If your New Year’s goal is to transform your HR function into an HR business partnering one then don’t miss this fantastic ‘how to’ on how to get your seat at the table and keep it.
One of the main challenges that new and aspiring HR business partners face is gaining credibility and influencing at a senior level. We often hear that the role of HR is to ‘Partner’ the business and engage in strategic decisions, be accepted as part of the senior team and have real influence. Sounds easy! But how do you do that? How do you build that credibility and move from being seen as an ‘HR Specialist’ or ‘HR Manager’ who offers advice and solves people problems, to being seen as a credible business player?
Here are some top tips from our work with HR Business Partners in private and public sector organisations.
1. Be an expert: Build and demonstrate knowledge of the organisation and strategic processes. Have something meaningful to contribute in the strategic discussion. Much is made of the business knowledge required, which is of course key but you still need to be an expert in HR and people processes.
The expertise required is usually less about operational HR and more around strategic HR knowledge, in areas such as organisation design (for restructures), talent management and employee engagement. Being able to explain how these will add value, increase effectiveness or impact on the bottom line, will gain you kudos!
2. Understand the agenda: Become passionate about understanding the business agenda and senior management plans. Read the plans, identify the people implications, identify opportunities and challenge what you think has been missed. Understand the personal agenda of the senior managers. Become great at stakeholder analysis, what the stakeholders are for and against and what keeps them awake at night. The solutions you offer will really add value.
3. Talk the business language: To be part of the team you need to talk like the team. Read the sector press. Understand the financial side. Avoid ‘HR speak’ like the plague.
4. Take a wider view: One of the ways you can gain attention and influence is by giving new information or a new angle to a discussion. Talk to customers, talk to staff, look externally and work out how to add value. Recently an HR Business Partner used develop uk to broaden her network with other business partners in similar organisations and through these contacts has been able to provide networking opportunities for her senior managers. They are now reaping benefits that have nothing to do with HR but gave her a real credibility boost with the senior team.
5. Deliver: To build influence and credibility, there is nothing like a track record of meaningful achievements that have added value. Organisations often discuss with us how to ‘launch partnering’ and achieve the publicised benefits. After exploring the culture and the risks many decide on a low key ‘sell’ and that by delivering value and quick wins, the benefits will have much more meaning for the senior management team. Influence and credibility is more than talking a good game.
6. Be accountable: HR business partners can gain credibility by sharing the objectives of the senior management team. Stop being measured purely on HR inputs and measure yourselves against organisational outputs, such as customer satisfaction, sales and increases in efficiency.
7. Use negotiation skills to unblock the organisation and gain resources: Someone recently said that in their organisation HR used to be known as the ‘business prevention unit’. In too many organisations HR is a block to what managers need or want to do. An HR business partner can gain real credibility by unblocking restrictions (within reason), obtaining resource and getting things done. Our research tells us that benchmark business partners engage in a degree of ‘horse trading’ to achieve what they need to achieve. This is not about breaking rules or behaving unethically – it is about being pragmatic and not hiding behind unnecessary bureaucracy when it is within the power of HR to get things done.
8. Become more ‘salesy’: This might be an uncomfortable piece of advice for some HR professionals, but successful business partners do promote their ideas and their function and look for commitment, in a way not unlike successful sales people. Sales is about understanding needs, developing a ‘need’ into a want, providing solutions by matching benefits and closing the deal.
9. Act with confidence: Maybe the easiest piece of advice to give but the hardest to do! Taking a deep breath and trying out new things – asking to be invited to the meeting, contracting with senior managers, putting forward a challenging viewpoint all pays dividends. Fellow HR business partners can be a great support mechanism to try out new things in advance. Act ‘as if’ you already have the experience and credibility you aspire to and before you know it you have become a credible and influential HR business partner.
10. Develop your skills, knowledge and experience: If you want to become more credible and influential, then invest in your own development – learn about strategy, influencing, consultancy, the organisation’s politics. If you don’t already have commercial or line experience then look for secondment or project opportunities to gain it.
Although this is a fairly long list, the road to becoming a credible and influential HR business partner is an incredibly rewarding one. Our experience tells us that the more credibility and influence the HR partner has, the more enjoyable the role.
Judith Strange and Shirley Dalziel are directors of develop uk, specialists in HR Business Partnering (www.develop.uk.com).
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