Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development

Business partnering A new direction for HR

a guide

Business partnering A new direction for HR

a CIPD guide

Written by Duncan Brown Raymond Caldwell Kevin White Helen Atkinson Tammy Tansley Peter Goodge Mike Emmott

Business partnering

Contents

Introduction By Duncan Brown Part 1 In search of strategic partners By Raymond Caldwell Part 2 Driving change through HR business partners By Kevin White Part 3 Are you passionate about HR, or are you passionate about the business? By Helen Atkinson and Tammy Tansley Part 4 Partnering journeys By Peter Goodge Part 5 Business partnering: a new direction for HR? By Mike Emmott References Page 40 Page 48 Page 34 Page 25 Page 14 Page 6 Page 3

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Introduction
Writing in the Harvard Business Review (January/February 1998), Dave Ulrich, Professor of Business at the University of Michigan, pointedly asked: 'Should we do away with HR?' This was somewhat ironic coming from someone who's been described as both a leading prophet and the potential saviour of the function. However, he went on to suggest that, rather than abolish HR, the answer was to create a new role and agenda that focuses not on traditional HR specialisms and activities but on the wider business and outcomes. The strategic HR movement had for years, of course, been beating the business impact drum, and the CIPD and other organisations had produced strong evidence for the links between people management practices and business success. But Ulrich and his colleagues genius lay in researching and identifying four key roles for HR functions to play, along with the requisite competencies and skills. HR should become: 1 2 3 4 a partner with senior and line managers in strategy execution an expert in the way work is organised and executed so as to increase efciency and reduce costs a champion for employees, representing their views and working to increase their contribution an agent of continuous transformation, shaping processes and culture to improve an organisations capacity for change. Ulrichs analysis clearly struck a strong chord with the HR community in the UK, and many have used his Human Resource Champions as a blueprint for reorganising and reorienting their function. One major UK-headquartered multinational is currently reorganising its HR function into technical centres of excellence, regional administrative centres and business-based business partner and change agent roles. The recruitment pages of our People Management magazine now contain regular references to the job of 'HR Business Partner'. The CIPD's HR Survey: Where we are, where were heading, with 1,200 respondents from UK- and Irelandbased organisations and published in October 2003, conrmed the inuence of the concept. We found that one in three senior HR practitioners see their current role predominantly as that of a strategic business partner, while more than one in four see themselves as change agents. More than half would like to become strategic partners in future. According to one respondent: 'HR is having to fully understand both the business agenda and HR practices, delivering effective solutions to maximise business performance.'

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The benets for the function, according to another, were that: 'HR is taking on new levels of importance as companies realise shareholder value is an empty goal and not what gets people out of bed in the morning.' Yet the survey also highlighted some of the challenges in attempting to achieve and deliver this aspirational role and position: Thirty-ve per cent believe the HR function in their organisation is currently too focused on operational issues, compared with 27 per cent who describe it as heavily strategic, though the direction of change is strongly in the latter direction. Almost half felt that their strategic input was constrained by the time they were having to devote to administrative activities, with the direction of change gradually towards greater use of outside providers, particularly in administration, plus a modest increase in the use of internal shared services. Three in ve believe line managers have not accepted full responsibility for people management decisions and actions with respect to their staff.

Some of the questions raised by our survey include: Do all those who see themselves as, or would like to become, HR business partners have the same model in mind? People want to be more strategic, but what do they mean by being strategic? Have HR managers given up on the sometimes thankless task of working with reluctant line managers, preferring to concentrate on getting more inuence in the boardroom? What does HR partnering mean for the HR function as a whole? And what happens to other aspects of the traditional HR managers job? Does HR partnering mean a wholly new kind of HR function? Does HR partnering work? Does it produce added value for the organisation? What do HR partners actually do differently? Is this a new role and set of activities or just the latest name change? How does the different legislative framework in the UK and Ireland affect and possibly reorient and constrain the role envisaged by Ulrich? Has the change agent role dened by Ulrich been under-emphasised as a critical requirement to improve the success rates of the increasingly frequent reorganisations that are occurring?
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Ultimately how do you do and deliver business-impacting HR strategies and play the business partner role rather than, as Professor John Purcell puts it, simply creating 'illusions in the boardroom'?

Is there in fact a single model of the HR business partner? Ulrich offers a number of clues as to what being a business partner might mean in practice. Some key elements emerge clearly enough. For example, the HR business partner needs to: focus on outcomes not process measure results help to resolve business problems be able to hold their own in discussion with line managers ensure that HR strategy is aligned with business strategy.

Ulrich emphasises that the primary responsibility for transforming the role of HR must rest with senior management, which is also responsible for making strategy. He also says that HR should be a partner in strategy execution getting away from the popular concept that being strategic simply means inuencing the senior team and that being a business partner doesn't mean abandoning many of the traditional personnel and HR activities, which are critical in establishing the credibility of the function. But many questions and issues remain. In the end, the Ulrich model can only go so far in helping to clarify what an HR business partner should do and how to demonstrably add value to the organisation. Organisations need to try it for size and adapt it to their own circumstances. At the CIPD, we're committed to providing our members with information, tools and ideas to help them play a more value-adding and personally fullling role. This brings together the experiences of a number of organisations from both the public and private sectors that have adopted the HR business partner model, along with some more in-depth and rigorous academic analysis of the concept. We aim to help to address some of the outstanding questions and support organisations and their people management professionals who are playing, progressing and thinking of moving in a similar direction. You can let us know what you think of this guide, and your own personal issues and experiences, at [email protected] You can also refer to our website where you'll nd a wealth of other materials from our long-running research stream on people management and business performance. We are very grateful to all the organisations that were willing to have their experiences used as case studies and to the authors who gave their time to writing them up. We are also grateful to Raymond Caldwell for his further analysis of the 2003 HR survey, which helpfully claries the characteristics of respondents who see themselves as business partners. Duncan Brown Assistant Director General, CIPD

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Part 1 In search of strategic partners

Introduction
HR professionals are increasingly taking on the roles of 'strategic partners' in their ongoing search to integrate business strategy and people management practices. Recent CIPD (2003) survey data conrms that this ambition is widely espoused by HR practitioners. Of 1,188 practitioners surveyed, 56 per cent indicated that they aspired to become strategic partners, although only 33 per cent were currently performing this role. The most inuential formulation of the strategic partner role has been outlined by Ulrich (1997). HR professionals are exhorted to become strategic partners by executing business strategy, meeting customer needs and becoming overall champions of competitiveness in 'delivering value'. Unfortunately, Ulrichs model tends to be prescriptive and inspirational, rather than empirical and practical. The model presents a potentially unifying aspiration for the HR professional, but seriously underplays the multiplicity of HR roles and the diversity of practices in real organisations. In this respect, Ulrich leaves many questions unanswered (Caldwell 2003). What is the scope and nature of the strategic partner role? How can it be integrated with other HR roles? What are the current and perceived impediments to the greater uptake of this role? One way of partly addressing these questions is to re-examine the recent CIPD survey data, with a new and sharper focus on what distinguishes strategic partners from other HR roles. This review highlights six interesting areas of possible differentiation: strategic versus reactive role proles involvement and inuence in the business strategy process management perception of the HR function time allocations for HR activities key personal competencies performance evaluations of HR.

By examining each of these areas, we may be able to throw some light on what makes strategic partners different.

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Background
The CIPD carried out a major postal survey of HR practitioners in July and August 2003. Some 5,000 questionnaires were distributed and 1,188 completed forms were returned, making a response rate of 23 per cent. The scale of the survey and the sample size make it an excellent source of practitioner insights into the current challenges facing the HR function in the UK. The full report of the ndings has been published by the CIPD. One of the important questions in the survey asked practitioners to classify their current and desired HR roles using Ulrichs matrix of roles: strategic partner, change agent, employee champion and administrative expert. One-third of respondents, the largest subgroup, saw their current role as strategic partners while well over a half saw this role as the one they would most like to play in the future. In contrast, less than a quarter of respondents saw their current role as an administrative expert and only 4 per cent wanted to play this role in the future. Here the CIPD survey data is re-examined by splitting the sample into two broad subgroups: those who characterised their role as strategic partners (323) versus other HR roles (714). Respondents who chose more than one role have been excluded from the analysis (151) so as to allow a clearer focus on the distinguishing characteristics of the strategic partner role. In other words, we are interested in what it means in practice if someone perceives their role as a strategic business partner.

Who are strategic partners?

A third of strategic partners have a seat on the board, compared with less than a fth of other HR professionals. But strategic partners are just as likely to work for public as for private sector organisations. Nor do size, industry sector or whether the organisation is a multinational appear to really matter. This conrms that the strategic partner role is widely dispersed.

Role proles
Strategic partner roles are often associated with a more strategic and proactive agenda for the HR function and this is invariably presented as a counter-image to more reactive and administrative conceptions of old-style personnel management. The CIPD survey data partly helps illuminate these perceived differences. Respondents were asked to describe the current and future state of the HR function using two key measurement scales: how far is HR either strategic or operational and how far is it either proactive or reactive? Strategic partners are more than twice as likely as other HR practitioners to perceive the current HR function in their organisation as strategic (47 per cent versus 23 per cent). Correspondingly, only 15 per cent of strategic partners view the current HR function as operational, while 40 per cent of other HR professionals do (Figure 1).

