The need to align HR with the business has become more urgent than ever. Financial markets exert relentless pressure for growth, especially […]. Financial markets exert relentless pressure for growth, especially in emerging markets.
Customers demand more and better service at lower cost. And cost-efficiency, resource conservation and regulatory compliance have become issues for almost every organization.
Turnover among top talent is expected to increase in ; globalization is requiring stronger regional HR capabilities; and demographic shifts across the world are dramatically affecting availability of qualified people. Yet, all too often, business leaders still wonder aloud why their organizations even have HR departments. For their part, many HR leaders are willing to partner with the business, but given the unique situation of each individual company, they have little in the way of concrete guidance about how to fulfill that role.
Let me suggest a way to start. Of every action you take as an HR leader, ask this simple question: does it cause friction in the business or does it create flow? Friction is anything that makes it more difficult for people in critical roles to win with the customer. Flow, on the other hand, is doing everything possible to remove barriers and promote better performance. The question applies to virtually any company in any business and it will take you farther down the road faster than the hazy, abstract injunction to become a strategic partner.
Even in what appear to be routine HR responsibilities, you can inject the business perspective simply by asking whether what you are doing is going to enhance the flow of the business or impede it with friction. Why is it so difficult to inject that business perspective? This involves a strong understanding of the business functions and priorities, and centers around the understanding of and dealing with business risk or opportunity. All the required competencies to be an HRBP include thinking about big picture changes for the organization and how to tactically achieve them.
Effective strategic aptitude assessments are critical to success in the role. This is a basic requirement to provide the business with advice and to implement plans. They should be able to connect business challenges to HR activities and outcomes. As someone who is responsible for analyzing and creating plans to meet goals, it would only make sense that the HRBP needs to be able to use dashboards and reporting to analyze data and provide insight and takeaways from that data.
Stakeholder management is the process of maintaining good relationships with the people who have the most impact in the workplace. However, some organizations may be lucky enough to have a large team of people where an HR professional can truly transition into a completely strategic position while others are performing the day-to-day duties.
Administrative HR focuses on employee relations, benefits, hiring, pay, risk management, and technology, which are most likely the areas where your HR team spends their time.
However, the HRBP needs to be a little more strategic. The core of strategic HR is aligning HR functions with the business. The alignment process includes thinking about the business as it relates to recruitment and retention, learning and development, engagement, and performance management.
For example, at BizLibrary one of the goals of our learning and development function is to promote the core values and mission of our business to all team members. A strategic relationship requires actively seeking out and building a bond with someone. Strategic relationships are give and take relationships where each person has something to offer the other. HRBPs are strategic business partners involved in the success of organizations, and not just hiring, firing, and traditional HR roles.
Some examples of strategic HR metrics are monthly turnover rate, revenue per employee, human capital cost, promotion rate, employee satisfaction indicators, retention rates, and time to hire. Gathering data and providing solutions for how these metrics can be influenced is the best way to speak the language of business leaders and to develop a relationship with key executives. Employee engagement is a complex HR challenge which requires high-level strategy to address. Increasing employee engagement has been proven to help organizations retain talent, increase customer loyalty, and improve organizational performance and stakeholder value.
Ready to see more of our online training library? Request a demo to learn how our solutions can help you deliver engaging and impactful learning to your employees! But without a strategic HR partner to guide those efforts, your impact will fall short. The role of HR as a strategic partner is to develop and direct an HR agenda that supports and drives the overarching goals of the organization. In other words, a strategic HR partner bridges the gap between the work of the HR team on the ground and the mission of the C-suite.
To do this, strategic HR partners make sure that the HR policy, procedures, and governance align with the big picture. Strategic HR partners ask, "How can HR help create an engaging, high-performance culture that drives the whole business forward? While your HR department can operate as a strategic partner collectively, the individual roles of a strategic HR partner and a manager are distinct.
It is a high-level, birds-eye-view role. Unlike an HR manager whose job is involved in the day-to-day administration of HR policy and programs such as payroll and recruiting , a strategic HR partner operates as a:.
Instead, they focus on the big picture, collaborating with the HR department and consulting with the leadership team to make sure everyone is pulling in the same direction. Too often, HR teams operate in a silo, disconnected from the conversations and decision making happening among senior leadership. Successful, high-performance organizations build alignment across teams and departments. And HR is uniquely positioned to enable and promote this kind of engagement when working together with senior leadership as a strategic partner.
HR is the glue that binds teams and organizations together—which means it has potential for high impact across the organization.
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