The Human Resources Business Partner Explained

Whether you work in human resources or aspire  to have a career in HR, you may be wondering: what is an HR business partner and what do they  do? Hi, I’m Erik from AIHR and in this video, you will get all these questions answered.  But before we start, please smash that like button and make sure to subscribe so you  don’t miss out on any valuable HR insights!

Imagine you’re working as the HR director  of a big enterprise and you receive a report that shows that engagement scores  in the supply chain department are at an all-time low. Employees aren’t motivated,  show up late, and quit at a higher rate. As a result, the department is spending time  and money on recruiting and training new staff, and, more importantly, is at risk of missing its  financial targets!

You need to know why this is happening, but who do you, as the HR director,  ask to diagnose and help solve the problem? You need someone who understands both the business and  the people side of the business, who has excellent communication skills, and who can coach managers.  In other words, you need an HR business partner!

So what is an HR Business Partner? An HR  business partner, also known as an HRBP, is a senior HR professional with a deep understanding  of how HR can make the business more successful. An HR business partner is usually responsible  for a few hundred to a few thousand employees.

They share responsibility for these employees with  the employees' direct managers, also known as line managers. HR business partners work together with  line managers to create a productive workforce. Good HRBPs are able to align HR  activities with the needs of the business.

This means that they understand which  HR activities should be implemented to reach business objectives. This helps them  provide value to internal business stakeholders, such as managers, employees, and shareholders,  as well as long-term value for the organization. For example, if the VP of production is  looking to open up a new factory abroad, the HR business partner needs to understand  how they can contribute.

They can, for example, analyze the availability of skilled workers in  the countries the VP is considering and analyze the level of competition from other organizations  in gaining a skilled workforce. This enables them to give the VP advice on which location is  preferable from a human capital standpoint. As you can see, the HR business partner is a  strategic professional who crafts and implements company-wide strategies to business  challenges.

They also measure and monitor existing policies and procedures,  and provide immediate fixes wherever needed. Before discussing the four essential competencies  an HR Business Partner needs, and what these have to do with flying an airplane, you need to know  about the three main responsibilities of HRBPs. The HR business partner has a wide variety  of tasks and responsibilities.

The exact tasks will depend on the organization and on how  strategic the business partner role is. However, in general, they have three roles: the strategic  partner, the credible coach, and the relations manager. Let’s dive into all three of them and  what they mean for you as an HR business partner.

As a strategic partner, you drive  business value and help prioritize business needs. For example, should HR invest  in a new performance management system, onboarding practices, or focus on retention  instead? What you prioritize depends on the business needs.

By having regular  meetings with your business leaders, you understand how you can best support their  deliverables and co-create business value. As a credible coach, you consult and coach  the line managers on their people issues. You have to choose when to coach the  managers and what to coach them on.

Here you can play a key role in building a  strong culture and better people practices through training the company’s leaders who  are most responsible for people’s success. As a relationship manager, you manage  the relationship between the employer and the employees, work councils, and  other employee representation groups. This means that you may be involved  in collective bargaining but also in time-sensitive issues like theft, fraud, health  and safety incidents, and workplace misconduct.

In large organizations, you will always have  a team behind you that can take care of the more administrative tasks. This means  that you can focus on the high-impact and strategic workforce challenges while  HR shared services and the specialized HR center of expertise can assist in solving  the more administrative, day-to-day challenges. Now that you know about the three main roles of  an HR Business Partner, let’s look at the four essential competencies that every HRBP needs. 

After that, we’ll dive into a typical day in the life of an HRBP. But before we do, if you’re  enjoying this video so far, you know what to do. I always like to compare the four essential HRBP  competencies to piloting an airplane.

When flying an airplane you need to know where you are headed  because this determines all the actions you take. As an HR business partner, this means that you  need to understand what the business is trying to achieve. Only then can you give good advice.

Being  a good navigator means having business acumen. Second, you need to be able  to rely on your visual cues. You need to be able to read your co-pilot  and have a feeling of how the people insíde the airplane are doing.