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A similar picture emerges in examining proactivereactive perceptions of the HR function. Strategic partners are more than twice as likely as other HR professionals to view the current HR function as proactive, and correspondingly they are twice as likely not to view HR as reactive. By combining the strategicoperational and reactiveproactive scales one can plot an interesting picture of the strategic partner compared with other HR practitioners (Figure 1). Strategic partners occupy a signicant portion of the strategicproactive segment of the matrix, although they would, in principle, have to occupy much more if they were to fully embrace the strategic partner role. More disconcertingly, however, other HR professionals appear to be currently positioned almost exclusively in the reactiveoperational segment of the matrix. Fortunately, this picture shifts signicantly when other HR professionals outline where the HR function needs to be in the future. In a future state, the strategic partner and other HR roles assume almost identical strategicproactive mapping positions, although the latter have clearly a much longer journey to reach this goal. This once again reinforces the inspirational challenges of the strategic partner role. Figure 1: HR roles and perceptions of the organisation

Strategic HR

47% 23% 21%

Strategic business partners (395)

23%

40%

Reactive HR
47% 15%
Administrative experts (395)

Proactive HR

40%

Operational HR

Business strategy: HR involvement and inuence

The CIPD survey asked respondents to describe how much involvement and inuence they had at various
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stages in the development and implementation of business strategy. This is an important issue because involvement in the early stages of planning can make an important difference to how much inuence the HR function exercises.

Strategic partners are more involved at all stages of the business strategy process, from formulation to implementation (Table 1). Inuence follows a similar pattern. Unlike strategic partners, other HR professionals have relatively low involvement and inuence. What is most striking, however, is that other HR professionals are more than three times as likely to have low involvement at the outset or planning stages and three times as likely to have low inuence at these stages. This suggests that this is a crucial issue, given that involvement appears to follow inuence at all other stages. More research needs to be done to unravel this important relationship, because strategic partners appear to have more involvement in planning and are able to exercise inuence, even though only a third of them have a place on the board. This nding complements earlier research by Budhwar (2000), who found that threequarters of the HR departments surveyed were involved in business strategy at the outset of the consultation process, although only half of them had a seat on the board. Table 1: Business strategy: HR involvement and inuence Strategic partners (323) Involvement in strategy Outset of planning Development Discussion/agreement Implementation Inuence on strategy Outset of planning Development Discussion/agreement Implementation 43 50 60 64 9 4 3 2 21 29 34 46 31 19 13 8 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 High (%) 53 59 66 74 Low (%) 7 5 3 2 27 36 43 57 Other HR roles (714) High (%) Low (%) 29 17 10 7 0.01% 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 Signicance

CEO and management perceptions of HR

Surveys of CEO and general management perceptions of the role and value of HR often make disappointing reading for HR professionals (Guest et al 2004). While board-level executives and senior managers may be convinced of the value of effective people management, at least in principle, they are often unaware of the links between HR and performance. More disturbingly, they often remain unconvinced that there are clear guidelines, strategies or well-tested methods for translating HR practices into performance improvements (Guest and King 2004).

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Although one would no doubt expect HR professionals to present a better-informed and positive assessment of opinions about HR held by board-level executives or managers, what is interesting is that this assessment tends to differ between the different HR roles. Strategic partners are generally more optimistic about management perceptions of HR in their organisation. For example, they are much more likely to believe that the chief executive views HR as playing a key role in achieving business outcomes. In addition, they are twice as likely to believe that HR issues are fully taken into account in the business planning process (Table 2). This once again highlights the way in which 'involvement' and 'inuence' may be mutually reinforcing, especially if overall management perceptions of HR are positive. Table 2: Perceptions of the importance of the HR function (% saying strongly agree) Strategic partners (323) The executive board frequently discusses HR issues The CEO believes the HR function has a key role to play in achieving business outcomes HR issues are fully taken into account in the business planning process HR managers are comfortable discussing business issues 59 64 35 47 Other HR roles (714) 41 43 17 35 Signicance 0.01% 0.004 0.000 0.000 0.002

How do strategic partners use their time?

Despite the overall aspiration of most HR professionals to be strategic partners, the CIPD survey evidence indicated that this ambition is being frustrated. Practitioners appeared to 'spend nearly three times as much time on administration as on business strategy', and this was reinforced by the high percentage of time (70 per cent) spent on various implementation-related support activities for line managers (CIPD 2003, p12). What is interesting, however, is that this picture begins to take on a different signicance when strategic partners are contrasted with other HR professionals (Table 3). Strategic partners spend much more time on strategy and much less time on implementation or line support activities. In addition, while half of other HR professionals spend over half their time on HR administration, less than a third of strategic partners do. The lessons of this evidence for those aspiring to be strategic partners appear to be twofold:
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Less time on administration means more time on strategy. Developing and inuencing HR strategy is ultimately more important than hands-on implementationrelated activities.

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Table 3: Time Spent on HR Activities Strategic partners (%) Business strategy Implementing HR policy Developing HR strategy Providing specialist input Providing support to line HR administration 31 39 52 56 63 31 Other HR roles (%) 10 54 42 44 74 52 Signicance 0.01% 0.000 0.000 0.001 0.000 0.000 0.000

Strategic partner competencies

The CIPD (2003) survey asked HR practitioners about the most important competencies for establishing their personal effectiveness, and which of these represented the biggest challenge. Not unexpectedly, inuence and political skills were considered central by 61 per cent of the respondents. The three factors, however, that appear most important in distinguishing strategic partners from other HR professionals are: strategic thinking, business knowledge and leadership abilities (Table 4). This focus ts well with strategy-oriented models of the HR function, which emphasise knowledge of the business and the exercise of leadership skills (Ulrich 1997). Certainly, without knowledge of the business, the HR function may have limited scope to exercise leadership. Table 4: Perceptions of most important competencies/capabilities (%) Strategic partners (323) Strategic thinking Business knowledge Leadership abilities 51 40 40 Other HR roles (714) 43 30 31 Signicance 0.01% 0.012 0.001 0.004

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Performance matters
Measuring the impact of HR has always been controversial (Paauwe 2004). The root of the problem is not just a measurement issue, it also relates to the intrinsic difculties of linking HR administrative efciency with goals of strategic effectiveness. This is partly summed-up by the increasing emphasis on moving HR from 'what is done' to 'what is delivered'. There is growing evidence that this message is widely accepted by HR professionals (CIPD 2003). Strategic partners, however, are more likely to perceive themselves as working for organisations in which line managers' views, business outcomes and employee feedback are central to performance (Table 5). Similarly, while most HR professionals say they work for organisations in which the HR function is assessed, strategic partners appear less likely to work for organisations in which HR performance is not assessed. In this respect, strategic partner roles and the assessment of performance outcomes appear more closely aligned. Table 5: Assessment of the HR function Strategic partners (%) Line managers' views Business outcomes Employee surveys Costbenet analysis HR not assessed 77 76 59 32 5 Other HR roles (%) 67 52 47 24 15 Signicance 0.01% 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.006 0.000

Are strategic partners different?

The survey evidence broadly suggests that strategic partners are different in six main areas: Their current role prole for the HR function is perceived to be more strategicproactive, rather than operationalreactive.
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They believe they have more involvement and inuence in the business strategy process. They are generally more positive about CEO and management perceptions of the HR function. They spend more time on strategy and less time on implementation or HR administration. They place greater emphasis on the HR competencies of strategic thinking, business knowledge and leadership abilities.

They perceive themselves as working for organisations in which HR performance outcomes are measured.

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If these ndings suggest some distinguishing aspects of strategic partners relative to other HR professionals, they must also be treated with caution. The differences are matters of degree, rather than absolute contrasts. The strategic partner role is part of a multiple role set and so it overlaps with other HR roles (Ulrich 1997, p38). In addition, the survey evidence is based on self-perceptions, and perception mapping can be misleading (Wright et al 2001). The major dangers are that strategic partners may inate or overrate the effectiveness of the HR function, perhaps not deliberately, but as a form of pragmatic self-belief in the value of their role and the strategic mission of HRM. Nonetheless, the consistency of the survey ndings suggests that there may be some useful lessons here for other HR professionals who aspire to become strategic partners. If strategic partners currently occupy a more strategicproactive HR role, have more perceived involvement and inuence on business strategy and are generally more positive about CEO and management perceptions of HR and its performance, how can other HR professionals learn from this? As a whole the survey evidence suggests that if HR professionals want to become strategic partners, they need to spend less time on HR administration and implementation issues and more time on developing their strategic thinking, business knowledge and leadership abilities. Only in this way can they perhaps fully embrace the performance implications of the strategic partner role. While such a recipe may, in principle, make perfectly good sense, the real challenge is creating the contexts and practices through which the strategic partner role can be realised. This is no easy task as the HR function seeks to balance a panoply of often conicting priorities: enhanced professional expertise, greater administrative efciency, increasing cost savings and constant performance improvements. If, however, HR practitioners can discover the contexts and practices through which the strategic partner role thrives, they may be well on the way to translating a widely espoused professional aspiration into a reality. Raymond Caldwell Birkbeck College, University of London

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Part 2 Driving change through HR business partners

This part sets out why we introduced HR business partners into the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), outlines the wider context of modernisation for the DWP as a whole as well as for the HR function and assesses the effectiveness of the new arrangements and future developments. The views expressed are my own. I would like to thank not just those business partners and managers who helped with the survey but also all the staff working in HR within the DWP for their huge contribution to the Department's success.

