THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN AN HR BUSINESS PARTNER & JUST HR
Human Resources. HR. It’s an industry that is elusive in
understanding to many including your CEO, hiring manager or employees. Just
exactly who is HR and what do they do for your business, compliance and for the
employee?
This complexity is with the history of HR having its roots
in administration, filing, personnel and compliance for your company. HR grew
out of necessity as employment laws, government requirements and other employee
documentation became more complex starting with the creation and storage of
employee files and the hiring and on boarding process of new employees.
THE ROI OF HR AS A
BUSINESS PARTNER
As HR grew in it’s complexity becoming more involved in
business forecasting, establishing business ROI and executing progress that
could be directly tied to future and current business success, so evolved the
role of the HR professional into something more than it ever intended to be.
We
are strategic business partners forcibly involved in the success of
organizations evaluating not just hiring, firing and traditional hiring
advisory roles but so much more. This is where the HR ROI
Scale developed by Paul Kearns comes into play.
Job titles, responsibilities, business involvement and other
factors make HR an interesting and challenging career to work and play. A
lonely yet noble profession, it’s not uncommon for HR professionals to have
little to no friends of work social life due to the complexities the industry
brings. Thursdays happy hour work drinking buddy could be the subject of
Friday’s termination meeting, and HR doesn’t like being seen as favoriting
employees or silly little things like feelings getting in the way of being the
voice of reason at your company.
UNDERSTANDING JOB DESCRIPTIONS & RESPONSIBILITIES IN HR
As the HR ROI Scale above suggests, the more strategic the
role, the more complex strategies and decision making becomes in your HR role
at the company. While I’m not an advocate of using the term personnel
management, it does sum up a great deal of what the lesser strategic but not
less important roles might be.
HR
Coordinator. A true administrative position. An HR coordinator has
responsibility for filing, maintaining reports, processing payroll and
typically the scheduling of interviews. HR Coordinator’s might plan and organize
events, develop email content for newsletters and other inter-office
communication within the department and the company. Their roles are focused on
administration providing a valuable service to the organization in maintaining
order and a system for everything. They are hourly non-exempt workers.
HR Specialist. Typically
1-3 years of experience working in HR. Still focused on administration, payroll
processing and other administrative tasks. HR specialists can gain additional
experience working on speciality projects, employee orientation, training, and
pre-screen interviewing. Human Resource Specialists have a basic understanding
of some employment law. They are hourly non-exempt workers and serve as a go-to
resource for employees and managers alike.
HR Managers. Typically
a salary level position these human resource managers may or may not oversee
and supervise a staff of employees. Generalists in their roles these individuals
often do a bit of “everything” including benefits, compensation,
recruiting and handing employee relations issues each and every day. The
responsibilities in this role are very wide everything from location
forecasting and budgeting, recruiting and interviewing. HR Managers sometimes
process payroll but are less administrative than coordinator or specialist
roles. Often they are cross-trained in the administrative tasks for
emergencies.
HR Directors. Often
responsible for HR teams of 2 or more, human resource directors oversee a
region, a number of locations or serve as the highest ranking member of HR
within the company but this is not always the case. HR Directors often are
responsible for building annual budgets and often times have decision making
when it comes to buying software, systems and negotiating benefits offerings
for the company. Less likely to be a department of 1 than the HR Manager, their
responsibilities are less compliance and policy and more focused on building
relationships with executive team members and driving results for the
organization focused on human capital and company.
HR Business Partner. This role is seen less of a generalist
or manager and someone who takes a more consultative role working in HR. Human
resource business partners have clients within the organization they provide
resources and build relationships with focusing on the missions and objectives
set forth by the organization. There is much less focus on compliance and
administration. An organization instead typically has a HR Services Center or
central department to help provide support in the form of policy development
and enforcement, benefits and compensation. This person is seen as an
operational and more strategic resource for the region or area in which they
support. This is an exempt level position.
VP of HR. Depending
on the size of organization, the vice president of human resources often
reports directly to the CEO or COO of an organization although sometimes the
CHRO or chief human resource officer has this distinction. Depending on the
structure and size of the organization, the VP of HR works with the executive
team to discuss business objectives. They view financial documents and work to
understand how the focused programs and services they offer the organization
drive revenue.
The VP of HR works to integrate people into the full scope
of business operations evaluating how the impact of human capital benefits the
overall organization. This position is heavily focused on business metrics,
reporting and analytics directly in contrast to the administrative roots of the
industry. This is an exempt level position and often a key decision maker
at the company.
What’s in a Name? Human Resource Business Partners v. Human Resource
Generalists
Bright lines between Human Resource Business Partners, Human
Resource Generalists, and Line
Managers
I also believe HR needs more diverse career paths instead of
ladders, but more about that later. If you want to be a strategic HRBP, then
it’s an MBA. I have literally put my money where my mouth is on that
recommendation, having pursued an MBA instead of an MS HR because I wanted to
provide broader strategic value to the business. On the other hand, if you want
to be a senior HRG or enter an HR Center of Excellence localized areas of
in-depth HR expertise then I would recommend an MS in
HR.
Why do I see such a strong distinction? Let’s face it: HR
isn’t at the table with senior leaders in the manner or frequency we would like
to be. This is in part because of the bias against HR, but in a much larger
part because of HR’s focus on human resources as a stand-alone function (rather
than taking a systems thinking view) and lack of understanding of other areas
of the organization (e.g., finance, IT, mission areas). If we, as HR
professionals, want to be at the table, the change starts with our
capabilities, not with the attitudes of senior executives toward HR. We need to
show our value in the language of business executives.
