So you’ve spent your last 10, 15 or even 20 years in the role of a HR practitioner. You’ve conducted countless recruitment and exit interviews, punched in the numbers for employees’ salaries. You may have developed retention strategies, sat in the boardroom and made a case for HR to be treated as a business partner.

Now what? Where do you go from here? For HR practitioners looking to make a career change, what are some of the career options out there that can tap on your strengths and skills acquired over the years as a HR practitioner? Human Resources speaks with a few former HR practitioners to learn what it is like stepping out of the corporate HR role, and how they made the leap and their challenges in their new positions.

Job opening: HR consultant

For many HR practitioners, moving on to consult on HR issues seems like a natural transition. After all, they have already garnered the industrial HR experience needed. And Elizabeth Martin-Chua agrees, saying that in her last role as senior vice president at Philips, she was mainly involved in business and people strategies. “The insights that I have dervied from watching leadership at work from an HR perspective is invaluable,” she says. Currently, she heads her own outfit called Elizabeth Martin Associates.

However, Matin-Chua’s current consultancy role was not on her cards during her 37 years as a HR practitioner. After a stint in Philips China, Martin-Chua says she had to opt for an early retirement and return to Singapore in late 2008 as a promise to her family. But driven by a desire to keep continuing her HR work, Martin-Chua says consulting then became a natural step and later registered her company in early 2009.

The same was not true for Cheryl Liew-Chng, CEO of work-life consultancy LifeWorkz. After becoming the HR director of KK Women’s & Children’s Hospital in her early thirties, she says starting her own business was simply the next step in her career path.

As a HR consultant, Liew-Chng says her work now involves a “fair bit of everything”. In a typical week, she spends approximately two days on research and development work, with the rest of the time spent on consultation work, pitches or on-site training. “And at least twice a month, I set aside time to work with my associates in terms of their own levels and content understanding, to ensure that quality is there for our clients.”

And as entrepreneurship is a marked shift from their previous HR jobs, both Martin-Chua and Liew-Chng had to work on honing their business skills in areas such as marketing and development. Throw in the ability to function independently without administrative support as well, Martin-Chua adds, “I have to be very hands-on and plan, monitor and execute the project from beginning to end.”

Before making the leap into starting a business consultancy, Liew-Chng says she often had long discussions long conversations with her husband, with topics ranging from family finances and how they could better manage the expectations of their three sons, as well as surround herself with a group of positive people.

But, Liew-Chng says one of the biggest changes she had to adjust to was that her sphere of influence as an external consultant is not as impactful compared to a HR practitioner working within the organisation, as the latter would have greater control over the day-to-day interventions and initiatives. “We try not to be too attached to a project, because when it does not go well it really demoralises the team,” she says. “I think that if we have our best advisory in helping them understand and putting in the systems and infrastructure, we would just need to leave it to them [clients] to take it to where they are comfortable,” Liew-Chng says.

And as a person who derives energy from working with others, Martin-Chua says there are times in her consultancy work where she feels a lack of belonging and organisational identity. “However, the upsides are obvious, flexibilty, variety and time for self care. There are trade-offs! It is just different,” she concludes.

Job opening: Executive or career coach

Being a coach is much different from being counsellor, says Paul Heng, founder and executive coach in NeXT Corporate Coaching Services. Unlike a consultant who shares his or her expertise, a coach provides carefully crafted and engaging questions to the coachee, facilitating the coachee’s personal journey of introspection and finding the answers (such as where the person wants to go) for oneself.

That is the power of coaching, says Heng, as one is more inclined to implement solutions generated by oneself, rather than solutions provided by others.

After 20 years as a HR practitioner, Heng started becoming a career career coach since 1997. Later in 2005, he branched into the field of executive and leadership coaching. “I realised this [coaching] was what I wanted to do for the rest of my career and life as it touches people as individuals and could also be potentially life changing.”

Heng’s time as HR practitioner has helped him sharpen his interviewing and counselling skills - both of which are necessary in his current role. His interviewing skills have helped him understand how to frame questions, while his counselling skills enabled him to understand what makes his coachees “tick”.

However, being a coach meant that he had to work on his coaching and listening skills in order to be emotionally and physically present for his coachees during a coaching session. “I also had to learn to remind myself to leave my ego at the door. I believe that a strong ego is a positive thing for a coach - but like most strengths, too much of it can turn it into a weakness,” he adds.

