Critical role of HR business partnering in HR operating models
How can HR balance line managers’ need for operational people management support while growing its strategic influence through the HRBP role?

How can HR balance line managers’ need for operational people management support while growing its strategic influence through the HRBP role?
The HR business partner (HRBP) acts as the link between HR and people managers to integrate business strategy and human resource management practices. As a key feature of modern HR operating models, refining this role is a central focus, particularly when people teams want to grow their strategic impact.
In this final article in our HR operating models series we look at the factors that shape the role of an HRBP and discuss ways to overcome the common challenges.
Besides organisational culture, other factors that determine the role of an HRBP include the following (CIPD members can download KopertyĆska and Dernowska’s peer reviewed article by accessing EBSCO through our journals page):
Bearing these factors in mind, creating HRBP roles with intent to enhance the people team’s strategic partnering with business leaders may not always be appropriate; a people team needs to be operationally efficient before it can grow its strategic influence across the business. The CIPD’s business partnering factsheet has tips on how to grow your people team’s strategic influence.
Some organisations that we spoke to undertook extensive research to determine what their HRBPs should do and how the role should evolve within their organisation’s context. They benchmarked their peers, reviewed existing literature, and conducted one-to-ones and focus groups with leaders to understand what’s needed now and in the future from the people teams in different parts of the business. They used these insights to assess skill gaps and development plans for their HRBPs.
So how can people teams balance line managers’ need for operational people management support while growing their strategic influence through the HRBP role? In the following, we unpick the challenges and explore solutions for people teams.
HRBPs are often being pulled into operational work, leaving little capacity for strategic HR. In some cases, HRBPs involve themselves in operational work to gain credibility, trust or develop a relationship with a particular stakeholder. Additionally, HRBPs with an employee relations background tend to fall back into their comfort zone, doing disciplinary and grievance casework.
Possible solutions:
In some organisations, leaders struggle to recruit HRBPs with strong strategic business partnering skills or have inherited a team that lacked this skill.
Possible solutions:
Despite the HRBP role being a key component of current HR operating models and strategic HRM, it continues to be fraught with tensions and complexities. Our research found that aligning people objectives and operational priorities proved challenging for many HRBPs.
Common conflicts and tensions included:
Possible solutions:
The HR operating model series builds on the CIPD’s body of work to understand how modern people functions are transforming to be fit for purpose and deliver value to its stakeholders. We hope that the case studies in the series provide useful examples of how transformations, both large and small, can make a difference to the effectiveness of the people function. We also outline other key enablers that organisations cited as being critical to support and embed these transformations, as well as the critical role of business partnering.
This research isn’t limited to large people teams in multinational companies with huge budgets to transform their function. Smaller people teams can also review their operating models to ensure that the function is set up to serve the business and stakeholders. This may require tweaks to the current model, rather than a huge overhaul. Periodic review is needed to remain future fit, with flexibility to allow people teams to respond to external trends and business needs in an agile way.
If you’re reviewing your HR operating model, please get in touch with the CIPD at research@cipd.co.uk for further research opportunities.
Acknowledgements and key contributors: Martin McCracken, Hayfa Mohdzaini, Becky Russell, Louise Wilson.
Case study organisations: Firstsource, Homebase, Peabody, Tesco and NatWest Group.
A series of thought leadership, case studies and podcast on current practices, future models and successful transformations
Rebecca joined the Research team in 2019, specialising in the area of health and wellbeing at work as both a practitioner and a researcher. Before joining the CIPD Rebecca worked part-time at Kingston University in the Business School research department, where she worked on several research-driven projects. Additionally, Rebecca worked part-time at a health and wellbeing consultancy where she facilitated various wellbeing workshops, both externally and in-house.
Rebecca has a master’s degree in Occupational Psychology from Kingston University, where she conducted research on Prison Officers’ resilience and coping strategies. The output of this research consisted of a behavioural framework which highlighted positive and negative strategies that Prison Officers used in their daily working life.
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