Moving into HR from a non-HR background

[GoldPlatedNineDoors]

My current employers are pretty great, and although I no longer want to work in my current role, I am keen to stay with the company. The hours I currently do are extremely un-family friendly and a standard of that role, so little to no opportunity to request set hours/days.

My employer runs a sort of Talent Scout event where you make yourself known to the HR team who help with finding a role within the company in the area you are interested in and offers training / qualifications etc.

I would like to make the move into HR, however all my previous employment has been customer service. I have experience of managing a team, and experience of handling a heavy admin role, as well as delivering training/team building sessions, but little to no insight into the current laws and legislation surrounding employment and employees.

I am worried that if I go to the Talent Scouting event they will kindly point out that as I have no HR experience I will not be able to move in this direction.

Has anyone made a move into HR from a non-HR background before? I am happy and willing to re-train from scratch and work as hard as I can, and possibly study for another Degree.

But I am scared

check out CIPD website and go armed with a commitment to study for one of the quals. CIPD has only recently been prominent so many HR professionals (esp older ones) are unqualified themselves.

Be careful about what you want to do in HR, though, as it is very segmented. HR Admin is as boring as all admin is. There's strategy & policy devt, recruitment, training, benefit mgmt & strategy....

Make sure you have a good reason as to why you want to be in HR.

As some who does everything in a small business it seems to me that a large part of good customer service is good communication skills which also seem to be essential for good HR so I would present the skills that you already have that would be useful.