What should be the Role of HR as a Strategic Partner in an organization?

According to David Ulrich,

Strategic Partner is about alignment of HR activities and initiatives with the global business strategy and it is the task of the HR Management and HR Business Partners. Sometimes, it sounds easy to implement Strategic Partnership, but it needs a lot of effort from Human Resources.

As I mentioned in an earlier forum therea are 4 important cultures a company can adorn which are 1)club culture-OB oriented 2)role culture-HR oriented3)task culture-strategy oriented and 4)existential-finane oriented.

Of this the firest three are cash Hogs which doesn't care for the value creation for stake holders. The last is a value creator and works for perpetual existence. Usually HR oriented companies face disuruptions and turmoils too.

The present slump in world economy can be attributed to companies everywhere adorning HR oriented culture expecially in US where they moved away from existential culture to role. Look at GM where they are an ISO 9001 company and they are facing bankruptcy.

The trouble is these cash hogging nature disrupted the credit offtake in the intermediation sector making it more risky to lend and disruruption resulted.

Predominently existential trained I believe others need to co-exists rather than take predominent positions in every type of corporate cultuer so that there can stable flow for the economies everywhere.

As a strategic partner transform Human Resources as Human Capital (i.e. Asset) of the organization.

Today any organization is looking for investment on Human Resources who has ability to think beyond the subjects. I mean Highly Analytical & Strategic thinking professional rather then professional who follow the normal process. We are living in competitive edge and market so, every department have the role to play equally & meaningfully. HR being strategic needs to play the role of Value creator to the organization in terms of recruiting high quality professionals, creating new policies which helps them no just to retain there talent but also get the best out of them. HR needs to be more innovative and creative in terms of policy making, policy implementation, and bring new dimension to the company. HR needs to build there employees as very competitive and update them on various new technologies and process in the market.

HR department has gained importance in the recent past with conglomerates going through turbulences and coming out with more complex business formation and benchmarks. Most of the professionals in this forum have presented an apt viewpoint on what would make HR a Strategic partner to an organization.  

1. As a department, the HR needs to comprehend the client centricity. It needs to focus on business trends, vision and innovation impacting the client needs. The HR should be the think tank in an organization looking at ‘what next’ all the time essentially in a phase where there is expected ambiguity. HR should be recognized as an advisory council that has bundles of strategies to implement when business comes running to them either for talent delivery or talent engagements or any such requirement that holds a huge impact on this business.
2. HR in the making of strategic partner need to have HR specialists/scientists who have a knack of everything ranging from business knowledge to business scope under given constraints. They ought to be aligned with all the functional areas impacting business to gain an acumen helping deliver solutions. Such standards will go long way to caption HR as a ‘Thinker’ and hence a key strategic partner.
3. Execution of the “Human Capital” concept at all levels in an organization drives HR closer to being a strategic partner. Some of the organizations have managed to leverage on this area but in the larger context we still have attritions, retrenchments, standing buffers, etc.  Some of the assets slowly turn into liabilities. A constructive approach where HR pumps its innovation, experience and creativity together to hone the potential of the acquired talent; counsel and train them based on competencies and utilize their worth in the right direction. It would lead to effective work results and pave way for organized cultures within the periphery of an organization.
4. It’s fundamental for HR to showcase itself on Value-metrics, Profit-scale, growth sustenance charts in the same way as business grows on profit and growth proportions. More & more banking of business on direct HR involvement would play vital role in shaping HR as Strategic.  

I think this question cannot be answered before truly understanding the "True" role of what exactly is needed / desired from HR. Policies, resource optimization, motivation, organizational developement and all such activities are just simple activities and not "core purpose". The core purpose of any HR should always be to create and maintain "Organizational Culture" that is conducive to growth.

Have you ever heard of any organization where individuals have grown but the organziation hasn't? NEVER. Organizational growth is a manifestation of success of fusion of individual growth, resource utilization and strategic compatibility of all internal players involved. But then isn't this fusion also called "Culture"? and that is the first primary responsibility of a HR. To create this culture and to ensure that it is maintained.

Every other activities like OD, Resourcing, Training, Policies etc are meant to ensure that this Culture is maintained. Can a HR do it on their own? Never. This needs to be an exercise driven by the top management with facilitation by HR. HR would need to be the FACE or the HOLE ( as a friend noted in his comments..:-)), while the heart and soul has to be the Top Management.

If the culture is well set and conducive to growth then everything else becomes easier.

Cheers

Navneet Chandra  

Human resources are nothing but our five sensible organs.

A person shall be treated as a HR Manager who knows to make the workforce in an industry to obey the Top Management, by the way of...

Hearing the Management orders, whole heartedly...

Communicating with the stakeholders (in verbal) for the total harmony

doing the respective jobs with good performance.

Thus, a HR Professional shall be a value creator for having more than profit in the competitive market

To make all the human understand that they are resources...

and take their consent to take some money and make a lot of it.

HR in all reality is the CORE of the HEALTH of an organisation for me!!

I remember a hilarious wall repartee... Its all about our human parts arguing with one another about who's the GUY!! Almost all the parts have some responsibility attached ot it and so when it came the turn of the ***hole to speak up.... Well its just shut down!! Guess who is the boss of the organisation??

Jokes apart, I feel that HR needs to be all that and not just a functional arm of the org. For me it has to be strategic in terms of recognising need of professionals in the org, fill in gaps and hence be integral in the overall GROWTH and HEALTH of the org. After all as the old adage goes... HEALTH IS WEALTH!!

Strategy has two main characteristics: first it looks at broad corporate objectives and second it is concerned with long time horizons. HR is a department which exists at functional level like marketing, operations and finance. When we talk of HR being a strategic partner it would probably mean HR department helping implement the strategies which have been decided at corporate level. HR department will have a strategy at functional level but this strategy must be derived from the corporate strategy. For example, if the company strategy is to achieve a ten percent market share in the rural market, the HR department should formulate a strategy of recruitment, training and HR policies which would help the company achieve this objective. So, if you want some of your people to nee work in rural areas, you need to formulate a new set of HR policies which would be relevant to a rural posting and encourage people to take up such postings. Normally, HR department works in simply implementing old policies rather than rethinking in terms of changing environment.

Ideally HR should contribute as a strategic partner in achieving organizations goals and objectives and in a way it contributes by way of recruitments, trainings, career growth, career planning, mentoring etc. Any good organisation would have a very strong HR department contributing to the overall growth of the company.

However, practically the top management's focus in other areas such as sales, operations, finance and marketing .So the HR is not allowed to probably reach its potential i.e to contribute as a strategic partner!