HR Business Partner – fact, fiction and consulting firms

We’ve thought long and hard about this blog and wondered if we should write it, but we have to be who we are and that is about being passionate for HR and HRs role in organisations.

So, while we’re not in the business of pointing out our competitor’s weaknesses (especially as there aren’t many of us out there), we feel we have to give our view on what we often see as a bunch of self serving hypocrites – HR Consulting firms (that includes CourageousHR by the way).

Unfortunately, we’ve come to this conclusion because there are few alternative views to those businesses which practice HR Consulting at the moment.  In most fields, the work of Consulting firms i.e. their research, models, processes etc is balanced by either a vigorous and independent academic field and / or enough competitors to generate debate.  This isn’t occurring in HR Consulting (although in other pseudo-academic fields like talent management it’s even worse!).

Consulting and professional services organisations (including CourageousHR) will not enhance HR unless we are clear about where we come from i.e. our biases, the source of our material and the link to our products and services.  We also, as a profession, need to encourage greater independent research that is evidence based and global in nature.

if there is one thing that drives us nuts (British term meaning to get angry), it’s when smart companies use academic research that is not only years out of date but it doesn’t relate to their clients’ needs.  It shows that they just don’t care enough about their clients, especially when the ‘academic’ research is not even that but simply one man’s vision of what HR should be doing.  I mean, I like Americans and especially American academics, they can also be great in front of an audience, but would you trust them as your HR boss?  Think about it.

The other thing that drives us nuts is when organisations are ‘sold’ HR Transformation projects that focus on ‘process mapping’, building ‘shared service teams’ or ‘outsourcing’ operations.  Real change only happens when people change their behaviour – that other stuff is only a means to creating the extra time and resources to enable this to happen.

So if and when you think about using a HR Consulting or Professional Services firm, ask them a couple of key questions; what are the underpinning theories and models for what you do; is it based on the latest research;  what experience have you got helping HR teams and individuals; will your recommendations help change behaviours?

Happy hunting. 

Do you want to ask CourageousHR those questions?  Come and talk to us – Contact Us.