The Department for Work and Pensions

The DWP came into being in 2001. It was formed from the Department for Social Security and the labour market policy elements of the Department for Education and Employment, including the Employment Service. The DWP brings together welfare policy functions and delivers welfare services for children, working-age adults, and pensioners. It was formed to engineer a fundamental reform in the modernisation of welfare policy and delivery and is at the forefront of modernising government. The DWP is a very large department with currently 130,000 staff (whole-time equivalents). We touch the lives of most citizens of this country. Each day, for example, we conduct 10 million transactions involving welfare support for our customers. We comprise more than a quarter of the home Civil Service. We spend about 120 billion a year and our annual administration costs are over 7 billion. The DWP is not just large but complex. We have Group and 'Department of State' functions and deliver our services through large executive agencies: Jobcentre Plus, The Pension Service, the Child Support Agency (CSA), and the Disability and Carers Service. The very great majority of our staff carry out administrative and junior executive functions. About 120,000 of them are personal adviser or front-line supervisor level (Executive Ofcer or below). Conversely, we face a huge management challenge in delivering consistent internal or external services, with 10,000 managers at Higher Executive Ofcer level or above. The DWP was formed to create change in welfare delivery but has a signicant programme of internal reform and modernisation covering HR, nance, IT and other support services. This article is about how we have been making change in the HR function, particularly through the introduction of HR business partners, and how successful that change has been.

Modernising HR
Right from the start, the senior HR team, including the HR directors of the main delivery 'businesses' (which is
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the term we use to describe the Department's agencies), was clear that we needed to bring about a fundamental transformation of the HR function. The DWP was a merger between different departments and the HR function itself was an amalgam of those different departments and functions.

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Looking at the people in the function, it was clear that we had a lot of talent to work with. The Civil Service as a whole, as well as the HR function in particular, attracts and retains a large number of talented, interested and very hard-working people. Our HR staff had a dedication to their job, a very strong sense of fairness and quality standards and, above all, a desire to do things better. We felt nevertheless that our HR function exemplied many of the areas for improvement we associate with an old-fashioned bureaucracy. To make the point through an element of caricature, it was a rule-based function with a primary focus on the development of effective and exemplar policies. HR was seen as a service provider, but all too often as a factor line-managers and businesses needed to adjust to or work around rather than as a partner. We had virtually no effective IT and had cumbersome systems with poor, slow or non-existent management information. We tended to be inward-looking. Best practice was doing what we did best rather than looking at how we might do better by learning from others. The culture of disengagement between HR and line management meant that we tended not to see HR from the line manager's point of view and the line manager tended to regard HR as our function rather than theirs. This conrmation of our traditional role was often comforting for HR and managers alike. We also knew that our current systems and operations were extremely inefcient. We estimated there were about 5,500 staff working on HR (including learning and development). A signicant number of them were not on HR's 'books' but were in management lines, often in dispersed units, providing administration and localised support. That meant, overall, we had one person working on HR for every 24 employees in the DWP. Given the overall programme of efciency in the DWP, and the investment in new resource management systems underway, that level of stafng was just unsustainable. Dispersed and localised teams also meant that standardisation of service and a coherent change focus was much more difcult to achieve. The HR leadership team therefore committed to doubling that ratio to 1:50 in the years to April 2006, with the knowledge that we would need to be looking for signicant further efciencies beyond that. It was clear that what we needed to drive forward the change was a new vision and a renewed change focus from the top. Investment in new information systems, targets for the modernisation of service delivery and efciency, and the stimulus of a signicant programme of external recruitment at HR director level and below were all vital ingredients for that.

Our vision
The top team formed a new vision for HR within the DWP. We formed a vision for a smaller, more expert and professional service with smart information systems supporting centralised shared services, the engagement

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of HR as a support to business operations and, alongside this, the full acceptance by line managers that their accountability for delivering results embraces the accountability for developing, managing and leading their people to achieve those results. Our HR modernisation programme had, therefore, a very broad and ambitious focus, encompassing: developing the expertise and professionalism of the HR function and delivering signicant stafng reductions introducing effective shared services based on a new integrated information system with an employee and line manager 'self-service' front end introducing a new technologically enabled blended learning environment simplifying the HR policy framework and enabling line managers to use it aligning HR with the businesses, helping and supporting line managers to deliver results through their people rather than doing it on their behalf. This represented a huge cultural change for people working in HR as well as for the DWP line managers. But there was a signicant appetite for this change. We all knew instinctively that we couldn't continue with the old ways and all of us in support functions could envisage the transformations and improvements in service delivery across the DWP as a whole and were keen to be part of that. To help focus that change, we consolidated the message for all HR staff:

Meeting the challenge: HR design criteria

HR is only there to support the delivery of services Line managers are the front line of HR HR services must support managers: Expert advice at the shoulder Policy frameworks to help line managers Minimising the bureaucracy We will maximise the role of intelligent IT HR work should only be done once We must meet both business and corporate needs
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We must be exemplars of the values

Source: Department for Work and Pensions

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The HR model - how HR will operate

We will not be: administrators taking sole ownership of HR issues surrogate managers only functionally focused inward looking. We will be: change agents business focused technical experts customer focused championing Values fair.
Source: Department for Work and Pensions

HR business partners
The introduction of HR business partners was a fundamental part of the new HR model. They were an integral part of the service delivery model, building alignment between the HR function and business goals and requirements and supporting and commissioning HR services to meet business needs. But they were also a key driver to help make the change by supporting line managers through the introduction of new HR systems, supporting the implementation of the new HR arrangements and improving the development of HR policies and systems through 'front-line' feedback. We saw them as agents for change as well as embodying the change themselves. The key to modernising the HR function, we believed, was establishing a positive and mutually reinforcing relationship between HR and line management through which HR would be seen as a part of business delivery, supporting business strategies. Line managers would increasingly take over accountability for the people dimension of their role, helped and supported by expert HR systems and advice. The comprehensive introduction of business partners across the DWP was designed to focus the energy of our change on the line managers/HR nexus which was always going to be either the engine for positive growth or a signicant inhibitor to the development of a modern HR function. Our expectations for our new business partners were, accordingly, high. We wanted them to: Demonstrate that HR was focused on business goals, both of a strategic as well as local and specic nature. Be an agent for change both in respect of changing HR functions but also in respect of the signicant change and modernisation programmes DWP businesses are going through at the same time.

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Be the gurehead for a more expert and professional HR function, adding value to business discussions. Improve HR service delivery, helping managers meet their goals. Help HR to implement its change programme and provide feedback to improve implementation strategies and policy developments for the future.

Coach and skill line managers helping them to deliver their own objectives and to understand how they can get the best from this new HR service.

Play an increasing role in the identication and delivery of skills training as we sought to refocus the energy of learning and development down the business line.

Help to make sure that we put people at the heart of our change agenda, for example, by leading on actions rising from our staff surveys and playing a key role in managing employee relations.

The simple way of presenting these expectations is to show how they map against the Ulrich HR capability model.

Future being part of the business team having value-added strategic input developing planning and resourcing strategies Processes achieving effective service commissioning and delivery implementing strategies for new HR policies giving feedback to service and policy development upskilling the HR function. Day to day being a change agent and role model upskilling line managers meeting the capability growth of the organisation. People putting people at the heart of the change championing DWP values having good communications having sound employee relations.

Resourcing and developing the function

We had a lot riding on the investment in business partners and wanted to get it right. We undertook detailed internal studies to identify the different levels and characteristics of HR business partner roles, with support from external advisers (PA Consulting to start, then Capgemini). We made clear from that start that HR in the
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DWP encompassed learning and development. HR business partners are accountable for learning and

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development strategies for their businesses as well as resourcing or other areas of employee policy. They are supported by staff with specic functional responsibilities but their remit covers the whole patch. We knew we had a signicant degree of 'home-grown' talent. But we also knew that much of that talent had been developed within the context of a historical service delivery model and that, however talented those individuals were, it was essential that we didn't simply re-badge existing HR roles as business partners. We drew up very clear job descriptions and competency proles and went to the external market as well as to our internal market to ll them. That was a departure from previous exercises and, unsurprisingly at a time of overall staff reductions, this was not a universally popular thing to do. But it was the right thing to do. We are a large and complex organisation and we have a large HR business partner structure. We identied 140 business partner roles at a senior level, as follows: 4 at Grade 6 eg lead business partner for a large Jobcentre Plus region of up to 10,000 staff (3 lled by external appointment) 52 at Grade 7 eg a Pension Service or CSA 'regional lead' for a large Jobcentre Plus district or central department policy directorate (17 lled by external appointment) 84 at Senior Executive Ofcer eg smaller Jobcentre Plus district role (15 lled by external appointment).

Of our 140 senior business partners, 35 were new entrants to the Civil Service, bringing a variety of different experience and expertise from the broader public and commercial sectors. Those 'new entrant' business partners have been vital for us, not just in bringing new knowledge and experience but also in being able to role-model for other business partners how we would like to see the role performed. Even though many of our talented people knew there was something missing, they couldn't know what they didn't know and it is impossible I believe to overestimate the contribution that new people modelling the right kinds of skills and behaviours can make in helping to develop internal capability. Although we were very keen to make rapid progress, inevitably the role development and recruitment of business partners took longer than we'd hoped. We were clear about this direction from early 2002. Design work had taken place during the summer of 2002, although the nal sizing and identication of the numbers of different posts at different levels was not complete until the start of 2003. We went into the internal and external markets between September and November 2002, with interviews held and appointments made from January 2003 onwards. The pace at which we were successful in completing the establishment of business partner teams varied from area to area and, indeed, some posts remained unlled until later that year. Given the strategic importance of the HR business partner community to the DWP and the importance of enabling an exchange of information between business partners from different backgrounds, from the start we were keen to establish a capability framework and clear opportunities for business partners to develop

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capability and exchange experience. Our capability framework was developed during the rst half of 2003 and is based on the Ulrich model. It provides a self-assessment and planning toolkit1 against which business partners can review and identify their development needs, along with information about relevant CIPD and Centre for Management and Policy Studies (CMPS) development programmes. The toolkit has been well received and is currently being reviewed. It's also being used as the model for capability work elsewhere across the HR function. Across the DWP there has been an increasing focus on growing and developing the business partner community, for example, through networking and best-practice meetings, and we bring together all the senior business partners for an annual awards conference.

