functions that can be challenging with a distributed team. Plus, the platform offers insights and analytics to help teams make data-driven decisions and streamline workflows even further.

Get Ready for a Fun, Productive Career in HR 

Should you become a cultural curator and work in human resources? Working an HR job, it can be easier to feel some of that family-style environment often promised by hiring managers, plus you get to help actually follow through with the promise of a fun, productive workplace that supports its employees.

It’s an exciting opportunity, and you can get a lot out of it in terms of personal satisfaction. Just make sure to leverage the various HR skills, tips, hacks, and tools that help you work smarter so there’s always time to take care of the employee you know best: you!