They are your  most important customers. This means that you understand people, culture, and are an excellent  communicator. We call this people advocacy.

You also have a big dashboard with your flight  instruments. These include an altitude meter, an airspeed indicator, a heading indicator,  and a turn indicator. These measures tell you how you are doing and when you need to intervene  when things go wrong.

These are like your HR dashboards which display KPIs like engagement,  employee turnover, and business data. As a business partner, you need data literacy  to read, interpret, and act on this data. Lastly, for the majority of the flight, the  airplane is on autopilot.

You need to understand this technology and know when you can rely on it,  but you also need to know when to disengage it. This is called digital integration. As  an HR business partner, you need to know when you can rely on technology  to streamline processes and make HR decisions, but also where you  need to step in yourself to solve problems.

With these four competencies, which are  business acumen, people advocacy, data literacy, and digital integration, you  will be an excellent HRBP and possess the foundations to become  an all-around, T-Shaped HR Professional. I’ve told you what an HRBP does  and what competencies they need, so let’s dive into what a typical day  in the life of an HR Business Partner actually looks like. To give you a better picture,  I interviewed a real-life HR business partner.

Phil works in a fast-moving consumer goods  company and I asked him to describe his workday! Phil manages about eight hundred employees in  the supply chain division of his organization. Here’s an example of a random  Tuesday as he describes it: “After making my way to the office, I  start the day by going through my email.

As a business partner, you need to stay up to  date on any time-sensitive issues. A couple of weeks ago an employee was fired for harassment  and this led to an internal investigation. This is a project I am monitoring closely as  it may affect the well-being of employees, the legitimacy of management, and the reputation  of the company.

Fortunately, it seems to be an isolated incident and I spend the rest of my  morning preparing for my afternoon meetings. “During lunch, I have a meeting with a  particularly busy operations and integration manager who joined the company a couple of  months ago. She explains that she is struggling to guarantee 99.

5% production uptime, which is  her KPI. Workers often change their schedule last-minute, leading to confusion, late arrivals,  and sometimes even missed shifts. All of this can lead to downtime and production errors.

I then  briefly coaches her on how she could provide effective feedback to late-arriving employees. I  also write down to talk to a few of these workers to see what the problem is, review the parameters  of the scheduling software, and check in on the recruitment pipeline, as each of these is key  to ensuring that the right people were at the right place at the right time. This is how I, as  a BP, can help the manager achieve their goals.

“Next up I have a workgroup on automation of  the supply chain. I am involved because supply chain automation will impact a big part of  the work population I’m responsible for. Great communication, as well as upskilling,  will be crucial to making this transformation a success.

Later that day I meet with the  purchasing manager and I meet virtually with the head of learning & development to update  him on the progress of the automation workgroup. The company is investing in automation as well  as upskilling of high-performing staff to ensure that they remain relevant and are able to stay  employed as the skills requirement evolves. HR plays a key role in this process by ensuring  great communication, guiding the transformation, helping people to upskill and reskill, as  well as managing internal relocations.

” Phil described a full and action-packed  day where, as an HR business partner, he worked on a number of urgent operational  activities. He dealt with a harassment case, coached a line manager on how to give feedback,  worked on tactical and strategic issues such as ensuring uptime, workplace automation,  and enabling an upcoming transformation. Do you think you’d like your workday to look  like Phil’s?

Let me know in the comments! Phil is a great example of a good HR business  partner. He is an HR professional with a lot of experience, who focuses on high-impact people  issues.

He knows how to strategically align HR activities to drive the business’ success. Phil  uses his airplane piloting skills, specifically his strong understanding of the business, people,  data, and technology to get the business closer to its goals. Now, I really want to make a joke  here but, unfortunately, HR did not approve.

That’s it for the HR business partner. If you  have any questions about the HR business partner, feel free to leave a comment below the video. If  you found this video helpful, don’t forget to give this video a thumbs up and make sure to subscribe  so you don’t miss out on any HR insights!

And, if I spark your curiosity, check out  the courses at the Academy to Innovate HR. The link is in the description. I hope you  have an absolutely brilliant day.

Bye-bye.