How was it for us? (Or, did the organisation move!)

We placed a great deal of hope and expectation in our new business partners. They were key agents for change as well as representing the key change itself, being introduced at a time of transition for the DWP as a whole and when the other elements of the HR modernisation programme were also in development. We haven't yet, for example, introduced our new information system that will enable employee self-serve and improve the effectiveness of our shared service delivery. Our blended learning programme is still in development, and we're making fundamental changes in our performance and development (appraisal) systems and our reward strategies. None of this is easy. So, 18 months on, and in the context of this wider background, I asked a random sample of 30 business partners and line managers what they thought of the changes business partners had brought. I asked them for comments in ve areas: What are the main benets of delivering HR through a business partner structure as opposed to more traditional structures? What role do business partners have in the achievement of business targets? What changes to the way HR is perceived have there been since the introduction of business partners? How should the role develop in the future? How could we have introduced business partner arrangements better?

The responses to the survey are summarised in the box on pages 2224. They are in many ways reassuring in that business partners and line managers see these new arrangements as delivering the changed relationship between HR and the business that we wanted to see. HR has become and is seen as being more aligned to business requirements and more accessible and more expert. This is hugely important and very encouraging.
Business partnering

The toolkit can be accessed at www.dwp.gov.uk/publications/dwp2004/hrtoolkits.pdf

20

The ndings also show that we have a long way to go to complete the effective delivery of our modernised HR function. The fact that we don't yet have employee or line manager self-serve, that the shared services centres are not yet operating as well as they should be or that our blended learning environment is only in its infancy all prevent business partners from operating at the right level and inevitably inuence business perceptions of HR. The ndings also show that we have more to do to ensure that line managers across the DWP understand what business partners are there to do, how they can help them and what their role is in people management. Looking ahead, there is a very strong desire that business partners should be able to play a more strategic role (spending less time re-ghting and supporting specic service delivery activities). There is also a strong consensus that, looking ahead, business partners would want to be more inuential in bringing their business alignment to bear on the development of HR policy and that they can add increasing value as organisational change consultants. Would I do it again? Yes, I would. The business partner 'revolution' in the DWP has been one of the main successes of our HR modernisation programme. It lays the groundwork for so much of what we are doing and is a key to the effective engagement of HR with business objectives and the development of the best possible HR function to all of which the senior HR team in the DWP is rmly committed. Kevin White DWP Group HR Director

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21

Summary of ndings
1 What do you consider are the main benets of delivering HR through a business partner structure as opposed to the more traditional style of HR structures? All respondents identied understanding and alignment with business goals and objectives as the primary benets of the new structure. Specic factors drawn out, in order of frequency of mention, were: clarifying accountabilities between HR and line managers (with business partners providing advice and expertise and line managers taking accountability for their people decisions) the opportunity to have a more strategic input understanding of the local business context a more consistent and effective deployment of HR policies support with the upskilling of line managers accessibility of HR expertise increasing expertise and professionalism of HR HR acting more as a change agent HR as a help, not a hindrance. Within the overall ndings, the particular emphasis from line managers in the survey was on the provision of more expert, accessible and professional services with clear accountabilities, support for upskilling line managers and the prospect of better HR provision through business partner feedback. 2 What role do you feel HR business partners have to play in the achievement of the organisation's business targets? A number of factors were drawn out, with little differentiation between the business partner and line manager views. The factors, again listed in order of frequency of mention, were: support for line managers in delivering organisational performance effective support and delivery, as appropriate, of key 'HR' activities driving performance eg discipline or attendance management
Business partnering

putting people at the heart of business planning and decision-making

22

 ensuring the right people are recruited at the right time growing the capability of our people delivering culture change skilling line managers. Perhaps not surprisingly, respondents at more senior levels of business or HR structures laid more emphasis on the role of HR business partners acting as people champions and organisational change catalysts, putting people at the heart of the business agenda, as opposed to their role in helping line managers tackle specic performance issues (such as attendance). 3 What changes have you seen in the way in which the organisation views HR since the introduction of business partners? There was almost universal recognition that HR is now seen much more as part of the business rather than as a remote function developing policies that, likely as not, hindered rather than helped business operations. The key factors drawn out to evidence this were: HR working in partnership with the businesses the provision of a human face, expert and accountable, and able to explain the purpose behind HR policies the opportunity to inuence HR policy through business partner feedback support for line managers, including coaching around skills transfer more effective support for specic 'HR' activities eg resourcing and performance management exercises. The responses to this question also show clearly, as we knew, that we have further progress to make in delivering the full elements of the modernised HR model system on which the effectiveness of business partners in part depends. There is also a worry that some line managers see the change in accountabilities as being 'dumped on' as we ask them to undertake a further task without the skills or support they need. And there's a corresponding concern that the new service is increasing the expectations line managers have of HR which the HR community may struggle to meet.

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4 How would you like to see the role of the business partner develop in the future? There was a considerable consensus on the areas of futures development, which were: a more strategic role with less hand-holding and administrative support offering greater added value to the business, as line managers need less day-to-day support and as the HR systems come on line greater inuence in policy-making, enabling greater operational knowledge to be brought to bear on HR policy development greater expertise and professionalism for the function, with a greater emphasis particularly on the roles of organisational change agent and internal consultant more external recruitment and benchmarking of services against external organisations. 5 What would you have changed about the way in which the organisation introduced business partners? There was, again, a very strong consensus here. The two key things we should have done better were: Inform and communicate the new structures and accountabilities of business partners so that line managers understood from the start what the role provided and how best to work with business partners. Ensure the emergent function was staffed up and skilled from the start. There was also a consensus that there was too much variety in the deployment and support of business partners across the various DWP 'businesses' (ie this model should operate to common corporate standards) and that we didn't sufciently pool and share the expertise of new external recruits across the organisation.
NB The survey was a free-form questionnaire and received 30 responses, 23 of which were from current business partners and 7 from line managers.

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Business partnering

Part 3 Are you passionate about HR? Or are you passionate about the business?
This is a story about how an HR department operating on broadly traditional lines has used the business partner model to move towards adopting a strategic rather than operational focus.

Who are we?

For over 360 years, Royal Mail has been servicing the homes and businesses of the United Kingdom. It has a proud history of brand and tradition. Royal Mail became a plc on 26 March 2001 and is wholly owned by the UK Government. The framework for change was the Postal Services Act 2000 that created a commercially focused company with a more strategic relationship with the Government. Royal Mail provides an essential public service. Notwithstanding the introduction of email and other electronic messaging, and the continuing use of faxes, the volume of mail delivered each day is some 82 million items and continues to grow. There is a statutory duty to provide a letter delivery service to each of the 27 million addresses in the UK at a uniform price, irrespective of the distance travelled. The duty also includes an obligation to carry out at least one collection daily from each of the Royal Mail letterboxes. In the UK, Royal Mail operates under the brands Royal Mail, Post Ofce and Parcelforce Worldwide. Post Ofce Ltd is a wholly owned subsidiary of Royal Mail Group plc and operates under the Post Ofce brand. Managing a nationwide network of around 16,000 Post Ofce branches, it is the largest post ofce network in Europe and the largest retail branch network in the UK, handling more cash than any other business. Parcelforce Worldwide is focused on the growing express market for UK time-guaranteed and next-day services and international parcels. It provides access to the world's largest delivery network, covering more than 99.6 per cent of the global population. Royal Mail Group plc has over 220,000 employees at over 2,000 sites all over the UK. In addition, a number of franchises and owner/operators operate through the Post Ofce and Parcelforce Worldwide network. Without putting too ne a point on it, Royal Mail is big business in terms of size, geography and complexity.

The case for the change: the business context

The transformation of the HR function within Royal Mail took place in the context of a business in crisis. After years of success as a business, Royal Mail found itself with increasing costs and declining contribution and quality of service. The business had a negative cash ow and needed some radical changes to transform a monolith into a commercially aware and viable organisation.

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The commercial environment that Royal Mail operated in was also changing, as the industry began to deregulate and markets began to open up. Customers began to have greater choice and increased buying power. But the business found itself having to balance commercial imperatives against the Universal Service Obligation (USO), a legal requirement of the business to deliver mail to every address in Great Britain. In 2002, the Renewal Plan was developed a three-year plan that sought to arrest the decline of the business, and produce a turnaround with a 400 million prot by 2004/05. This was a challenge of enormous proportions requiring a dramatic change effort in an industry that was in the process of deregulating.

Cultural context
In the delivery ofces, postmen and women were committed to serving the communities in which they worked, but had a limited concept of the commercial buying customer. In mail centres, the factory environment and culture prevailed and in many mail centres there was limited pride in being a Royal Mail employee. The culture manifested itself in a high incidence of bullying and harassment and high levels of unplanned absence. There was low investment in both capital and people. The organisation seemed to retain all the negative elements of a traditional public sector culture wastefulness and a lack of commercial focus. In addition, despite generous HR policies and practices, employees didn't perceive that they worked for a generous employer. Rather, there was a paternalistic expectation of care. The psychological contract was similar to that in the public sector employees expected a job for life with little or no change to their ways of working.