Heng, who has a degree in business administration says, the coaching profession has relatively no entry barriers as a person could set up a sole propriertorship and immediately start soliciting for coaching assignments. However, it is essential that coaches should have a sincere desire to want to help others and to “add value to one’s career, life [and] leadership journey,” he adds.

“I would suggest that coach wannabes invest in the time and money to get himself /herself professionally trained and certified.”

Job opening: Lecturer

For almost 17 years, Alvin Oh’s burning passion for sharing and imparting his knowledge with others meant leading a double life of teaching and holding a full-time job.

As a former L&D specialist, Oh is now the executive director for Wisdom Consultancy International, as well as one of Nanyang Technological University’s adjunct lecturers.

Oh’s stint in teaching first started when the National Productivity Board (now SPRING) introduced a new slew of HR-related diploma courses geared towards the government’s directives and invited him on-board as a lecturer. Soon after that accepting that role, offers soon came in from other private universities such as Management Development Institution of Singapore, Singapore Institute of Management and UniSIM. “[When I started], I told myself, just commit one or two nights per week [to teaching]. And before I knew it, I was teaching every night,” he says, adding that he even taught on Saturdays as well.

Unlike other university lecturers who solely come from an academic background, having worked in HR positions for comapanies such as STATS ChipPAC and UOB means that Oh incorporates his industry experience and knowledge into his students’ curriculum. “We don’t just teach HR theoretically or academically, but we bring into the syllabus a lot of rich industry experience, which I think the students find practical.”

Having taught on the subject of HR and economics from diploma to post-graduate levels, Oh says he has also learned to adjust his teaching style for students across the various levels. For instance while he describes younger undergraduates as sponges who are ready to absorb and learn, older working adults pursuing their Masters or higher education need a transformational learning style and a level of critical thinking in their syllabus, Oh says.

The possibility of heading back to a corporate HR role or a consulting position is still something which Oh says he would be open to considering, so long as it fits into his passion for L&D or organisational development. “But having said that, I think I will still continue to do my part-time teaching!”

Job opening: Management position

After spending the last 24 years in the Singapore Prison Service in various functions, the most recent of which was assistant director of staff development, Lee Kwai Sem was approached in 2008 on her interest in building a new organisation from ground zero – to which she readily agreed.

For Lee, who is now the chief executive of the newly-created Centre for Enabled Living (CEL), this opportunity has allowed her to shape the mindsets of Singaporeans on the issues of elderly care and people with physical disabilities. CEL provides referral services for people who require elderly and disability care programmes and aims to raise awareness and change misconceptions about elderly and disability issues among Singaporeans.

Lee says she was approached by her former boss, Chua Chin Kiat, who is now CEL’s board chairman, as they had worked together on the Yellow Ribbon Project before, which changed Singaporeans’ perceptions on ex-offenders. Their former working history and the trust built up was probably one of the reasons why she was offered the job, Lee says.

As a CE, Lee is now responsible for charting the direction of the organisation, and ensuring that employees have a direction and vision that is aligned with the organisation’s objectives. Governance is also an important role for her job, she adds. “Having been a civil servant all my life, I understand the importance of ensuring that the money entrusted to us by the government – taxpayers’ money – is properly accounted for and well spent.” Hence, it is her responsibility to ensure that all resources are managed and utilised efficiently and effectively.

According to Lee, her time in HR has helped her gain certain people-skills, such as interviewing and having a deeper understanding as to what motivates employees. She says she has also learned that for a small organisation such as hers, there are certain HR processes which can be outsourced–this is reason for why her company’s payroll process is now outsourced. Based on her years of HR experience, Lee also made the deliberate decision to hire a good mix of employees from the private sector as well, as their diverse views would help counter any group-think.

Heading a team of 21 employees, Lee says she used to spend much of her time in setting up the organisation, building working systems and processes as well as recruiting her team. As she is in the “execution and implementation” phase now, she spends more time networking and meeting up with other voluntary welfare organisations. However, she laughs as she says, “Meetings still take up a lot of my time!”

And unlike her previous organisation where Lee had to work with other decision makers, now “the buck stops here”. Lee says the decisions she makes now have bigger implications for not only her staff and organisation, but the people and society whom they serve as well. “There is no place for pride and ego because you are working for a larger cause,” she adds.