What is a HR Business Partner and what does the future hold?

We all recognise the confusion when people talk about “HR Business Partners”, as there can be many different levels of understanding of what one actually is. Wikipedia talks about a business partner as “being a commercial entity with which another commercial entity has some form of alliance”. Sounds interesting, but what is a HR Business Partner and what does the role entail?

Many of us will understand HR Business Partners to be HR professionals who work closely with an organisation’s senior leaders in order to develop a HR agenda that closely supports the overall aims of the organisation. We all know about the Ulrich model, but what did David Ulrich really have in mind when he came up with the business partnering model, how has this evolved over recent years and is it still relevant today?

Ulrich’s idea was centralised around HR being focused on different initiatives and being visible to managers and employees; he wanted to ensure HR relationship were visible to everyone, including internal and external customers. David Ulrich is a strategist and he identified 4 key roles which make an organisation effective and friendly for employees: HR Business Partner, Change Agent, Administration Expert, and Employee Advocate.

Ulrich defined a new strategic agenda and a strategic role for HR. He also proposed to change the structure of HR functions to build HR around current roles in an organisation. HR Business Partners play a strategic role in HR, they build relationships with dedicated internal clients, as well as acting as a single point of contact to represent and advice HR services in the organisation. They positively influence the organisation’s design and identify top talent, whilst helping to identify key “knowledge holders” and help spread their knowledge across organisations. The role also entails giving honest feedback to internal clients and using this feedback to improve procedures and services, whilst also facilitating difficult meetings and finding solutions.

This is all good HR stuff but the “Ulrich Model” still divides opinion even after more than 20 years. Professor Ulrich, described as “the most influential HR Thinker of the decade”, has had his theory questioned. These doubts mainly revolve around how the Ulrich model is fit for purpose in the rapidly evolving workplace. Though surely the drivers behind the model – to drive efficiency, standardisation and HR strategic impact remain as relevant to business today as they ever were?

In some cases HR BP’s can end up obstructing change; they often become overwhelmed by “business as usual” requirements and can become so embedded in the business and so distanced from central HR that they are sometimes at risk of taking a business’ short term demands to heart, in turn ignoring or over-riding the company’s need for strategic change.

Often HR Business Partners can also be bogged down with day to day transactional work, whilst the centres of excellence can alienate the business through an overly specialised, jargon heavy approach. The effect of this is that many HR professionals who have grown up with the model have become pigeon holed, and perhaps are too specialist making one dimensional HR leaders of the future.

The HR Business Partner model has been instrumental in creating value for many employee functions, and the Business Partner model continues to evolve. Over the last 20+ years the model has changed to adapt to today’s modern business challenges.

In the future, HR Business Partners will need to deliver value to multiple stakeholders. We have seen progress in the HR profession as it has moved toward greater strategic understanding and relevance, whilst HR professionals continue to deliver value by helping employees find meaning and well-being from work. HR professionals will also need to focus on external as well as internal stakeholders to improve business performance. HR valued outcomes will need to move beyond talent to organisation and leadership in the future and, as the HR has a direct impact on business performance, it’s essential that HR departments fight the war for the best talent in the market.

HR will also need to become more technologically efficient. The routine work of HR must still be done, though newly emerging technologies can be applied to improve the efficiency of HR administrative work such as Payroll, Benefits Administration, entry level staffing and employee record keeping.

HR Business Partners need to master the right competencies to ensure they get invited to business discussions, whilst HR professionals need to be credible activists who influence through relationships of trust, can understand business context and can think and act from the outside-in.

In the future, HR Business Partners will continue to develop, the bar has been raised on HR and some HR professionals will make the grade and others will not. There are emerging business issues where HR can and will contribute value. The future of HR is filled with both challenges and opportunities, so HR Business Partners will need to continue to deliver value to help businesses manage the enormously difficult and exciting challenges ahead.

Please search our current vacancies to discover more about our current HR Business Partner opportunities.

 

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