When To Implement an HRBP Model: 5 Signs You’re Ready
Generative AI, skills shortages, and new employee demands are impacting HR’s role in organizations. Business leaders expect HR to have a strategic impact, employees want engaging employee experiences, and the board requires HR to protect the business against risk.
Since the late 1990s, HR has repositioned as a strategic partner with a new operating model focused on balancing strategic business partnering, centers of excellence, and operational efficiency in HR delivery. The HR Business Partner (HRBP) model, also called the Ulrich Model or Three-legged Stool, facilitates a proactive approach to aligning HR practices, like talent and culture, with business needs and priorities.
Contents
Business problems the HRBP model solves
5 signs your business is ready to implement the HRBP model
1: Business complexity and size demands a different HR solution
2: Business feels the pain
3: Leadership buys into a different type of HR contribution
4: Willingness to invest in HR in the short term
5: Openness to change in the HR team
When to not implement the HRBP model
Next step: Implementing the HRBP model
Business problems the HRBP model solves
Before we discuss how you can determine whether your business is ready to implement the HRBP model, let’s unpack the common problems businesses highlight when working with HR.
HR is too internally focused
A common criticism of HR is that it is too internally focused, prioritizing internal processes over business needs. This focus often leads to perceptions of being reactive and ‘difficult’ to collaborate with. This focus often leads to the business questioning the value of HR activities and their relevance to what is required to drive business goals.
How the HRBP model can solve this
The HRBP model offers a solution by fostering closer alignment with business priorities and a focus on strategic partnerships across the business.
For example, HRBPs are embedded within business units, participating in regular strategic planning and operational meetings. This ensures that business goals and priorities directly inform HR initiatives.
Additionally, HRBPs work closely with leaders from other functions, such as finance, marketing, and operations, to ensure that HR activities are aligned with broader organizational strategies. Often, HRBPs have a dual reporting line to business leaders and HR and are measured on both business and HR deliverables.
HR does not understand the business needs
HR is often seen as disconnected from the business due to a lack of understanding of the market, business goals, and commercial insights.
Our research shows that HR professionals’ business acumen increases with seniority as they become more involved in business operations. Yet, early-stage HR professionals from fields like administration, education, or psychology focus more on learning, coaching, or talent management, missing core knowledge in economics and business.
How the HRBP model can solve this
The HRBP model is designed to immerse HR team members at all levels in the business, fostering the development of business acumen as a key skill.
For example, HR partners with the business at various levels within the hierarchy. For instance, HR consultants are specifically focused on partnering with managers, while senior HR business partners focus on the needs of departmental heads to address more strategic challenges at a senior level.
This approach helps HR professionals demonstrate the business reasons for HR activities beyond just the people-related benefits.
HR cannot show the link between business impact and HR activities
HR often can’t show how its actions tangibly impact business results. This makes it seem like HR doesn’t add value. For instance, company ABC spent a lot on an “Emerging Leaders” Talent Program to create a strong talent succession pipeline.
HR might measure success by how satisfied employees are with the program, whether they can use what they learned, and how the program’s costs compare to others. But these don’t show how the program helps the business. If HR doesn’t link the program to keeping high-performing talent, getting them ready for promotions, and boosting leadership across the company, then the business sees HR efforts as nice to have but not valuable.
How the HRBP model can solve this
The HRBP model integrates the HR value chain and objectives into the broader Business Strategy and scorecard. This allows for a clearer understanding of how HR contributes to position, how the focus of HR activities aligns with business goals, and how HR contributes to overall business success.
For example, if a company’s strategic goal is to enter new markets, HRBPs might focus on identifying and developing the talent and skills required for successful market entry.
HR deliverables will form part of the business scorecard and be measured with business outcomes, rather than having their own separate scorecard independent of the business.
HR struggles to scale its service delivery efficiently
As businesses grow and become more complex, HR faces pressure to serve a larger employee base, increasing HR costs. Implementing shared technologies and expertise is crucial for cost-effective HR scaling, yet is often not a priority in traditional HR models.
How the HRBP model can solve this
The HRBP model promotes shared services to standardize technologies, improving efficiency and scalability.
Centers of excellence allow for gaining specialized expertise across the business, enhancing HR solution quality.
Together with business partners, this approach allows for the localization of solutions according to specific department requirements while maintaining consistency across the end-to-end organization.
Let’s examine the signs that your organization might be ready to implement the HRBP model.
5 signs your business is ready to implement the HRBP model
Determining when and if the HRBP model is the right fit for your business is essential. Several factors contribute to this decision. The decision to change the HR operating model should not be taken lightly, as it requires a significant change effort in people, processes, and technology.
There are several signs indicating it’s time to move to an HRBP model:
Sign 1: Business complexity and size demands a different HR solution
As your organization grows in size and complexity, with varied needs across different departments or geographies, a one-size-fits-all approach to HR becomes ineffective. When HR needs to support diverse needs across various departments or locations, it indicates that there might be a need to transition to the HRBP model that can balance standardization with localization.
For instance, a company with operations in both the United States and Japan may have to comply with various localized labor laws. When implementing a flexible remote working policy, the policy must be localized to the needs of the US and Japanese employees, balancing standardization with localization.
Assess your readiness:
- Your current HR framework struggles to keep up with the organization’s growth
- HR processes are becoming cumbersome or there’s a noticeable lag in response times to HR-related inquiries as the company scales
- A uniform HR solution is becoming ineffective as the organization scales
- There is a lack of strategic alignment between current HR practices and business objectives.
