HR Business Partnering - Shaping the Future of HR
For an organization on a mission to unlock its productive potential, HR plays the driving force behind its corporate culture. The meaning of HR has molded over the years to go beyond its classic definition and has transformed greatly into something beyond people and administrative tasks. And to solve business issues through the people side of the business, HR business partners step in.
Defining HR Business Partners
Defined as human resource professionals who help align an organization’s people strategy with their business strategy, HR business partners help leaders envision, design and implement an HR strategy that contributes to the company’s growth, performance and future objectives.
Considered a strategic force within an organization, the HRBP role detaches itself from the administrative responsibilities of an HR manager and focuses on a company’s strategic importance such as HR planning or strategy. This, in turn, enables them to preemptively influence an organization from within and advance its development.
Breaking Down the Core Roles & Responsibilities
An HR business partner’s central focus can be viewed in four distinct ways.
Strategic Control of the HR Process
Equipped with the strategic vision to recognize bottlenecks in the early stages, an HR business partner directs an organization’s efficiency and smoothens its recruiting and hiring processes.
Staff Development and Coaching
Aiming to uplift an organization’s workforce, an HR business partner devises personalized professional development and training strategies for its managers and employees.
Collaborating with the Executive Management
An HR business partner is expected to maintain a clear eagle’s eye view of a company’s future and actively help the company to be proactive.
Taking Charge of Change
Considered to be an essential driver of change in an organization, HR business partners take charge of and optimize the entire change management process.
Corporate Culture Branding
An HRBP may focus on enhancing a company’s corporate culture in order to attract and retain top talent.
HRBP Function vs. Role
As a job function, an HRBP is the official strategic liaison between HR and the business. Contrastingly, the HRBP can also be a role and is often referred to as ‘business partnering’. This emphasizes that every HR professional must have a sound understanding of an organization and shape its HR policies to consciously add value.
Getting Future-Ready with HRBP
Viewing today’s problems with yesterday’s solutions is a dead-end. The HRBP model has evolved finely over time and has changed in recent years to suit modern-day business challenges. Here are five future trends we predict for HRBP.
- HR will deliver value to multiple stakeholders
Over the past years, the world has placed more importance on HR and given its much-deserved credit. The empirical progress in the field has pushed it towards greater strategic understanding and relevance. And, it will not stop there. We believe this progress will continue and HRBP will build value within a company by enabling employees to find meaning and well-being from work.
- HR outcomes will go beyond talent and contribute to organization and leadership
Talent matters but also do companies. In addition to refining the talent of an organization, HRBP will shift its focus from individual competencies to organization capabilities to broaden HR outcomes. Subsequently, internal and external stakeholders will receive more value. This will demand HRBP to level up their business skills.
- HR will transform technologically and achieve better efficiency
The strategic advances of HR will have to still co-exist with the routine work of the HR function. Newly emerging technologies contribute to the digitization of HR and will continue to improve the efficiency of HR administrative work such as payrolls, entry-level staffing and employee record keeping.
- HR professionals will have to master the right competencies to be business partners
HRBP requires many skills, but central to effectiveness are business acumen, digital integration, being data-driven and voicing the people. However, problem-solving capabilities, listening and communication skills plus relationship-building are also known to drive value in the HRBP role.
- HR will improve business impact through structured and unstructured information
HR analytics operates with the ultimate aim of providing information that develops an organization. As HR moves towards analytics-driven business impact, HRBP will have to source information from multiple methods. Structured information is curated through spreadsheets and contributes about 20% of practical information that can be used for business impact. However, the remaining 80% of impactful information is derived from observations and insights from HR professionals. This proves that HRBP being anthropologists more than statisticians bring more value to the table.
Learn More
HRBP will continue to morph and mold. Emerging business issues require novel solutions and HR grows beyond its stereotypical meaning to take on a more prominent role in an organization. Right now, HR holds the power to navigate the future of business. However, being strategic and commercial while focusing on the people as an HRBP requires more understanding.
This is where Keynotive’s upcoming live virtual masterclass can help you.
Future of HR Business Partnering Masterclass: Building the Capability of Tomorrow’s HR Business Partner
This two-day workshop has been designed to take you through detailed sessions on how change impacts HRBP, changing behavior to be more strategic, tools and techniques to build trust with leaders to deliver successful results and the future demands HRBP have to be prepared for.
This masterclass will be led by Dave Millner, Author, Founder and Consulting Partner. Dave has a coveted experience of over 30 years in the industry and is a recognized as a key HR influencer.
Learn more about this masterclass here.
