How the HR business partner can take on a strategic role

For more than 30 years, the HR business partner, or all-in-one HR generalist, has been a key part of many large companies’ overall business strategies. But over those three decades, the role has evolved — and not necessarily in a good way.

HRBPs have often gotten bogged down with the nitty gritty of HR instead of being part of a business’ strategic team and helping a company create a plan when it comes to their people, according to a new study from The Josh Bersin Co.

At forward-thinking companies, that’s changing, the report said. Companies are asking new questions, like “How should we use [HRBPs]? What new capacities do we need?” said Kathi Enderes, senior vice president of research at the Josh Bersin Co. “Maybe we need to redesign their structure and how they interact with … the business.”

The evolving HRBP

The HRBP was first introduced in the 1990s as a generalist role and a “key connection point to the business for all the things HR does,” said Enderes.

It was an honorable intention, but over time, that intention has fallen by the wayside, with HRBPs “not being in these strategic conversations with management teams,” she said. If, for example, a company wanted to expand to a new area, HR was not brought in to advise on how they could do that from a people perspective at the start of those conversations. Instead, they would get “bogged down” in employee-employer relations and being the go-between for centers of excellence. Staffing a new location would come after a decision had already been made without their input. 

Modernization has forced HRBPs to evolve, pushed by the rise of digital technology, globalization and changing workforce expectations. Where the role was originally designed mostly as an HR consultant, the best HRBPs right now “really are a business consultant and sit with leadership teams to understand what the business is doing from a business perspective, and weigh in as a business leader,” Enderes said. 

HRBPs know what they can do, if they’re empowered to do it

In “The New HR Business Partner: Essential for Systemic HR,” the Josh Bersin Co. analyzed 55,000 comments from the Strategic Business Partner in the Josh Bersin Academy. The report showed that HRBPs know how important their role is, but often struggle to add value to the business in the most effective way. 

They found that only 11% of companies have a systemic HR function operating at the highest level of maturity, but the results at these companies speak for themselves. They are twice as likely to exceed financial targets, 12 times more likely to accomplish high levels of workforce productivity, and seven times more likely to adapt well to change, according to the report. 

One such successful company is The Lego Group. Instead of the senior HRBP leading a group of HRBPs, that person is a senior strategic advisor to the business with no direct reports, the report said.

At Lego, 70% to 80% of HRBPs are assigned to functional areas with 20% to 30% assigned to priority projects. HRBPs also focus on change management, coaching, developing senior leaders and supporting organizational design, and are aligned to a business unit with cross-functional projects instead of being managed in a traditional hierarchy by senior HRBPs aligned to one or seven business units.

How to change the HRBP role

Of course, not everyone is Lego, either in scope of business or how HR operates. The Josh Bersin Co. report also included a self-assessment of 7,100 HR professionals, and found that HRBPs currently excel at individually focused, lower-impact work rather than shaping the future of the company.

HRBPs “all know and understand how important their role is, but they struggle to add value to the business in the most important ways,” Enderes said. Many are “struggling to be this business consultant and to have the right relationship and right skills respected by the business.”  

A company can change this by changing the HRBP role, shifting these professionals away from transactional things like onboarding and employee communications to developing and coaching leaders, and change management.

“From the HRBP perspective, think about yourself as maybe working on a cross-functional project to understand different parts of the organization a little better,” Enderes said.

Companies like Lego also don’t just assign their HRBPs to one team and stop there “because it isolates them. They rotate them around” and have them work on projects that span different business functions, she added.