The personnel function

Personnel managers were proud of the service that they and their teams provided and managers generally received quality advice and support on people issues. The personnel department was comprehensive, with each operational area allocated a personnel manager and personnel team, and a shared transactional services that looked after payroll and other routine operations. But due to the lack of linkage between business goals and HR, HR activity largely took place in a vacuum, removed from the strategy of the business. Transaction and strategy were mixed up and lacked clarity. What strategy there was was traditional and functional, more like action plans than strategy and dealing with the transactional elements of issues such as absence, reporting and industrial relations. By and large, operators simply didn't see themselves as responsible for people issues. Consequently, there was little ownership of issues such as attendance and resourcing. Operational managers didn't see their people as
Business partnering

delivering the results for them, and they certainly didnt see themselves as leaders and coaches. Rather, the model exacerbated the operational view that managers looked after the mail, and personnel owned the people problems.

26

If people were the businesss fundamental competitive advantage, then the HR strategy was a key element of moving the business forward. With a business in crisis, it was clear that it was not only the operations that needed to change. HR had to reinvent itself quickly and fundamentally.

The vision
In January 2003, Tony McCarthy became Group Director for People and Organisational Development (P&OD). Inheriting a committed personnel function, but one that was overstaffed, traditional and lacking in focus, Tony needed to nd a way to make better use of its talent, while providing an innovative and forwardthinking HR function that supported the business and moved it forward. In addition, Tony was charged with reducing personnel overheads by at least 40 per cent by March 2005. The vision was: People will be at the heart of all our major business decisions. The function will facilitate and support our people by delivering world-class solutions and services. The P&OD function will be professionalised, with key capabilities underpinning every role, in addition to the key capabilities identied as core to the business.

The three-box model

In his previous role as Group HR Director for BAE systems, Tony had used a version of the HR business partner model developed by Dave Ulrich, and had seen its benets. He sought to introduce this model at Royal Mail to help make the vision a reality and provide a framework for the HR strategy. Figure 2 demonstrates the relationship between the renewal plan and the HR strategy. Figure 2: HR strategy in Royal Mail

Grow
HR strategy

Focus

Fix Year 1 renewal plan Year 2 renewal plan Year 3 renewal plan Postrenewal plan

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The Royal Mail model is based on three boxes (Figure 3). The move demonstrated a fundamental shift from traditional personnel to the new approach of 'people and organisational development'. The change in functional title was the rst step in signalling that change was on its way. Figure 3: The Royal Mail three-box model of people and organisational development

Business partner

People and Organisational Services (P&OS) Transaction

Experts

The roles for each component of the model are described in the appendix on pages 3233. As an example of the new structure, within the Letters business (which is by far the bulk of the business, with over 160,000 employees), 31 business partners were created, one for each area. Areas vary in geographical size and have between 3,000 and 6,000 employees and are split between three territories East, West and North. Business partners are referred to as people and organisational development advisers (PODAs) and they 'partner' the most senior manager in each area, the area general manager. The PODAs are senior managers in their own right and sit on the Area Management Team. Each PODA reports to the head of P&OD for that territory. Each of the heads of P&OD (East, West and North) 'partner' their respective territory directors, who are the most senior operational managers within the Letters business, reporting to the UK operations director.

Are you passionate about HR, or are you passionate about the business?
Royal Mail was attempting the biggest turnaround in British industry and the personnel structure, passionate though it was about the HR services that it provided, simply couldn't enable the organisation to move forward to meet and exceed the renewal plan and to be competition-ready. The new model provided HR with a structure that would, in theory, help them do all that and more. First, however, the board had to be convinced that the new model would help deliver the renewal plan.
Business partnering

Second, approval had to be sought for the investment that would help facilitate the new structure. Third, the

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changes had to be managed in an environment of extreme operational turbulence and change. And nally, ongoing HR support for the business was still required while the changes were taking place. One only need scan the HR job advertisements to see that many organisations overlay the business partner model on their existing structures changing titles in the apparent belief that this will reect a business partner approach. However, in order to deliver the vision described above, Royal Mail had to completely disassemble the personnel function and reassemble a new vision, structure and strategy. This was never going to be done without some pain. The 3,150 employees within the personnel function had to apply for 2,250 new positions within the new structure. And, for the rst time, Royal Mail was actively going out to the open market to recruit. That meant fewer jobs, and more people in the pot. For example, a Royal Mail area that previously had 20 personnel employees servicing the population of 5,0006,000 operational employees was reduced to having one visible business partner in the area, supported by a centralised and drastically reduced shared service. There was a challenge in drawing on the talent among existing employees and creating an environment where the change was welcomed, while at the same time creating a compelling vision for those external recruits. In addition, for the 18 months that the resourcing process was being completed and the new structures bedded down, the organisation was going through some difcult operational changes reducing its headcount by up to 30,000 employees and introducing some radical changes to the network. While the new transactional People and Organisational Services (P&OS) division undertook its own transformation by dramatically reducing its staff and completely overhauling its processes, the newly appointed business partners had to live with dual roles. On the one hand, they were told to be strategic but, on the other, there was still the transactional work to be done and no one to do it. The operations needed help to effect and manage the changes they were going through, and didnt much care for the fact that there was a new HR model that changed the way that things were done. Without courage and resilience, the changes might never have happened. And there was certainly initial resistance. Operations mourned the loss of their personal personnel managers, while the personnel managers mourned the loss of their teams, and struggled to come to terms with what the new roles meant.

Step one of the journey

Business partnering was off to a shaky start. However, two key elements have helped to shape a much more positive approach to business partnering:

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1 The progress of P&OS in their transformational processes. As transactional work has been removed from the business partners, they have been able to start the true work of understanding the role of partnering the operations. 2 The introduction of the new P&OD capability model (Figure 4) and the associated development programme: The development programme consists of three mandatory programmes covering consulting skills, business knowledge and strategy, and organisational capability. In addition, every business partner has been given a development budget and can choose electives within the programme (or, if appropriate, from external sources). Electives include facilitation/action learning skills, managing change, coaching, and measuring P&OD value. Programmes have been run by leading-edge providers such as Professor Wayne Brockbank (University of Michigan). An annual P&OD conference brought together recognised leading-edge experts in industry and HR, and best practice from within the business was demonstrated and recognised. Figure 4: The Royal Mail capabilities

Consulting
Uses a consultancy approach and techniques to challenge, solve problems, facilitate and coach others to improve current and future organisational performance

P&OD knowledge
Understands leading-edge P&OD thinking and is able to decide what P&OD process/ interventions could be used to improve current and future business performance

Organisation design and development

Utilises organisational development tools and

Consulting P&OD knowledge Delivering results OD&D Personal credibility

processes, to build a structure and culture which delivers the current and future business strategy; meets and, where appropriate, challenges assumptions

Delivering results
Effectively achieves results through their ability to build strong relationships in a more fluid environment

Personal credibility
Role-models leading and influencing behaviours. Is

Business knowledge

intellectually and emotionally intelligent

Business knowledge
Understands and utilises commercial acumen and awareness of external environment to enhance Royal Mails current and future business performance

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So, what is a business partner?

The P&OD function is only just beginning the journey of understanding what potential a true business partnering model can bring. This is critical if the P&OD function is to support the business in meeting renewal plan targets, improving the current level of quality of service and tackling the cultural issues pervasive within the business. The role needs to demonstrate value and be differentiated from the previous personnel manager role. Business partners need to be able to demonstrate to operational colleagues that they understand the customer, the business and the competitive environment within which all this ts. Business partners need to contract with the operations to analyse a problem in the light of these inputs, work with the experts to develop an appropriate solution/product/strategy or response, and then work with P&OS to deploy such a response. Equally, the business partner needs to be a coach to their operational partner. The business partner needs to be able to create an environment to be able to focus on longer-term strategic issues: a challenge when faced with operational partners that focus on a daily repeatable task. The organisation will continue to face changes, and so the role of the business partner must be to help operations face those changes head on, develop an appropriate response and then evaluate the deployment.

What weve learned

Making the change under the circumstances detailed above meant that the implementation wasn't perfect, but the rst step of the journey is always the hardest and there is never an ideal time to implement such a magnitude of change if you dont start, you'll never get where you want to be. There has been a dichotomy between short-term business requirements resulting in processes that didnt let the model work properly, and which gave people permission to return to their comfort zones, and the fact that the business so desperately needed the model to work, to get out of day-to-day tactics, and to look at the longer-term cultural and strategic issues. There has been a body of work necessary to communicate and educate the operations on the new model, how it operated in practice and what this meant for their role in managing their people. There is still not perfect understanding of the model, nor of the role of the business partner. It's the responsibility of all the parties within the three-box model to make the shared services (P&OS) a success. Without a strong, efcient transactional component, it's hard to build true credibility as a business partner.

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In a sense, we've taken three steps forward, one step back. Some business partners have found the role too isolated, or have missed managing their teams. Some have just not been up to the challenge. So the team that started is not the team that remains.

Why the business partner approach is a good thing

So, there have been some challenges along the way, and we still have a very long way to go, but it is clear that the courage in moving to the new model is starting to pay dividends. The investment in capability within the P&OD function is starting to pay off. There is energy and excitement about the business partners as they seek to apply the new models to their everyday roles, and the development programme has provided a shared platform of learning, a shared language and a shared experience. Royal Mail posted its rst after-tax prot in the nancial year 2003/04 and is well on its way to meeting renewal plan targets. There have been small wins that grow larger every day. The challenge now is to build on the successes of the model while learning from the challenges weve faced. Helen Atkinson Head of People and Organisational Development, East Territory, and Tammy Tansley Employee Relations Manager, Royal Mail Letters

Appendix
Business partners Business partners are the P&OD directors for each business unit and the area P&OD advisers identied within the units. The teams within this structure are very small and business partners are identied as being: users of experts to design P&OD interventions needed in their business units or areas responsible for overseeing transactions, but not managing them other than contractually developers of talent development and performance coaches, facilitators and counsellors
Business partnering

at the forefront of business strategy

32

 encouragers of risk (particularly with people) decision-makers and performance improvers behavioural role-models deliverers, not managers of deliverers responsible for measuring service quality and business impact innovators for people and business improvement. Shared services (P&OS) Shared services are People and Organisation Services. P&OS is responsible for the delivery of excellent people services in a consistent way and they provide a world-class standard of services and costs. Experts We have small professional teams of experts in: talent management chief learning ofcer diversity corporate social responsibility employee relations recognition and reward involvement and communication. Our experts are recognised in their own elds and their role identies them as: world-class specialists, aligned with or ahead of their eld understanding business educating the business by pushing and coaching owners of policies deliverers and doers advisers on new and innovative ideas owners of key mandated activities.

