A progressive HR organization

- I want to start by first explaining how the role of an HR business partner can vary. The size of the organization and the overall structure of HR can change things up a bit. In larger companies, let's say over 1,000 employees, the business partner role usually sits within its own organization within HR. These people were historically referred to as field HR or HR generalists. The model that is considered best in class includes three major groups or three legs of a stool, so to speak, each providing a specialized service to the organization: HR operations, centers of expertise, and business partners. The first leg of the stool is HR operations, also referred to as an HR service center or talent services. This group is responsible for maintaining the record keeping systems and executing the processes that support HR transactions such as job postings, promotions, leaves of absence, or manager changes. This group also typically serves as the frontline for questions like, "Where can I find our 401k plan information?" Or, "What's our policy around flexible work arrangements?" The next major group are the HR centers of expertise. This group is actually comprised of smaller groups of specialists usually within a very specific area of expertise. These people focus on the specific aspects of the employee experience, like reward, talent acquisition, talent management, learning and development, and the list goes on as the needs of the organization become increasingly specialized. And the third leg of the stool is, of course, HR business partners. This is the group we will focus on during this course. This group serves as the face of the human resources function in a company. These individuals also tend to be aligned with the specific departments in a company or geographic locations in order to best support their client groups. The HR operations and centers of expertise groups are absolutely critical to the success of the HR business partner. Much like a three-legged stool, if one of your legs breaks, the entire stool, or in this case the employee experience, will fail. For example, if your HR service center can't execute on basic tasks like new hire paperwork or job title changes, or your reward team can't ensure that people are enrolled in the right health plan, the ability for an HR business partner to establish a relationship built on trust and accountability will be severely compromised. In a company with less than 1,000 employees, these HR functions may not be as distinct and HR professionals may be responsible for multiple areas. And in an even smaller company with, let's say, less than 100 employees, you may be the only employee in the company responsible for the entire HR function. I want to challenge you to adapt your thinking, approach, and work style into this model to ensure that you are positioning human resources as a strategic partner to the business.