HR Business Partner – fact, fiction and competencies

We know the world of ‘HR Business Partner’ is a confusing one. We know that words matter, that job clarity matters and that until we sort it out, HR will continue to baffle both ourselves and our internal customers.  But can you tell me what capabilities (competencies) a HR Partner actually needs to have?

Now I have my professional bias’s (and one of them is my passion for HR unfortunately), but they’re generally based on a career of having been in HR and having run HR teams. So when clients started asking if we had a competency framework for HR professionals in the Business Aligned structure (what used to be called HR Business Partner structure), we did the research and were surprised at how little original thought was out there. There was, of course, material from the ‘guru’ and a large US, member based organisation that peddles ‘best practice’ (like, this is so not a competitive advantage) but little else. Trouble is, even if you were prepared to pay for it, none of it felt useful to a practioner and certainly did not reflect the global nature of the HR profession.

The other issue we had was a personal one. We don’t believe in easy answers – as HR professionals we deal with people and people are never simple. However, we do believe in creating a common language and understanding – this was a great chance to provide that to HR and set the foundations for our own material and thoughts.

In the end we decided we had to create our own competency framework and provide a template that could act as a starting point for HR individuals and teams. Like everything else we do, we applied our own experiences and that of the many senior professionals that go through our workshops to make sure it was both sensible and practical.

And then we decided to make it available to anyone who wanted it. Until we have general concensus on these HR fundamental building blocks, we cannot move forward as a profession.

So are you interested? Take this link HR Competency Framework.