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Part 4 Partnering journeys

We're all new to HR partnering. The books and gurus certainly don't have all the answers, and those of us engaged in seeking to move HR forward have had our fair share of successes and setbacks. In addition, everyone has their own version of what partnering is no two organisations see it in precisely the same way. Almost no one adheres to the Ulrich model closely; quite a few HR functions have adopted very different approaches yet believe they're operating a partnering model. Perhaps that's a good thing interpretations of what partnering is need to reect differing business circumstances and objectives. Many organisations have embarked on explorations into partnering in different directions, in different ways and at different paces. Perhaps, in ten years time, there'll be a consensus on when and how to partner, but for now we have to draw on the experiences of those who have embarked on an assortment of journeys. This part describes a few of those journeys, considers what went well, and offers some lessons for those seeking to learn from others' experiences. As it happens, all the organisations whose experiences are outlined here are in the private sector and medium to large in scale, employing between them some tens of thousands of people.

1 The detour
Often a company will embark on partnering with new HR roles, new customer interfaces, new IT and a bold, professional launch. But, within a surprisingly short time, it may become apparent that, although HR continues to provide helpful expert services, the partnering role is too costly, or is failing to add real strategic value to the business. This is the story of one organisation's mistaken detour, and how it found a much more effective route to partnering. The key lessons from the case (about the number of strategic partners, operational infrastructure and cost pressures) are signicant and other organisations seem to have learned similar lessons. I will call the organisation simply company 'X'. As part of its rst foray into partnering, X:
Business partnering

appointed a partner to each of several businesses created centres of expertise staffed by HR specialists that developed HR policies and tools outsourced much of the routine transactional HR (such as recruitment) developed an intranet resource of HR information and advice for line managers.

All the new partners there were several of them had been HR managers. The businesses typically had between 1,000 and 1,500 employees each.

34

Initially, this partnering model proved very successful. Senior managers loved having 'their own' dedicated HR professional and partners prized the close engagement with 'their' businesses. Partners devoted much of their time to meetings with line managers discussing minor operational issues. They reworked materials from the centres of expertise, tailoring resources and policies to their own businesses. In addition, partners became helpfully involved in local issues, such as cases involving individual employees. However, all of that was very expensive and much of it was of questionable value. Perhaps it was inevitable that cost pressures demanded a dramatic rethink of HR and a new organisation, with: the creation of delivery centres providing both polices/tools and case management on a regional basis. Staffed largely by ex-partners, the new centres were line managers' single source of HR expertise. There was just one phone number to call, and 'cases' were allocated to HR professionals on a workload basis. greater emphasis on the use and development of HR's intranet-based resources for line managers.

Centres of expertise shrank dramatically, and just a few strategic HR partners were created one for each of the major divisions. These people were closely aligned to the executives and were expected to have little or no operational HR involvement. The thrust of these changes was to focus HR effort where it was most needed and reduce HR numbers very signicantly. There were problems, however. Not surprisingly, many line managers strenuously objected to the new HR. They missed their personal HR professionals and needed more training to become more self-sufcient. HR itself doubted if the new organisation would work a few weeks into the change and senior HR professionals privately asked themselves if they had 'wrecked HR'. The few genuinely strategic HR partners also realised that their new role was signicantly more challenging, both interpersonally and intellectually, than anything they had encountered before. Today, HR is successfully enabling the implementation of business strategy and delivering low-cost operational services the two central objectives of most partnering initiatives (Goodge 2004a). X's journey to get there was something of an odd detour, yet its lessons have similarities with routes taken by others: Some organisations have also discovered that only a few HR partners can be truly strategic. Appoint lots of partners and they all will get sucked into operational work, in which case probably no one will be strategic. Operational HR can be very expensive, although managers and HR professionals will love the personal service. Low-cost HR needs good IT, trained and able line managers and a radical approach to HR delivery. Cost pressures will get the better of any HR function that is merely expert and professional. Helpful best practice is no longer enough. HR has to be inexpensive too.

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How will you know if you've taken a detour? Well, business decline or stagnation may eventually tell you. HR's failure to add strategic value is magnied when a business is in trouble long-standing human resource problems weaken competitiveness, while opponents seize tactical opportunities by making smarter use of their people. Alternatively, make a list of HR's outstanding contributions to the business over the last three years you ought to be able to name about ten very signicant achievements.

2 Getting there
Organisations in trouble sometimes take huge leaps into HR partnering. Cost pressures, falling share prices and diminishing market share force fast, radical changes within HR. However, organisations are rarely in such difcult circumstances, and most journeys into HR partnering are taken with measured, cautious steps. Most of the organisations I see have already progressed towards partnering but still have some way to go. Organisation 'Y' is typical of those that have taken incremental journeys towards partnering. Y's story illustrates important lessons about the incremental approach: (a) the need to formally review where HR is, what the next step is, and how to take it, plus (b) the importance of raising HR partners' capabilities ahead of the next step. Y's rst step towards partnering was to elevate selected HR managers to be HR partners it was more than a change of job title. The six partners, one for each geographical region, were given new, more strategic roles, which had been agreed with senior managers. Nothing else changed: no new IT, no centres of HR excellence, no service-centre type of operation. But that rst step was successful in some ways. The more able HR partners with good relationships with regional managing directors contributed to, and shaped, current strategic debates. There were several good examples of HR adding real value to the business in ways it hadn't done before. However, that was true only for some partners some of the time. Even the most able of partners had limited inuence and scope. Some partners, especially those with difcult managing directors, had much less impact and were essentially operational HR managers. Individuals within the HR team wondered where they were and what the next step was. These questions are asked by almost all organisations that have chosen to progress to partnering incrementally. Failure to address the questions, and to do so every year or two, leaves HR stuck somewhere between what it was and what it ought to be. Incremental progress is ne, and is easier and safer than large-scale, radical change, but organisations have to keep it going. After some months of being stuck, Y's HR team used a one-day workshop to dene a series of steps to
Business partnering

partnering from basic 'mopping up' to advanced 'initiating strategic issues' (see Goodge 2004b). Most of Y's HR partners were at the steps they described as 'tooling up' and 'coaching'.

36

Figure 5: An incremental approch to partnering

Proactively initiating strategic issues Contributing to todays strategic debates Coaching and advising executives Tooling up providing managers with helpful processes Mopping up solving daily problems (created by line managers)

The workshop enabled the HR team to dene the skills they needed to develop, and the process by which they would take the next step for them: 'contributing to today's strategic debates'. They also decided on changes needed within HR eg learning and development activities would report to HR, not directly to line managers. Y's story illustrates an important aspect of the incremental route to partnering ie individual skills and circumstances cause partners to progress at different paces. And that shows in partners' varying performance. HR directors in such organisations often contrast successful and less successful HR partners: something those who have taken different routes to partnering tend not to do. Developing partners' abilities ahead of the next step seems crucially important. It's the only way of ensuring every partner succeeds. It's also the only way of ensuring line managers continue to support the journey to partnering. It's important to appreciate that the abilities required of partners are not those of traditional HR. Partners need to learn the business inside-out, build great relationships, be at the leading edge of HR, and build their personal credibility (see page 39, and Goodge 2004c).

3 Arriving somewhere different

Not all journeys to partnering arrive at the same place. Sometimes the intended destination is dramatically different from that implied by other models of partnering, but is highly successful nevertheless. Organisation 'Z' is one such dramatically different organisation. In some ways, it's old-fashioned, even to the point of calling HR 'personnel'. They never changed the name. Yet, in other ways, Z is strikingly modern, such as in its uncompromising focus on HR delivery and performance. Z is a great example of the need to t partnering to your business and its culture. It also highlights the crucial importance of measuring HR's real contribution. A very few of the old personnel departments were surprisingly business-focused. Z's approach to partnering is not in the least new or modern, but is in fact decades old. HR partnering in Z means: clearly dening HR's contribution to the business strategy (eg lower costs, great customer service, talented innovators etc)

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putting measures in place to assess that contribution (absence costs, prot per employee, customer satisfaction etc)

responding to problems highlighted by the measures (eg managers or parts of the business with poorer measures)

constantly seeking out and taking opportunities to improve measured performance.

HR partnering isn't about using a model (eg Ulrich's) or cutting HR costs. It's about achieving strategically signicant targets. Inevitably, Z's executives question HR's costs but they recognise that HR provides a net benet. Credible, accurate measures are vital. HR needs to be able to say exactly how well it's doing. It has to report on its performance just as sales, service and production do. In addition, HR has to continually publicise how it's doing. Z's personnel department produces monthly reports on its performance which are discussed at every board meeting. Any HR department has signicant responsibilities, but also great freedoms. In Z, HR operates as an entrepreneurial, internal consultancy, developing the business while developing its own agenda and resources. The HR director described it as a business within a business. This rather different approach seems to require two things: A well-run, stable company one with a clear, unchanging strategy and able line managers. Without those, HR's measures would be constantly changing and line managers would entangle HR in day-to-day problems. Talented HR people HR has to recruit able people and stretch them with business projects that add measured value, while giving them time for personal development. It is interesting to note that Z's approach ts the company's numbers and measures-orientated culture, and perhaps highlights the importance of nding a partnering model that ts how your business does things (for an overview of partnering's organisational requirements, see Goodge 2004a).

