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Is the HR Business Partner Model Killing Your Career?
Featured Author:
Scott McArthur
Scott McArthur is a Management Consultant (Atos Consulting), public speaker and writer on HR and people development. He has delivered learning events and speaking engagements in Europe, Australia, Hong Kong, Canada, China and the USA.
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May 27, 2008
The current trend of outsourcing transactional HR to services centres may be creating a future talent crisis for HR professionals.
Back in the 1990’s, when I began my HR career, I started off by looking after flexitime, recruitment administration, childcare vouchers, staff welfare and manpower planning. I knew if I knuckled down and got to know the technical elements of my role that my next step would be to the much coveted role of Assistant Personnel Officer. I then moved into more specialist areas such as executive reward, graduate recruitment, employee engagement and employee relations.
This trend continued, and it eventually lead me on to roles such Personnel Officer, HR Manager, Head of HR and ultimately to HR Director.
As my career developed I always had (and still have) people that I respected and who acted as my mentor. These individuals tended to be in one of the rungs further up my career ladder. Consequently, whilst I always aspired to attain advancement I knew that to get there I would have to know my HR.
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This week I have been working on a development programme for HR professionals and was asked by my client if I could, “…consider the career progression for HR professionals…” in her business. I was thinking about this and realised that the business has already outsourced almost all of the duties that I cut my teeth on back in the day. So I wondered, how can aspiring HRBPs gain the required grounding in HR if there is no ground for them to stand on?
I’ve expressed my concerns about how many organisations appear to be misinterpreting the Ulrich model by focusing primarily on the “strategy” role. Surely if this is the approach taken these organisations will not be able to grow talent into HRBP roles and will therefore have to resort to what will be an increasingly competitive external market?
HR Business Partner – A failure?
According to Personnel Today referring to research by Roffey Park:
“A backlash against the much-feted human resources (HR) business partner model appears to have begun after research revealed that more than half of managers were unconvinced by the structure.
.....One in four said the model was ineffective, while the rest were undecided on the merits of the increasingly popular system.”
Well there’s a shock! Yet another provider of HR development programmes claiming that HR does not have the skills to meet the expectations of business! Call me cynical, but what else would they conclude from their own research?
Perhaps the issue is that HR has not had access to appropriate development programmes or has failed to implement the model, as developed by Ulrich, appropriately?
Ulrich himself dismissed the notion of the partner some 7 years ago for goodness sake. There is a problem with HR and how it is perceived, but that is not new. What we must do is stop debating our place in the universe and get on with delivering people solutions to our respective organisations.
McArthur
8 months ago
8 comments
I find this subject to be highly complex and very interesting.
For example, in the UK good quality HRBPs are one of the most sought professionals in the permanent and interim markets and in my experience there are poor HR departments across the sectors. This may be a result of limited competence in the market or of the decline in talent as a result of the HRBP model - it may of course be both or neither!
I'm not sure if the HRBP model does work as there are very few examples of success when you scratch under the surface of even the most respected HR departments. I am open-minded on this and would really like to see real examples of real success?
The notion that HR is not about HR but rather the business is also challenging. I agree that HR must be business focused but surely if we forget about HR we forget about our role in the business - i.e. people management.
A deeper understanding of "human" factors, organisational psychology etc. and how these contribute to the business both in tangible and non tangible ways is more appealing to me than becoming, what some of my clients refer to as a management "lite" accountant.
Catbert
8 months ago
2 comments
I disagree with the notion that the HR business partner model will create a future talent crunch. While we continue to move towards an outsourcing model, the most succesful companies that will be providing these services will be training and developing talent. Moreover, the most successful outsourcing companies will be partnering with internal HR in order to drive more value.
The HR business partner model works. However it is highly dependent on several factors. The first is that the centers of excellence - whether outsourced or not - need to understand the business and be accountable for results. If not, then as business partners, we need to find a way to fix this, or find another resource. If I cannot rely on an outsourced recruitment firm to bring me successful candidates, then I need to find a new firm.
Secondly, in order for the model to work, we need to educate and train our upcoming HR leaders that it's not about "HR." It's about the businesss. If an HR partner cannot understand the business and speak to revenues, margins, brand architecture, etc. then he/she cannot possibly be a partner to the business. Unfortunately I have seen too many HR folks fail, as they are more concerned with the process and forms than the business. That is not to say that we don't need process and those darn forms, but our focus needs to be on the business. For example, finance folks must go through extensive process and spreadsheets to build a budget in concert with the business leaders. However, the finance person is not focused on the PROCESS to build a budget, they focus on how the budget helps guide business results.
Once we are able to build successful centers of excellence, and understand the business, HR partners truly need to show their leaders how HR adds value to the organization. Of course this requires technology. I need to be able to show the direct and indirect cost of turnover. Or, that the economic indicators that tell me we may be facing a labor shortage in web development talent. Then I need to demonstrate how I will solve the issue, e.g., I may need to find the resource to build a great web developer training and development program.
In summary, HR cannot and should not be the policing function of an organization, but a resource leaders can use to identify and solve problems.