Sign 2: Business feels the pain
The organization recognizes the need for HR to go beyond operational and administrative work and sees a professional and strategic HR function as key to success. Often, organizations realize this need after “feeling the pain” when struggling to attract talent, facing retention challenges, or finding that employees are demanding more from the employee value proposition.
For example, a tech company facing high turnover rates among software engineers starts to see the direct impact on its product development timelines and overall innovation capacity. The leadership team begins to express frustration with HR’s traditional focus on paperwork and regulatory compliance.
They push HR to adopt a more strategic role in shaping the company culture, enhancing employee engagement, and developing a more attractive value proposition for potential recruits. This shift in perspective is driven by the company’s immediate need to retain top talent and foster a more innovative and supportive work environment.
Assess your readiness:
- Your HR function primarily focuses on operational and administrative tasks, even though your organization requires more robust HR solutions
- Your organization is experiencing difficulties attracting and retaining talent, or, if employees are increasingly seeking more from their employment experience
- There is a gap between business leaders’ expectations regarding HR’s contribution and the current role HR plays.
Sign 3: Leadership buys into a different type of HR contribution
The HRBP model operates in strong partnership with business leaders. Before transitioning to the model, senior leadership should provide sound support to transform HR into a more strategic, business-focused function. This sponsorship from business leaders is critical for the resources, time, and changes in organizational culture needed for the HRBP model to succeed.
Without this buy-in, HR leaders may struggle to fully implement and integrate into the organization.
Assess your readiness:
- There is commitment from senior leadership towards transforming HR into a strategic partner within the business
- There is a willingness to allocate resources and support changes in organizational culture.
Sign 4: Willingness to invest in HR in the short term
The organization is prepared to invest in the necessary resources for the HRBP model to be successful, including technology, training, and moving other functions that do not belong in HR elsewhere.
The positioning of a potential HRBP model needs to be supported by a robust business case that shows its longer-term value, but organizations should know that there will be increased costs in the short term.
Additionally, the company might allocate funds for extensive HR training programs, ensuring their team is well-equipped to leverage the new technology and methodologies. Moving functions like facilities management to a dedicated department could also be part of this strategic realignment, further optimizing HR’s focus and resources.
Assess your readiness:
- The organization shows a willingness to invest in HR resources
- The business is prepared to move non-HR-related functions to other departments within the organization
- The organization understands that implementing the HRBP model will increase costs in the short term.
Sign 5: Openness to change in the HR team
The HRBP model is a significant change, and it is crucial to know whether the HR team is willing to adopt it. Any decision to change should be made by considering the HR team’s feedback and being realistic regarding the need to develop new skills, move into new roles, and work in new ways.
For example, an HR team has traditionally focused on administrative tasks but needs to shift towards a more strategic role per the HRBP model. The team’s openness to learning and adopting new strategies for talent management and business alignment is critical.
This may involve upskilling in areas like people analytics and business acumen. If the team shows resistance, an HR leader may have to consider recruiting individuals with the necessary strategic mindset and skills or investing in targeted training programs to bridge the gap.
Assess your readiness:
- Gather feedback from the HR team to gauge their willingness to adopt the HRBP model
- Evaluate the team’s current skill set and whether new skill development, role changes, or operational approaches are needed
- Develop a talent strategy to either build required skills internally or acquire them externally, recognizing that the change may not suit everyone.
When to not implement the HRBP model
Implementing the HRBP model, while beneficial in many contexts, might not always be the best fit for your organization. Here are three scenarios where adopting an HRBP model might not be ideal:
- Small organizations with limited complexity: The HR model must always fit the business context and needs. If the organization is still reasonably small and has similar requirements and needs from HR across departments, it will be better suited to a traditional functional model. Implementing the BP model will be impractical due to a lack of resources and introduce unnecessary complexity that will slow down execution without providing significant additional benefits.
- The leadership maturity and culture: The HRBP model requires a collaborative business leadership team that believes in building strong relationships between different divisions and agrees that HR needs a strategic mandate. If the senior business leaders, especially the C-suite, do not believe that HR should be a strategic function, implementing an HRBP model will not be successful.
- Organizations with a highly centralized decision-making process: Companies where decisions are made centrally, with little autonomy given to individual departments or units, may not benefit as much from the HRBP model. The model thrives in environments where HRBPs can work closely with departmental leaders to tailor HR strategies to specific needs, which may be at odds with a highly centralized approach.
- Organizations undergoing short-term crisis or transformation: For companies in the midst of a significant crisis or undergoing a short-term but intensive transformation, the focus may temporarily need to be on immediate survival or rapid change management rather than on implementing a new HR model. During such times, the organization’s priorities may not align with the longer-term strategic focus and investment required to successfully implement and benefit from an HRBP model.
Next step: Implementing the HRBP model
The HRBP model implementation roadmap
You’ve identified that your organization faces business challenges that the HRBP model can address, and you have the right conditions for its implementation. What’s next? Strategically planning and executing the transition to this model—you need the right tools to get there.
We’ve developed an HRBP Model Implementation Roadmap designed to guide you through your HR transformation and model implementation. The roadmap provides a 5-step process with questions, considerations, and tools to help you implement a highly functional HRBP model.
Final words
The HRBP model holds great promise for organizations that want a more strategic and impactful HR team. However, embarking on an HR operating model change should not be taken lightly, as this undertaking will create a lot of uncertainty and require strong sponsorship from business and HR leaders to be successful.
If done correctly, the model offers significant benefits to business stakeholders and employees — enabling HR professionals to learn new skills and stay relevant.
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