4 Key points
The cases of X, Y and Z contain several important lessons.: Assess the readiness of your organisation, and of HR, to embark on partnering or to take the next step. Find out where HR is now, assess your customers' abilities and expectations, think creatively about your options, then plan things in detail (even if it's just a small next step in an incremental process). Articles and conferences are good, but they can only provide ideas. You will need to design something that is right for you.
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Develop the people ie both HR professionals and line managers. The biggest reason why partnering fails is lack of competencies. Your rst practical step towards partnering will probably be to assess potential partners in ways they understand and support.

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Measure, and publicise, how well you are doing. But don't rely on soft measures, use some facts too. I've encountered HR partners who thought they were doing really well, while line managers said something very different! These examples underline that there is no single model of successful HR partnering and no single route to success. But all partnering journeys focus attention on key challenges for HR and can be a stimulus to more effective organisational performance.

5 How to be an HR business partner

The one thing many HR directors agree on is that their HR business partners are 'not strategic enough'. This seems to be the single obstacle to becoming an effective HR partner. The 2003 CIPD's HR Survey: Where we are, where we're heading found that, although large numbers of senior HR professionals were engaged in developing strategy, many felt poorly equipped for their roles. This underlines the difference between being a business partner and traditional HR jobs. People aspiring to be a successful HR partner need to take the following steps (Goodge 2004c): Learn the business inside-out. Only an in-depth knowledge of your business will equip you to contribute to strategic debates and initiatives. Without it, you will be on the side-lines of the big business decisions and have little inuence on their implementation. Build great relationships. Very few business partners have any formal authority: in order to get things changed, they need to rely on diplomacy, persuasion and political skills. Many HR partners have no formal reporting lines: relationships are the means by which they get things done. Be at the leading edge of HR. Your ability to add value depends on the ideas and changes you come up with. Adding value means offering something genuinely new. You'll need to be an expert in what is promising, and possible, in people management. Build credibility. Without credibility, HR partners are more or less impotent. Credibility is not a competency. There is no training course and it can't be taught. Credibility has to be won and built over time. If your ideas add real value to the business, people will want to hear about them, so tell them. And nally, in order to get started, you may need to sell the idea of business partnering to top management. You can't be a business partner on the quiet. Peter Goodge www.develop.uk.com

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Part 5 Business partnering: a new direction for HR?

The case histories in this Guide illustrate the richness and diversity of the organisations, and their HR functions, that are moving, explicitly or implicitly, towards a more HR business partnering approach, as well as some of the ups and the downs along the way. A criticism of current HR literature is sometimes that it's too 'glossy' and divorced from organisational reality, so we're particularly grateful to our contributors for their frank and honest accounts of their experience of business partnering. Our contributors also emphasise the importance of learning and knowledge in moving towards the business partner ideal, and one of the learning points for us has been to follow up this publication with further webbased case studies and publications. One obvious message emerging from this guide is that you need to work out and progress on your own individual journey towards business partnering. Business partnering isn't about implementing a xed textbook model but about crafting an approach for your HR function that, as Peter Goodge explains, makes a strategic contribution towards the achievement of your organisation's key objectives. That is the only universal and essential ingredient. But in this concluding part, we return to consider some of our opening questions on the nature, character and value of business partnering.

Is there a single HR business partner model and what makes for success?
More jobs are being advertised as 'HR business partners'. In some cases this is simply a change of title while the incumbent carries on doing a traditional reactive and functional HR job. This kind of re-badging is unlikely to lead to HR adding more value to the business. It's interesting that our contributors were well aware of this danger, and some didn't use the business partnering title. Business partnering has to be more than simply a change of title. The organisations in this report have clearly adopted a more considered approach. But the way they have tackled it differs substantially from case to case. As Ray Caldwell says, context is key, but our senior practitioners demonstrate that HR can do a lot to help create the right context for the model to work in. It's difcult to dene what a strategic business partner is because it's impossible to supply an all-purpose denition of what he or she actually does. The concept is applied in different ways, even where Ulrich's model has been a direct inuence, with the DWP, for example, seeing the business partner encompassing all
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four of Ulrich's roles, but other organisations focusing more exclusively on his top left 'box'. Business partners do a whole range of different things, depending on what is required and where their organisation is at.

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So the model clearly doesn't offer a one-size-ts-all template that can be taken off the shelf and applied across organisations of all shapes and sizes. It does, however, map out a clear direction of travel from a function historically focused on rules, administration and service provision to a function focused on business issues and working with line managers to deliver performance targets. The nature of the HR partnering role, and the likelihood of success, will be inuenced by many factors, including: the level, structure, numbers and talents of business partners either because of the advanced competencies required and/or the level of strategic input, the message from our contributors' experiences seems to be that you generally need fewer but 'bigger-hitting' business partners line managers' understanding of and capabilities in people management and the quality of relationships between HR and line managers the existing roles and credibility of the HR function and the ability to rapidly develop internally and/or to import the competencies required for business partnering the state of development in the other activities of the HR function our contributors demonstrate that if, for example, the administrative and day-to-day activities are not being handled well, in practice it's difcult for the business partners to take enough of a long-term and strategic perspective on how people can best add to competitive advantage in the organisation. The requirements for business partners themselves to succeed are very clear from the experiences described above, if seeming somewhat superhuman at times. They must have excellent business knowledge but also top-notch interpersonal skills and high personal credibility. They are not 'HR techies' but need to have knowledge in respect of leading-edge approaches in HR and organisational development. They must be able to diagnose and analyse situations well, to measure the 'hard' outcomes, their own results and those of the HR initiatives they create. They need high levels of freedom and autonomy and they need to be able to publicise and 'sell' themselves and the function effectively. And they seem to require a good dose also of Ulrich's 'HR with attitude', or, as Goodge puts it, 'you can't be a business partner on the quiet.' One problem with HR partnering is that we don't generally talk about 'nance partners' or 'IT partners', for example, although, like HR, these functions are also off line. In some ways, partnering can be like a form of internal consultancy, but without the degree of contractual formality that generally characterises external consultancy relationships. Support from colleagues' expertise in HR technical areas and administration is vital. If the HR partner role fails to offer scope for personal inuence and direct organisational impact, the job is unlikely to attract competent and ambitious people. Care is needed in dening and communicating the

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content of the partner role if expectations on both sides are not to be disappointed, and a number of the cases refer to this danger of over-expectation on the part of both HR and the rest of the organisation. The partner concept needs to be well explained, but is more effectively demonstrated in the doing than the selling.

Why are organisations moving towards creating HR business partners?

HR partnering doesn't take place in a vacuum. It only makes sense in the context of a wider look at the structure of the HR function and the organisation as a whole. But in many ways the time is ripe for partnering to take off. Many HR people who have read or heard Dave Ulrich will be enthusiastic to develop their role as a partner in order to raise their inuence and credibility. In order to make room for a bigger strategic contribution by HR, process activities need to be computerised and/or brigaded in an HR 'service centre'. We know that this is happening in a big way. Line managers will also need to take more of the strain in terms of managing their own people. This is one of the key targets underpinning HR reorganisation in the DWP. Chief executives looking to achieve nancial savings may also see the HR partnering role as an opportunity to reduce the numbers in their HR departments while hopefully adding value to the business. However, such savings will only be achieved if the implications of moving to HR partnering are thoroughly worked through and understood. If business partnering is just pursued as a cost-reducing exercise, the indications are that it will fail. Competitive and cost pressures may be a major driver and some would say 'nail in the cofn' of the traditional reactive model of personnel management, but business partnering can only work if the partners can play a demonstrable value-adding and strategic role, which can't be done on the cheap. It's about higher added value rather than HR cost-cutting. If the Department of Trade and Industry is right and the way for UK companies to succeed in the future is not to compete on cost alone but by high value-adding activities, business partnering is the HR component of that competitive strategy and approach. Ray Caldwell's analysis clearly denes this HR agenda. Partners are more strategic and proactive. They have high involvement and inuence on the strategy of the business. They are viewed positively by the chief executive and line managers. They spend less time on implementation and administration, focusing on the HR competencies of strategic thinking, business knowledge and leadership. And they're more focused on measurable HR outcomes. This clearly sounds attractive if you can hack it and deliver.

Should all organisations go for the business partner model?

For business partners generally, tackling the partnering agenda is a change management issue in its own
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right. HR managers can only make a success of partnering roles if the rest of the organisation changes to accommodate them.

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Peter Goodge emphasises that some organisations may not be ready for business partnering, possibly because they don't see the potential for HR to be more strategic or because the HR function currently lacks credibility. The organisation may need to be educated in what it can expect to receive by way of support from the HR function, since this is going to look substantially different from what it has received in the past. Business partnering is obviously not a magic bullet, but it is a journey that many HR departments feel they have little option but to embark on. As the cases of the Post Ofce and the DWP illustrate, it's a tough journey. But what is the alternative? And despite the radical changes implied by a shift to business partnering, in many respects these can be seen as meeting long-standing aspirations of the HR function: to align HR and business strategies to transfer people management responsibilities on a day-to-day basis from HR to the line to achieve greater credibility and inuence in the organisation by being able to demonstrate that it is adding value. Goodge's company Z may never have heard of the business partnering concept or read Ulrich, yet they appear to be doing a pretty good job at delivering on it. Goodge also sets out a nice model of progress on the journey, akin to Maslow's hierarchy of needs, from HR 'mopping up' at the most basic level to proactively inuencing strategy at the top. The detailed analysis of the CIPD survey results by Caldwell highlights a strong divide between those pursuing the business partnering route and the rest of the participants. Whatever the problems of changing, and our cases illustrate the 'courage' required, as referred to by Atkinson and Tansley, the prospects for the latter group who have not started on the transition journey, and with the cost-cutting and outsourcing agenda on the ascendancy, look pretty bleak.

