The HRBP's Search for Meaning

Note: As this post centers around the HR Business Partner, it would be useful to take a closer look at this strange animal, particularly for those, who have not been initiated into the slippery terrain of HR. CIPD defines HR business partnering as a process whereby HR professionals work closely with business leaders and/or line managers to achieve shared organisational objectives, in particular designing and implementing HR systems and processes that support strategic business aimsand proceeds to caution us: However, it is important to note that many varying definitions of HR business partnering exist and, where HR business partners operate, there are wide variations in their role. 

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A recent conversation, I overheard:

“So my HR Business Partner comes to me and says, “Why is your appraisal not complete” and I go, “Um, because it is pending with my manager…” And she has the audacity to ask me, “Why have you not followed up with him ?” I decided to give her a piece of my mind and inquired, “If I have to do that too, then what, pray tell me, is your job ?”

A conversation, such as this is likely to provoke an animated debate between HR and Non HR professionals, and will probably involve the expressions,  ‘lazy’, ‘clueless’, ‘arrogant’ and ‘unbelievable’ being ascribed by each party to the other.

Everyone laments about HR, HR laments about HR and HR laments about everyone. The root cause of this pervasive evil is contained in that statement, “What, pray tell me, is your job ?”

This lack of clarity in the ‘expected outcomes’ from HR, stems from three dangerous ideas or myths, which get entrenched in every HR professional’s mind right from the management trainee days:

Myth #1 The key to effectiveness is activity

Every fresh graduate in HR has to face the onslaught of words, such as “active”, “proactive” “initiative”, “enthusiasm” etc,. These bright and upbeat terms usually contain an implicit message “greater activity = greater effectiveness.” The more queries you handle, the more training programs and engagement activities you conduct, the more productive you are.

When was the last time, an HR manager got a pat on the back for having reduced the number of training programs necessary, or for the fact that there was no need for any ‘engagement activities’ in her / his team ?

And why do employees (as in my example above) think, follow ups on their appraisal completion are the job of the HRBP ? I suspect, this is in large part, because of the HRBP’s misguided zeal to ‘add value’ and be ‘responsive’ (more follow ups = more activity = more effectiveness).

True HR Business Partnering will consist in changing this mindset, and this mindset change will need to begin at home. The guiding principle for business partnering needs to be, “HR helps those, who help themselves.” Many HRBPs will, at this point, raise a pertinent question, “Why are we really needed, then ?”, which brings us to the second dangerous idea below.

 Myth #2 The key to success is indispensability.

There is a term in German called ‘Geltungsdrang’, which roughly translates as “the urge to matter”, which pithily expresses every HR (or any management) professional’s gut wrenching struggle. Consciously or subconsciously, everyone likes to feel ‘needed’; so much so, that they sometimes forget to think about ‘what’ they want to be ‘needed’ for.

If you are constantly needed for support on “how to open this link” or “how to file that claim”, then you are a trouble shooting assistant and not a business partner.

True HR Business Partnering lies in making yourself as dispensable as possible. It will involve enabling managers to support themselves, by acting only as a ‘consultant’ or ‘expert’, where your input is necessary. What this means is, for instance, that they should come to you, not for “how to access the performance evaluation tool”, but for “is my understanding of this performance rating correct and have I applied it consistently ?” I would urge any budding HR Business Partner reading this post to pause and reflect on which of the two questions s/he encounters more frequently. If the former is more frequent, the hapless HRBP is often given feedback about the importance of ‘influencing’ and that is the third dangerous idea.

·         Myth #3 The key to business partnering is ‘influencing’

‘The ability to influence’ usually figures among the top three competencies required of any HR Business Partner. The relentless focus on the need to ‘influence’ the business heads is symptomatic of a faint, subtle, perhaps unconscious notion within HR – that there are two distinct sorts of imperatives: ‘business imperatives’, which are the territory of the business head and ‘people imperatives’, which are the sole province of HR and that incompatibilities between the two necessitate all the much talked about ‘influencing’. Although HRBPs will be the first to wax eloquent on ‘alignment of people initiatives to the business’, they often overlook that categorizing them as ‘business initiatives’ and ‘people initiatives’ is not necessary, in the first place. Often (and here comes a somewhat controversial point), the need to influence contains a latent assumption among HR professionals, that HR managers are better at understanding ‘the softer, people aspects’ than non HR managers, which need not (and is often not) true.

True business partnering will require debunking this dichotomy of ‘business’ and ‘people’ in the most genuine sense; seeing oneself as an essential part of the team, rather than as an external 'influencer'.

Engaging Thoughts.....

I am not a big fan of Why-I-Have-Set-Out-To-Write-This-Blog posts. I believe, that once you have decided that your thoughts are important enough to be inflicted upon the world, it it is quite superfluous to defend / justify your decision. The astute reader may have noticed that the title of this blog does contain an overture to its raison d'etre - it is important to do what makes one feel important.

So let me plunge headfirst into an issue that has been gnawing away at my thinking time for some time now  - and that is the imponderable problem of Employee Engagement.
I have often been asked, "What are the engagement activities conducted for employees in XYZ organization / site / function ?" On the first such occasion, being a novice to the Switch-On-Your-All Knowing-Important-Look-When-You-Have-No-Answer strategy, I probed further on what constituted 'engagement activities'. I was assailed with a colourful plethora of examples: Hobby clubs, Diwali celebrations, Yoga lessons.
Later, as I embraced the dynamic and strategic field of Human Resource Management, I noticed, that 'Employee Engagement' constituted a distinct responsibility area within HR (similar to Compensation & Benefits or Recruitment), and consisted of the colourful plethora of activities mentioned above along with more innovative alternatives. Moreover, an oft used indicator of effectiveness in this area was 'the number of engagement activities conducted' in a specific duration of time.
Of course, appended to any report on Employee Engagement, one would be sure to find impressive statistics shouting out to you about the incontestable link between employee engagement and the organization's performance (80% of the organizations, which implemented employee engagement activities registered a growth in revenues, while the corresponding figure was only 30% for those that did not etc. etc.)

What is my point here ? Firstly, let us take a minute to pause and think: Is employee engagement a cause or an effect ? Is it a process or a result ?
It is clearly an effect, a result or an end. Engagement, thus, need not be treated as a distinct process; it is the reflection of the effectiveness of all of your other people processes - recruitment, development, talent, performance and rewards management. People in an organization can be said to be 'engaged', when the organizational policies, processes, culture and strategy motivate them to contribute, and not when they get to attend 4 team dinners in 3 weeks.

I am not at all against organizing Hobby clubs or Diwali celebrations or Yoga classes, however, it pains me that such activities get grouped under the banner of 'Employee Engagement', which then becomes a 'process' in its own right and worse still, gets comfortably tucked under the amorphous blanket of 'HR'. They are, by all means, good and useful activities to have, but 'quantifying' employee engagement based on these activities (also typically substantiated by five-point-feedback-forms) is not only ridiculous, but threatens to divert the focus of employee engagement, from being a desirable 'end' to being an entertaining 'activity'. It is redolent of a tendency to look for quick fixes and jump to solutions before understanding problems (Hey, look, this team has a low engagement score, let's plan a picnic for them!), which is an emblem of all that is wrong with HR management today.
It is important to understand Employee Engagement for what is really is - an indicator, that people see a reason to perform and persist. Employee engagement is the accountability of everyone; we don't need an 'engagement specialist' for it.