For shared understanding, let’s clarify the definition of
HRBPs and HRGs for this blog. The Human Resource Business Partners (HRBPs)
perform a strategic role by advising leadership on how human capital management
can support larger goals and initiatives. In other words, HRBPs have a deep
understanding of – and role in – determining how to achieve its mission. HRBPs
also understand the fundamentals of other components of the organization, how
they add value, and how they interact with HR. HRBPs view HR through a systems
thinking lens.
Human Resource Generalists (HRGs) are primarily responsible
for the traditional work of the HR department, like HR policy and
administration, employee relations, recruitment and change management. The
depth of those skills can vary depending on the size and needs of each agency,
but generalists must be well-versed in all things HR and bring a breadth of
knowledge and skills. Centers of Excellence provide a depth in one area of HR.
For example, according to a SHRM survey,
Training is the HR specialty most
often delivered by a center of excellence. Also for the sake of
simplicity, when I say “business” in this article, I am referring to the
mission-facing parts of your Federal organization as distinct from HR.
In many organizations,
all HR Generalists consider themselves business partners. Being a business
partner is cool now, right? Like floral prints for spring 2014 or “Selfie” now
that it’s in the dictionary. And everyone wants to be “strategic.”
The mismatch of expectations to what’s delivered negatively
affects HR as a whole. At the root of this problem is the false assertion that
strategic roles add more value than tactical roles and therefore that HRBPs add
more value than HRGs. In general, HRBPs are higher in the organization and have
more power and resources to wield, so one could (incorrectly) view that as
adding more value. That does not, however, mean they create a higher ROI as
human capital. To the contrary, the highest ROI from your HR organizations
comes from delineating HRBPs from HRGs and COEs to maximize specialized value
added by each group.
Furthermore, the rise of Human Resources Lines of
Business (HRLOB) and Shared Service
Centers (SCC) has transferred
administrative work away from HRGs and shifted their focus to delivering
critical tactical services. Tactical is valuable! Delivering tactical
HR services in an efficient, effective manner that reduces risk to the
organization and contributes to optimizing human capital is priceless.
From the view of many HR professionals, becoming an HRBP is
a natural progression from an HRG role, requiring experience without any
transformational change in skills and aptitudes (i.e., building on existing
skill sets). I would argue, however, that this assumption is part of the
problem HRBPs face in gaining credibility as business experts.
Instead of
having an HR Career Ladder allowing for mostly vertical movement (preferably
upwards, of course), organizations would benefit from a clear delineation
between HR roles that creates a career path with lateral moves for upward
mobility. For example, from a junior HRG role, I could aspire to a senior HRG
role as a people manager, an HRBP role, or a role in a Center of Excellence.
The required skills and experience should be differentiated and align with the
roles.
Following the example I referenced earlier, I recommend an MS in general HR for
the Senior HRG role, and MBA for the HRBP, and a specialized MS HR for the COE role.
That is not to say the position should require such qualifications.
One of the
best HRBPs with whom I’ve ever worked was a lawyer (I guess Shakespeare was
wrong about them.) The only universal recommendation I would make is to have a
career path with supporting plan (e.g., your IDP) and an HR Certification,
which you should keep current though training and other professional
development.
As HR practitioners, we are always eager to move into more
strategic roles, but it is imperative that we not lose sight of the value and
career opportunities in traditional tactical roles.
I’ve met candidates who call themselves HRBPs but in fact
are HR generalists and trouble-shooters. There are HRBPs who report to the CEO
or Divisional head but where the relationship is anything but a partnership one
and more like a subservient one.
The truly commercial HR business partner has
earned the respect and status they have but their influence on the business may
not be obvious from their position in the organisation. Instead, I look beyond
this to the way they have conducted themselves.
Let’s start by exploring how HRBPs choose to spend their time.
The biggest choice I have observed the commercial candidate
make in their career is over what work they get involved in. Are they an HR
generalist, a jack-of-all-trades who can turn their hand to anything from
handling disciplinary cases to facilitating team meetings? Or are they a
business leader who focuses on how to create the conditions for high
performance or on how to build the workforce of the future?
I’m deliberately describing this as a choice because those
who try to do both, invariably have less impact on the business. The more time
they spend doing the jack-of-all-trades work, the less time they have to add
real commercial value.
Making this choice isn’t easy. There is a prevalent myth to
contend with here – that HR needs to get the basics right before they earn the
right to do the strategic stuff. This has more than a grain of truth in it – if
the basic security and welfare needs of employees are not being met, then the
organisation is failing in it’s duty of care and will ultimately lose the
loyalty of its workforce. If these basics are missing, nothing could be more
commercial, or strategic, than putting them in place.
But this doesn’t mean that the HRBP has to meet these needs
personally. They do, however, need to ensure that the processes, services,
systems and behaviours are in place to deal with these issues. The myth is
thinking that, once these are in place, they have to “keep their hand in” and
provide some of these services themselves to their senior colleagues.
how did this improve the revenue or profit margin of the
company or reduce risk?
what commercially valuable behaviours resulted from this
intervention and why was it the best way of achieving this?
what other options were available to you and why did you
reject them?
what outcome where you trying to achieve and how did this
directly relate to the business strategy?
how did you measure the impact and what was the level of
improvement over time?
what was the relevance of using best practice or applying
external benchmarks in this company and how did these drive the achievement of
the business strategy?
Clearly, these two factors are interconnected. The more time
spent on strategic issues, the more opportunity there is for having a
commercial impact. The more time spent on service delivery, when there are
other ways these needs could be met for less cost, the more missed
opportunities there are for commercial impact.
What differentiates the truly
commercial HRBP is not whether they can demonstrate commercial impact – it is
how they free themselves up to deliver more and more commercial impact.
