A critical look into today’s business landscape will show how it is being shaped by technological innovations and intense competition. Organizations, in a bid to outperform themselves, are now familiar with the importance of effective people management as a way of achieving improved economic performance. They thus seek employees with skills that align with their goals as well as professionals that can help manage their human resources effectively. However, the challenge has always been continuously creating value in work and building an organizational culture that supports career growth. Lets discuss how hr business partner leads to leadership development.
These inadequacies could be attributed to the lack of human resources that can work directly with organizations’ senior leadership – that is, HR Business Partners – rather than as a part of the HR department. The role of HRBPs in HR management extends beyond recruiting talents.
A good HRBP ensures that HR strategy aligns with the overall business strategy of the organization. Even human resource management in Malaysia has taken a new turn, with different graduate programs that are critical to manpower optimization in place.
Skills For A Successful HR Business Partner
Being recognized as a strategic business partner requires that such a human resources professional possesses a certain set of skills and knowledge. This includes problem-solving abilities, business knowledge, knowledge of departments within the organization, and being solution-oriented. All of these attributes help to develop good business leaders for future responsibilities. These attributes include:
Business Knowledge
HRBPs are expected to demonstrate practical knowledge in the financial, operating, and strategic aspects of the business. With this, they would be regarded as industry experts. This skill is complemented with a sales mindset.
By this, HRBPs should be able to sell their ideas to the leadership of an organization which include senior or C-level executives and other stakeholders. They also need to portray their organization in the most attractive way to candidates, based on their talent growth and management role.
Solution-Oriented
HR Business partners are expected to offer solutions to organizational problems that revolve around human resources. They should be able to suggest ideas and carry out good business strategies that translate into extra value and increased productivity.
For instance, in the case of an organization that seeks to increase profitability, an HRBP may suggest programs that can help to increase employee motivation and work engagement. An idea such as staff performance appraisal will undoubtedly boost profitability.
Project Management
HRBPs often have to conceive and implement initiatives that can help organizations achieve their goals. The implication of this is the possession of project management skills which involve team and time management, critical thinking, and ability to be at the forefront of projects. In communicating the ideas, HRBPs should be able to persuade and negotiate with the senior leadership team as well as get key players involved to achieve unity of purpose and cohesiveness.
Organization
To become successful as a HR business partner as well as achieve success on proposed initiatives, the HR professional must be organized in such a way that they are able to schedule activities in a timely manner and execute the steps stated in their plan to achieve company-wide goals. They will also have to coordinate individuals as well as teams required to take certain actions that will draw the organization closer to its goals.
Strategic Thinking
Strategic HRM is critical to helping HRBPs get their job done. For the fact that they also sit on organizations’ boards, this qualifies them to have huge contributions in the decision-making process of the organization. They are expected to conceive ideas that place premium importance on people development and how to utilize human resources to achieve organizational success.
An instance of such an idea would be pushing for the introduction of a program that will help to retain employees by improving their overall experience. They must have had knowledge of relevant data on different HR analytics, such as level of employee engagement and satisfaction.
Leadership Development Practices
By weaving the stated skills into their career, HRBPs can successfully work with executive leaderships to help organizations outperform their peers, especially in terms of improved productivity and profitability. Research indicates that organizations that follow leadership development practices perform better than their competitors. Tapping into this huge potential, therefore, requires an organization to define the contributions expected from the leaders as well as the organizational culture directed towards leaders’ motivation.
Another practice is to have an effective employee performance management system. Employee performance is often measured against the company’s business strategy. Some of the activities involved in the process include talent management and development activities such as in-service training and reward systems which include promotions and recognition programs. Basically, rewards are offered based on individual performances.
Organizations with long-term goals will often have a comprehensive plan for their workforce. They identify potential leaders (otherwise known as high potentials) and start preparing them for greater roles and responsibilities. This is after organizations must have performed some assessment of their skills and capabilities as well as future skill needs.
To improve their talent hunt process, organizations look towards recruiting and training new employees for a long-term basis. They study and analyze future workforce demand and supply patterns to hire potential leaders that will be able to replace the old generation of leaders. This is another aspect where HRBPs come to help.
Conclusion
In summery, leadership involves the possession of natural abilities and, most importantly, certain organizational skills which could only be acquired through training. So, as already stated, succeeding in the current business landscape requires skills that perfectly match the challenges of growing an organization in the 21st century. Leaders are thus expected to possess the skill sets and prepare current employees for the future. These roles are better achieved with collaboration between HRBPs and organizations’ senior management team.
To develop yourself into an HR business partner, we provide a number of graduate programs in Human Resource Management. The graduate program focuses on the evolution of the HR field as well as how its knowledge can be adapted to organization strategy