Is HR partnering about strategy or delivery?

Contributing to business strategy doesn't necessarily mean having a seat on the board. Strategy is not a set of top-down decisions but a process of continuous review of how policies are to be delivered. As the Financial Times noted (19 August 2004), 'strategy is the art of the possible and needs to take account of time and resources available.' There is major scope for HR to contribute to and inuence the strategy process in organisations, particularly by ensuring that the direction of policy takes full account of organisational capabilities, including the existing talent base, opportunities for extending this through recruitment, and implications for learning and development.

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Many organisations are focusing HR partnering jobs on support for senior line managers. Developing the relationship between HR and the line is clearly a key task for organisations. It's not an area, though, where Ulrich offers a great deal of practical advice or guidance and there is little evidence to hand about the positive impact that HR partnering has had so far. This is likely to be an area where organisations will need to make signicant ongoing efforts to develop a mutual understanding of roles and expectations. The CIPD's research on the links between people and performance would suggest that business partners need to focus at least as much on rst-line management and the delivery of business and HR strategies as they do on the board, although, as at the DWP, this does hold out the risk of getting too drawn in to day-today issues. As Tansley and Atkinson say, unless HR partnering encompasses vision, strategy and delivery, then it's 'just talk'. A signicant aspect of strategy is choice, deciding what a company should do and, often as important, what it is not going to do. Over-ambition and loss of strategic focus is a charge levelled at a number of well-known British companies today, and the business partnering journey appears to need regular doses of reality checking and focusing if it is to continue successfully. Measurement also comes out strongly from our contributors as being a key component of the partnering role, gauging and assessing the views of line managers and staff, assessing the impact of strategic initiatives and adjusting them accordingly.

Are business partners still doing 'HR jobs'?

The short answer is that business partners are responsible for embedding the people dimension more securely into the way the business is run. Business partners are fully engaged in the processes of people management and development. But they won't be preoccupied with traditional HR processes. The reason for this is twofold: many of the processes will have been computerised and/or outsourced, and day-to-day people management activities are now undertaken by line managers. HR business partnering can only ourish if line managers are willing and able to discharge their people management role: the two processes should be mutually supportive and need to go hand in hand. However, our contributors' experiences would seem to reinforce John Boudreau's contention that increasing HR inuence depends both on strategic input and strong technical expertise. Business partners themselves need, and they need colleagues with, high levels of expertise in the main HR disciplines to develop and apply effective HR solutions to business issues. And as well as this knowledge, the delivery of effective HR administration services, in-house or outsourced, appears to be a critical underpinning of enabling and freeing
Business partnering

up the business partners to perform.

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Are there particular issues in the public sector?

The creation of senior business partner roles in Whitehall can be seen as part of a programme of modernisation affecting both the HR function and the delivery of public services. This conrms that it would be wrong to see business partnering as something to be done on its own, or as something that will produce dividends without reference to what is happening elsewhere in the organisation. Research for the CIPD by John Purcell at Bath University has underlined the importance of line managers in getting people management practices right. The only way the 'say/do' gap of attractive and productive 'great places to work', in the private as well as the public sector, is going to be remedied is by changing the behaviour of line managers. The strength of the HR business partner model is its focus on the critical relationship between HR and the line. In many organisations in both the public and the private sectors, the issue of accountability for people management remains largely unresolved. The HR function wants to focus on strategy and support, while line managers see people management as an unwelcome distraction from meeting business targets and one for which they feel they have little afnity or competence. Our contributors illustrate not only the opposition to changing the status quo that can come from line managers who can nd the 'comfort blanket' of HR support extremely attractive, at least when it is threatened but also the potential benets that can result from change on both sides, and more importantly for the organisation as a whole. The DWP has recognised that the only way to provide effective support for the reform of front-line services while shrinking numbers in HR is through ensuring that line managers accept and deliver on their people management responsibilities. This will require major change in the culture, along with ongoing coaching and support. Many HR partners will need to become specialists in change management. Historically, departments and agencies have tended to buy in expertise on a contract basis to support change management activity. This will be increasingly unnecessary as central government grows its own specialists in organisational development and change management. Many HR business partners are being recruited from outside, bringing with them valuable experience in the processes involved. But cultural acclimatisation and understanding will be the key to them delivering results in practice.

How do organisations set about developing the business partner role?

Development, education and knowledge, our contributors emphasise, are perhaps the most critical determinants of success when attempting to deliver the business partner role in practice and reality.

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The business partner model is recognised in the current CIPD Advanced Practitioner Standard on strategic personnel and development. Indicators include 'carry out a strategic appraisal of an organisation's strengths and weaknesses, paying particular attention to its human resources.' The indicative content of the Standards includes the relationship between the personnel and development practitioner and the strategic management process, or the business partner in context, and developing the relationship between the practitioner and functional management. The emphasis is on strengthening the HR connection to business strategy by ensuring that HR strategies complement the overall 'strategic intent' of the organisation. The CIPD Professional Development Scheme's Core Standards include a strong business element in the Leadership and Management component, and the concept of the thinking performer that underpins them, has many facets of business partnering included. But the Standards do not attempt to dene partnering as such. Respondents to the CIPD HR survey in 2003 agreed that HR needed to acquire new knowledge and skills. This underlines the need for training for both HR partners and line managers. The business knowledge required to be an effective HR partner will often be signicant, as will the need to acquire new personal skills. The focus on business partnering will lead some organisations to conclude that they need to look outside for people with the right personal qualities and experience. In order to support the transition to HR partnering, the DWP has produced a detailed 'capability toolkit'. In essence, this is a competency framework listing 14 capabilities of HR business partners. These cover between them the four HR roles identied by Ulrich and make clear that 'strategic' HR is only one element in the mix. The toolkit underlines the scale of the challenge facing HR partners but helpfully suggests that individuals should select a small number of development priorities and use them as the basis for a personal development plan. 'Capability' is dened as 'competency plus will plus successful application!' The Post Ofce is similarly putting a great deal of effort into developing and delivering their P&OD capability model. In our information- and knowledge-based economy, learning assumes a key role in delivering and sustaining competitive advantage. What has become clear from the experiences of these organisations in our Guide is that business partnering not only depends on continuous learning and leading-edge thinking, but is actually dened and evolves through a process of interaction and learning between HR professionals and their partners.

So what does it all mean?

HR business partnering is a concept that is being increasingly seized on by organisations as a way of redening both their structures and their agenda on people management and development. Partnering can't
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be a purely internal matter for HR. It goes with the grain of what is already happening to HR services and

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structures but it needs the whole-hearted support of senior and line management. It doesn't answer all the questions about how HR can add value but it restates them in a form that gives HR people new opportunities. It doesn't entirely resolve the ambiguities about HR's role but it faces the function directly with the need to tackle business issues. It doesn't tell HR managers what they should be doing, but it gets them away from an unhealthy preoccupation with either administrative process or regulatory compliance. It reinforces ways for HR to engage with the strategic processes that relate to both the direction and the delivery of business objectives. In short, business partnering is a challenge that HR can't afford to duck. Reform is not a sure-re route to earning business credibility but retrenchment is still less attractive. The message in this Guide is that many HR departments are determined to rise to the challenge. And the question remains: what is the alternative? Mike Emmott Adviser, Employee Relations, CIPD

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References
Part 1 In search of strategic partners
CALDWELL, R. (2003). The changing roles of personnel managers: old ambiguities, new uncertainties. Journal of Management Studies. Vol. 40, No. 4. pp9831004. BUDHWAR, P. (2000) Evaluating levels of strategic integration and devolvement of human resource management in the UK. Personnel Review. Vol. 36, No. 3. pp441470. CIPD. (2003) HR survey: Where we are, where were heading. GUEST, D., CONWAY, N., MICHIE, J., SHEEHAN, M. and KING, Z. London: CIPD. (2004) Voices from the boardroom. London: CIPD. GUEST, D. and KING, Z. (2004). Power, innovation and problem solving: the personnel managers three steps to heaven? Journal of Management Studies. Vol. 41, No. 3. pp401423. PAAUWE, P. (2004) HRM and performance: unique approaches for achieving long-term viability. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ULRICH, D. (1997) Human resource champions. Boston: Harvard University Press. WRIGHT, P., MCMAHAN, G., SNELL, S. and GERHART, B. (2001) Comparing line and HR executives perceptions of HR effectiveness: services, roles and contributions. Human Resource Management. Vol. 40, No. 2. pp111123.

Part 4 Partnering journeys

GOODGE, P. (2004a) Ready for HR partnering? Strategic HR Review. Summer. GOODGE, P. (2004b) Tools for strategic HR partners. Competency Journal. Vol. 11, No. 3. Spring. pp1720. GOODGE, P. (2004c) How to build a career as an HR partner. People Management. 30 June.

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The CIPD explores leading-edge people management and development issues at a strategic level. Our aim is to share knowledge and to increase learning and understanding to improve practice. We produce surveys, think-pieces, research summaries and introductory guidance that all are available to download from our website.

Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development

CIPD House Camp Road London SW19 4UX Tel: 020 8971 9000 Fax: 020 8263 3333 Email: [email protected] Website: www.cipd.co.uk Incorporated by Royal Charter Registered charity no.1079797
Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development 2004

Issued: October 2004 Reference: 3129