What is business partnering?
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TL;DR. Be France.
Business partnering is a big focus on these articles. Partnering doesn’t start and end with the position description ‘business partner’ but is much wider concept that really should be applicable to all aspects of HR, but the focus will vary, depending on how HR is structured, and what is the HR department’s ethos.
What is business partnering?
Business partnering is getting along with a business/business unit to align your thinking with theirs, so you can adjust your actions, decisions and recommendations to help them achieve their goals. It’s aligning your head to theirs, it’s internalising their priorities. If you’re driving home, worrying about what they are worrying about (that isn’t a people issue), you’re there.
It isn’t limited to HR, and often other support functions do this as well- finance, supply chain, engineering and procurement are also examples. It’s being an ally more than an auditor.
Their success is your success
At the heart of business partnering is the internalization of the business’ strategy into HR policy. Their success is your success, your measures of success should align to their objectives, and both your practices and priorities should be able to be demonstrated as beneficial to their objectives. For example, performance and absence management systems should be a priority, that aligns to maximizing labour uptime.
You need to be an ally, but an independent ally
To do this you need to be an ally, but not a minion. You need to be like France.
France, to its international allies- is on the same side, but independently minded and free to speak it’s mind. This is important, because while you are here to help, you’re also there to ensure that unacceptable risks aren’t taken, and shortcuts aren’t made for the sake of convenience. Often we are here to make sure it’s done right, not easily.
Can you be both ally and police?
Yes, but sometimes no. Arguably you have no long-term objectives that differ from the business unit you are supporting, but in the short term, you may have different objectives. For example, your objectives of building constructive relations the trade union may be contrary to the business unit’s preferred course of action on a specific project. Sometimes you will need to say no (or at least resist) their current strategies, if you believe it is not in their long-term interests. If this is not the case, perhaps a re-appraisal of your position is in order.
You’ll note that in the example I gave above of other departments who also help, Health and Safety and Quality were not included. There are department whose area of focus is a much more significant source of conflict with the business. For Quality, and Health and Safety, their role is to ensure harm does not come to customers or employees respectively. Their objectives cannot be balanced or compromised against business objectives, so their roles are also exclusively as internal police.
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