Take your partners and advance

The transformation of HR has been one of the most dramatic management changes of the past two decades. Organisations have abandoned traditional structures in favour of dividing the function into service centres, centres of excellence and “business partnering” roles.

This revolution has its roots in the work of the American academic Dave Ulrich, who observed and synthesised what many companies were already doing. In his 1997 book Human Resource Champions, Ulrich outlined how HR could be aligned more thoroughly to business processes and make a greater contribution to business outcomes. He identified more than the three roles mentioned above – more recently adding “operational executors” reporting into corporate HR – and proposed that wherever HR professionals work in this new structure, they all are required to work as partners with the business. But, in practice, organisations usually refer to the roles embedded within the business – including operational executors - as HR business partners.