What Does It Mean To Be A HR Business Partner Today?

What does it mean to be an HR Business Partner (HRBP)? The most impactful element of the HRBP role is being a strategic partner to the business, helping to translate organisational strategy into HR strategy. When organisations enable HR Business Partners to embrace this role, they see clear business benefits, according to research by Gartner: Organisations that build high-performing HRBPs improve employee performance by up to 22%, employee retention by up to 24%, revenue by up to 7%, and profit by up to 9%.

As highlighted by Diane Gherson, former CHRO at IBM, new work models, business requirements, and new employee expectations require a new HR approach. A new approach, which, as David Green, Managing Partner at Insight222, explains, is about becoming real strategic partners for today and the future.

In this blog, we’re going to look at what it means to be an HRBP today, and the HRBP role for 2022 and beyond. We’ll answer the following questions:

• What is an HR Business Partner?

• How is the HRBP role changing?

• What is the purpose of an HR Business Partner today?

• What skills do HRBPs need to develop for the future of work?

What is an HR Business Partner?

According to CIPD, "HR business partners (HRBPs) work closely with business leaders and line managers to diagnose people priorities, create people plans, and help implement organisation-wide people approaches. They have an excellent knowledge of the business, a good understanding of all the areas in the people profession, and often act as the point of people expertise for a specific business area."

Essentially, HR Business Partners today are HR professionals who work closely with an organisation's senior leaders in order to develop an HR strategy that closely supports the overall aims of the organisation.

Traditional definitions of HR Business Partners are often focused on transactional elements of the role, for example providing solutions to employee challenges and responding to acute people-related emergencies. Since the concept of HRBP was developed in the 1990s, the emphasis on the HRBP role has become increasingly strategic – not just tactical. HR Business Partners are expected to be a strategic advisor to the business, solving senior business leader issues and all through a data-driven lens leveraging workforce data and people analytics.

As the term "business partnering" suggests, HRBPs work closely with an organisation's senior leaders to develop an HR strategy that closely supports the overall aims of the organisation. Through this collaboration, HRBPs bridge business leaders and the wider HR function, providing expert advice and guidance on people-related matters.