HR Business Partner – fact, fiction and partnership

 

When we started to run HR Business Partner courses (we called them that in the old days), we looked around for the best of the best.  Then we looked around for the merely good.  Then we decided to create our own.

While the available material was truly inspirational, it lacked any sort of practical application.  Over time, we also realised that it was lacking any commentary about one significant part of the role – that of ‘partnership’. 

Think about it.  Stuff on relationship management and internal consulting but actually very little on what it means to be a ‘partner’. 

We like being practical, that’s one of the things that makes CourageousHR different. But sometimes we have to be visionary to create clarity and we think ‘partnership’ fulfils this role.

If you look at wider management and organisational research you’ll notice that there’s a well established academic field called New Forms of Organisation (NFO).  Essentially, this approach recognises that the dominance of hierarchy and bureaucracy in organisations is reducing and being replaced with more flexible, less formal, more output driven structures.  This movement is underpinned by technology and reflects broader social-economic trends e.g. globalisation, the emergence of Gen X and Y, contingent workforces, social networking to name a few. 

In other words, it seems like the world is heading towards a more partnership based approach to working.   

Now of course organisations, especially the big ones, are mainly run by the Baby Boomers and this approach is a radical departure from their career to date.  But HR is already showing the way in how it encourages treatment of its employees e.g. flexible working, alternative approaches to employment, output assessed performance. 

For CourageousHR, HR has an opportunity to truly demonstrate the principles of working in partnership and act as role models in showing organisations how it can work in practice.  Initially, it’s a great opportunity for organisations to gain a competitive advantage, but eventually they’ll just need to do it to keep up.

Are you up for the challenge?

Want to know more?  Take this link HR in Partnership.