How do you build a great HR business partnership? First, get curious about the business!
You can use the business insights you learn to elevate the impact of HR. Maybe numbers make you nervous 鈥� this doesn鈥檛 mean you can鈥檛 strengthen your business acumen. Consider sparking your interest by finding out more about your company鈥檚 ambitions, digging into its goals and objectives, or exploring barriers to growth your company may be facing.
Once you get started, you may just find that it triggers your creativity and helps
you develop new ways for HR to support the company. Before we get too far, though,
let鈥檚 confirm that we are defining 鈥淗R business partner鈥� in the same way.
What Is an HR Business Partner?
An is a senior-level employee who focuses on supporting business units by using human resources. Although they undoubtedly have administrative duties, the more high-value contributions include advancing business goals, objectives, and strategies using HR functions:
- Talent acquisition
- Performance management
- Learning and development
- Compensation design
Successful HR business partners have and the ability to think strategically. Some companies assign these partners to specific business units to provide support; others do not use this title but still expect business-minded HR support.
Over time, business leaders and HR professionals alike began to recognize that if the professionals within that department took time to align their programs and
initiatives with the company鈥檚 desired direction.
Becoming an HR Business Partner
If you are just stepping into this role and are hoping to demonstrate results quickly, follow some tips to get started:
- Know Your Stakeholders: Identify your audience. Do you have a supervisor? How involved is the company leadership? Are you serving as the single HR business partner for the entire company, or have you been assigned to a particular department? You may have a single stakeholder or many. It鈥檚 important to know your audience so that you can take time to understand their expectations.
- Learn Company Plans: Find any documents you can, such as strategic plans, business plans, annual reports,
financials, or department reports, and then read, read, and read. You may gain insights
and develop great questions for your stakeholders.
- Build Rapport: Get out of your office and spend time with your stakeholders. What are their goals
and aspirations? What challenges are they facing? The more you show a genuine interest,
the more likely you will receive useful information. As you spend time with your stakeholders
listening, learning, and understanding, your rapport with these individuals should
begin to increase. Coming up with programs and initiatives privately in your office
with no input or feedback is a sure way to sabotage your effectiveness immediately.
The goal is to develop solutions that resonate with your stakeholders.
- Gain External Awareness: It is critical to understand your company鈥檚 inner workings, but don鈥檛 lose sight
of what鈥檚 going on outside the company. You have the ability to get ahead of challenges
by monitoring world events, watching for workforce trends, and keeping your eye on
the competition. Allow this extra information to inform your recommendations.
- Assess: Having done your research, you may have lots of ideas about how to make a difference.
Maybe you have zeroed in on an acquisition strategy that is sure to attract talent
or developed a compensation strategy to address wage concerns. Have you considered
the cost versus the benefit of your ideas? Do you know your budget? Show your business
acumen by providing this information to your stakeholders before it is requested.
Make sure that the resources are available for implementation.
- Execute: Once recommendations have been made and approved, execute! This is where you can
really shine. The magic happens when you are able to successfully launch the initiative.
- Evaluate: It is easy to fall in love with an idea and keep it going despite the results. However,
a strong HR business partner carefully examines the results of initiatives and is
confident enough to say when the plan didn鈥檛 perform as hoped. The quicker you can
recognize the need for a course correction, the sooner a better idea can be born.
HR Business Partnerships
If the leadership of a company is wondering how to get more business support from
the HR team, it is helpful to start with an assessment before jumping to action. Consider
some important questions before getting started:
Organizational Planning and Communication
- Does your company have a clear plan that it shares with all department heads?
- Does each department have goals and objectives that align with the company鈥檚 overarching strategic priorities?
- Are the company鈥檚 resources allocated in such a way that they support achievement of the plan?
- Is the organization structured in a way that allows you to execute the plan?
- Does everyone understand who is responsible for doing what?
If you answered yes to all of these questions, this is a great start. HR business
partners cannot be successful if they don鈥檛 know the company鈥檚 plan or if resources
are not available to execute agreed-upon initiatives.
Organizational Structure
- Does the HR team have adequate staffing to fulfill all basic HR functions?
- Is there a better way to distribute responsibilities or adjust the structure to support HR business partnerships?
You may not need to layer on additional staff in order to build HR business partnerships.
It may just require you to shine a light on the expectations and realign roles and
responsibilities.
Talent
- Are there any strategic thinkers on the HR team?
- Has anyone on the HR team demonstrated the ability to put organizational success above any departmental or personal agendas?
- Is anyone already serving as a business partner of sorts by proactively communicating with management and staff to understand both goals and pain points?
Sometimes the talent is already present and just needs to be cultivated. If it is
completely missing, new people may need to be brought onboard to broaden the skills
of the HR team.
Other considerations
- Does communication flow well within your company, or do certain employees hoard information?
- Is there a high level of collaboration within your company, or is the operation more siloed?
Great HR business partnerships have information flowing in both directions. Let鈥檚
say you have an HR professional with a business background who asks all the right
questions and you match this person up with a department head who hoards information
and works in a silo. This is not the makings of a strong partnership. Is your whole
team on board to make an HR business partnership work?
Taking Action
Once an internal assessment has been completed, you are more likely to be aware of barriers that may hold this concept back from succeeding. Some actions may need to be taken to address insights gained.
Through your assessment, you may find that you have several issues:
- An employee who strives to be an HR business partner but is having difficulty breaking
out of his administrative and compliance functions. Consider carefully whether he lacks the ability to think strategically or whether
something else is at play. Does the department structure need to be realigned? Does
he need to be challenged to approach work differently to maximize the time he has
available to think and strategize?
- A lack of clear organizational or business unit goals and objectives. This means there is work to do; however, you can get started by getting some basic
goals and objectives down on paper even if a formal plan doesn鈥檛 exist.
- HR professionals who have not yet realized how much of a bigger impact they can make
by serving as HR business partners. By encouraging your HR team to simply review the company鈥檚 plan and consider how
they might support those efforts, you can help make your expectations clear. Consider
challenging your HR team to dig into the company鈥檚 information or specific departmental
plans and begin envisioning how they can play a more significant role in supporting
the company鈥檚 desired direction.
- A lack of resources allocated to support the HR business partner function. If you鈥檝e decided that HR business partnership is a priority at your company, ensure
that the resources are there to make it a success.
Your Path to Strong HR Business Partnerships
To learn more about adopting a strategic approach in HR, consider taking one of our many USF courses. You can broaden your HR business partnership knowledge by taking Business Acumen for HR Professionals, where you will learn how to play a bigger role in your company鈥檚 growth, or HR Data-Driven Decision Making, where you will learn how to use data to inform your thinking and improve your ability to demonstrate HR鈥檚 impact.