We’re still in the Great Resignation and HR talent is just as susceptible to turnover as any other type  of talent. From recruiting and training to compensation and benefits management, properly managing  the employee lifecycle for everyone — including HR workers — is central to company success.

Offering competitive pay is key to attracting and retaining top talent,  and that is also true for positions in human resources where the market  has been changing fast. In 2020, HR gained more recognition for its  strategic influence. HR employees had to step up their game and have  been making more of an impact. But are HR employees seeing that  growth reflected in their own career development and wage increases? 

When pay is not competitive, employees are more likely to search for  a new opportunity where they will receive a considerable pay increase  — and that includes compensation professionals! When it comes to fair  and competitive pay, the folks most in the know need to feel heard by  executive leadership and people managers.

Of course, keeping up with how the market has changed can be challenging. Market pricing  jobs and analyzing pay trends can be time consuming, especially if you have a lot of jobs in a  lot of locations. HR can easily feel overburdened. This is where compensation management  software like Payscale can help.

In this report, we look at just one of the salary data sources available from Payscale —  compensation surveys that aggregate employer-sourced data from Payscale customers — to  reveal the hottest jobs in HR. Our rank lists include the fastest-growing jobs by wages and the  highest-paid HR jobs excluding executive positions. We also look at Payscale’s employee-sourced  salary data to identify the hottest skills for HR by pay differential.* *Definition: % Pay Differential The average positive impact that  a skill has on pay for the given  occupational group. For example, if  an HR employee sees, on average, a  14 percent impact on pay with a skill  like performance management, then  they will, on average, earn 14 percent  more than their counterparts who lack  that skill. This calculation controls for  compensable factors, including job  title, experience, location, etc.

Offering competitive pay is key to attracting and retaining top talent,  and that is also true for positions in human resources where the market  has been changing fast. In 2020, HR gained more recognition for its  strategic influence. HR employees had to step up their game and have  been making more of an impact. But are HR employees seeing that  growth reflected in their own career development and wage increases? 

When pay is not competitive, employees are more likely to search for  a new opportunity where they will receive a considerable pay increase  — and that includes compensation professionals! When it comes to fair  and competitive pay, the folks most in the know need to feel heard by  executive leadership and people managers.