The Business HR Model
Throughout time there have been many HR Practitioners, consultants and management professors that have gotten together to deliver real business value to their organisations by building upon research and experiences. However, despite all the knowledge gained and shared, many organisations continue to struggle to practically realise what is commonly identified as Business HR.
There is tons of research that suggests that if HR operates with Business Impact, you achieve excellence in business. Organisations that implement the Business Impact model are far more likely to adapt to market changes, introduce new products or services, operate efficiently, and win over their competition.
To achieve Business impact HR and to make HR a strategic function, one must shift to a new level of maturity. Traditional models that focus on service delivery efficiency and cost reduction are important. But now we must move from “rational” to “optimal”.
Such models make HR a partnering function and stay parallel and close to the business. Instead of being operators, HR now becomes a consulting team or an advising team. The skills move up as well by way of capability, capacity and maturity.
The Business HR Model forms the architecture for the synchronisation of HR and business functions to drive levels of expertise. It also heightens HR’s role to further strategic talent and business outcomes.
Since around 2000, HR functions have moved from being an operations function to a services function. Employees have forced HR to think, the way businesses would think of customers. While we should not stop being a service function, most organizations continue to struggle to build an HR function that can move away from transactional BAU tasks and focus on strategic alignment with the business.
Shared services and outsourcing this has failed too due to costs and people heavy dependency. It probably makes sense for HR to move to a technology-dependent function, where software products that aid this becomes more and more critical. Apart from everything else, strategic alignment today does mean that technology is necessary. Tools that align OKRs to the business vision are now a must-have. This is only one such example.
Other examples of tech enablement in HR would be to enhance self-learning tools and daily engagement tools, which are the closest things to bringing people together and having two-way communication for vision alignment and employee services in real-time.
If the points above are built correctly as a thought-to-execution exercise, it could make HR an agile and contributing function to organisational growth.
Technology in HR has to move from Transaction excellence to Intelligence through automation.
HR today still invests in transactional automation solutions, as either the HR teams don’t know how to leverage Business Intelligence Automation or they don’t understand Business HR. If Business promoters can think of ROI, why can’t we? Of course, we need transactional efficiency tools, but what about business growth? Isn’t HR responsible for it too?
With the above clearly established, HR needs and must morph into a strategic business partner. When we hire HR BPs, think ROI, think true partnership. Think Growth, and think Alignment with the CEO/Founder. Enable technology and hit the nail on the head.
The HR model is also moving to the current generation and just like employees in the current generation are changing every 5 years, so is the HR generation. If you are a service-oriented HR function, it is high time, you prioritise data-driven strategic alignment. A combination of both is what will get not only your employees grooving, it may even lead to your leaders dancing.
–Aditya Chakravarty, HR Leader
