HR practitioners as business partners share responsibility with their line management colleagues for the success of the enterprise and get involved with them in running the business. They must have the capacity to identify business opportunities, to see the broad picture and to understand how their HR role can help to achieve the company’s business objectives.
As defined by Tyson (1985), HR professionals integrate their activities closely with management and ensure that they serve a long-term strategic purpose. This is one of the key roles assigned to HR by Ulrich (1998), who stated that HR should become a partner with senior and line managers in strategy execution and that ‘HR executives should impel and guide serious discussion of how the company should be organized to carry out its strategy’. He suggested that HR should join forces with operating managers in systematically assessing the importance of any new initiatives they propose by asking: ‘Which ones are really aligned with strategy implementation? Which ones should receive immediate attention and which can wait? Which ones, in short, are truly linked to business results?’ But there is a danger of over-emphasizing the glamorous albeit necessary role of business or strategic partner at the expense of the service delivery aspect of the HR specialist’s role. As an HR specialist commented to Caldwell (2004): ‘My credibility depends on running an extremely efficient and cost-effective administrative machine… If I don’t get that right, and consistently, then you can forget about any big ideas.’ Another person interviewed during Caldwell’s research referred to personnel people as ‘reactive pragmatists’, a view that is in accord with reality in many organizations.
The Strategist Role
As strategists, HR professionals address major long-term organizational issues concerning the management and development of people and the employment relationship. They are guided by the business plans of the organization but they also contribute to the formulation of those business plans. This is achieved by ensuring that top managers focus on the human resource implications of the plans. HR strategists persuade top managers that they must develop business strategies that make the best use of the core competences of the organization’s human resources. They emphasize, in the words of Hendry and Pettigrew (1986), that people are a strategic resource for the achievement of competitive advantage.
As defined by Tyson (1985), HR professionals integrate their activities closely with management and ensure that they serve a long-term strategic purpose. This is one of the key roles assigned to HR by Ulrich (1998), who stated that HR should become a partner with senior and line managers in strategy execution and that ‘HR executives should impel and guide serious discussion of how the company should be organized to carry out its strategy’. He suggested that HR should join forces with operating managers in systematically assessing the importance of any new initiatives they propose by asking: ‘Which ones are really aligned with strategy implementation? Which ones should receive immediate attention and which can wait? Which ones, in short, are truly linked to business results?’ But there is a danger of over-emphasizing the glamorous albeit necessary role of business or strategic partner at the expense of the service delivery aspect of the HR specialist’s role. As an HR specialist commented to Caldwell (2004): ‘My credibility depends on running an extremely efficient and cost-effective administrative machine… If I don’t get that right, and consistently, then you can forget about any big ideas.’ Another person interviewed during Caldwell’s research referred to personnel people as ‘reactive pragmatists’, a view that is in accord with reality in many organizations.
The Strategist Role
As strategists, HR professionals address major long-term organizational issues concerning the management and development of people and the employment relationship. They are guided by the business plans of the organization but they also contribute to the formulation of those business plans. This is achieved by ensuring that top managers focus on the human resource implications of the plans. HR strategists persuade top managers that they must develop business strategies that make the best use of the core competences of the organization’s human resources. They emphasize, in the words of Hendry and Pettigrew (1986), that people are a strategic resource for the achievement of competitive advantage.
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