Mental Health

IS THE HRBP title thrown around with true meaning behind it eroded?

No one seems to quite remember the origin of HRBP as an HR role, but Dave Ulrich is known to have popularised it in the late 90’s.

An HRBP is a strategic adviser to the head of a business. S/he has a critical seat at the executive table and takes the lead on people matters, in particular on how the business can optimise the contribution of its people in the rolling out of strategies that deliver competitive advantage.

For an HRBP role, business acumen, strategic thinking and a keen understanding of the operation’s environment outweigh HR operations mastery. An HRBP doesn’t play in the transactional space but rather makes effective use of automation and self-service e-HR solutions. In large organisations, HRBP’s may also be supported by a centralised HR service which houses different HR specialists such as HR actuaries, psychometricians, L&D consultants and so on.

Depending on the business, a unit head may wish to have an HRBP with some specialisation that is critical for the particular operation.

To quote Matthew Mayol, a recruitment specialist, “HRBP was, in many ways, a revolutionary concept: the human resources professional who didn’t engage with procedures but with strategy; who delivered real value to the business, helping it both define and achieve its business goals.”

The HRBP role of the future doesn’t veer too far off from the original concept. The problem with the HRBP title is that it has been used willy-nilly. It has either bastardised or watered down by assigning it to just about any HR official. This is evidenced, for instance, by a ridiculously-wide salary range and variants. On the lower side, Mayol recalls placing a candidate where the employer was looking for someone “who could become deeply involved in recruiting and performance management. But they also wanted that person to look after the monthly payroll.”

In another example, the search was for a candidate who would be placed in charge of their own portfolio, reporting into a Head of HR. It was that head of HR, not the candidate, who would be responsible for partnering with the most senior leaders in the operations group. Neither of these examples typifies the HRBP role.

Belia Nel, a Certified Performance Technologist from Improvid, agrees and defines the HR Business Partner of the Future.

A Future-fit HRBP role

The HR Business Partner should be future-ready to optimise business in a challenging and changing environment. In the next decade more than a third of current mainstream jobs won’t need a human to execute. As Alan Hosking writes, “big changes are coming; they’re unprecedented in terms of their scope, impact and magnitude”.

Researchers estimate that 70% to 80% of the current jobs will disappear in the next five to ten years or possibly even sooner. Jobs that are the most vulnerable are those of a repetitive or technical nature. The scarce skills of the future will be human skills. Human skills are those for which humans enjoy exclusive ability. In other words, skills that cannot be easily replicated by robotic or AI (artificial intelligence).

So, notwithstanding AI and automation, human intervention will continue as a critical skill to do “problem sensing”. In addition to business acumen and facilitating strategic alignment of functions in the organisation, problem sensing skill will assist managers and business partners to sense a potential problem or sense the situational complexity of a problem. In the future humans will almost never be used to solve problems because robots will; however, our ability to sense a problem, will remain important.

So the question is: is your role as an HRBP about to become extinct? And what are the implications? Are you providing more technical or transactional HR services to your organisation? Or are you adding business value by improving performance or “problem sensing” potential performance issues and deciding on the appropriate solution required – whether to be executed using human or technology?

In the past, HR focused on helping business cascading the

strategy and operationalising it at all levels. In the Future of Work (FOW), there is, and will continue to be a new focus on purpose and how you can get all levels and groups of employees to buy into this by being engaged.

This is not just trying to engage employees with radical, faddish engagement models. Future-thinking organisations are asking: • What is our purpose? • Who are the customers we want to attract? • What type of talent do we want to attract and how do we develop them?

While Dave Ulrich’s business partner model was launched to great acclaim in 1997 in the book, Human Resource Champions, in 2008, he highlighted some of lessons learnt since the publication of the definitive publication.

He asked and answered the important question: where did we go wrong? According to Ulrich, ‘we have a misguided purpose. The original aim of the Human Resource Champion model lost its meaning of integrating purposefully into the business. We are not creating enough value: the role of a partner to the business will remain critical because of the value creation’ through problem sensing and ‘assisting management to focus to on improving the performance of the organisation.’

Gearing HRBP for the Challenge

According to CEB Global, upgrading HRBP talent and removing barriers to performance, organisations can boost their effectiveness in the following categories by increasing: • Employee performance: 22% • Employee retention: 24% • Revenue growth: 7% • Profit growth: 9%

Ensuring you have the right skills-set is critical for future-proofing your role as a business-focused and competent partner. Developing the competencies as indicated in the diagram will lead to success and value creation for the organisation.

Ulrich further points out that “intellectual and process leadership should never be underestimated. And some people will never be business partners - it is what it is.”

He cautions against blaming technology but encourages HRBP’s to learn how to use it for data analytics and data management. The final point is to make a real shift from policies and transactional activities to value creation by improving performance. But, this may be too great a shift for some, as has been the case when HRBP titles are thrown around. Here are 10 ways in which you can innovate your role for the Future of Work. Today, 20 years later you can innovate your role without actually changing what you do: • Ensure your HR competence is balanced with your knowledge of the business as well as the human side. • Know and learn the business well enough to call yourself a business partner. Gain/regain credibility by understanding the purpose of the organisation because only focusing on strategy implementation is not good enough.

• Don’t only focus on transactional or administrative work. Soon this will be digitised for electronic processing. And don’t only focus on technical ability. The major focus of your role should be agility – your ability to sense the future and respond swiftly to your business’ needs. • Do focus on the human side of the business as it will emerge as a key source of competitive advantage for you. • Contribute to the strategic business decisions of the organisation, otherwise you are not adding value and can be replaced. • Become a specialist in the processes of human and organisational optimisation and you will become central to business success. • Don’t measure processes – measure results and sustain your organisation’s business performance by measuring the right things – not processes but impact. • Learn how to add value – truly. Identify your organisation’s pressure points. Learn how to ask the right questions. A good questioning technique will go a long way to contributing to your success. • Develop yourself continuously and change your HRBP role blueprint – this will set you apart from others. Read widely about the Future of Work and stay informed about developments in this space. • Don’t label just any role in HR as HRBP because in this case it is not.

In conclusion, develop your own blueprint for the HRBP role of the future. Remember this acronym, it will help to keep you at the top of your game: F – Focus on the future purpose. U – Understand the business. T – Commit to being data savvy. U – Undo your old ways. R – Be relevant. E – Evolve your thinking and knowledge. Aim to achieve a changing view of the HRBP role as resultsdriven and value-add partner in your organisation in the Future of Work age.