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'.