How to become Strategic HR Partner and help your organization to grow

“It is about a balance between mind and heart”

Even before current uncertain times due to this pandemic, Human Resource function has grown or required to be more strategic and playing many different roles in the company. As function, HR has moved from only administration and payroll to do more strategic things like talent and performance management, change agent or cultural transformation while still expected to do basic HR services (like recruitment or training) and manage employee relations. The new HR professional is expected to have not only HR knowledge and skills but also good understanding of business and its implication to HR programs.

What the market needs from the profession as the companies face all sorts of people and organization challenges is a good HR Business Partner to their business leaders.

Normally they need HR to solve issues like:

• I don’t have enough talents for the future – so HRBP will help on talent management and succession planning
• My manager does not have leadership capability – so HRBP will probably do assessment and develop program to improve
• We don’t have the right culture…so HRBP can develop program to develop the right culture
• We need to do restructuring…so HRBP can do some study on organization design and lead change management project

So an HRBP is like an “all-rounder” generalist player who needs to have a good understanding of the different areas of HR. Note he does not have to be an expert of everything but they should know how to source for help and support if needed to solve the issues. It is about adding value to the business beyond the administration tasks and answer questions on:

• How HR can help companies to implement their Strategy 
• How to use Business Acumen in our HR work
• How to lead Cultural Transformation
• How to do Organization Development and Managing Change
• How to drive Capability Building (Grow People to grow Business)
• How to be Engaging as HRBP

To be a good HRBP, of course you should have some basic HR competencies but most of the things in the above list are best learned through experience or exposure to some of best practices from other companies.  A lot of them are hard business skills where you use data, analytics, logic which you can learn. However, it also requires good feeling and awareness on the “how” part. You need to be sensitive about what will work for your people and your company. Not all best practices can be adopted as it is in so you definitely need to understand your own context and needs, adopt and adjust as necessary.  

In summary it is a combination between using your mind or logic to find the right solution but also using your heart and feeling when you apply the solution.

It is a balance between mind and heart.

If you are interested to develop your HRBP competencies, Cicom Brains Indonesia and MM UGM has developed a training program for HRBP, please contact us.