What is an HR business partner (HRBP)

[PunnyRobin]

In our organisation we are recruiting for a HR business partner (HRBP), and ive had it explained a couple of times and even googled it, but im confused, to me Hr manages the people side of the business and then bosses talk to hr etc but where does the Hr business partner fit in with all this, because i cannot see unless they act as the business needs this we hire x etc but then i get confused with it all.

The long story short, in layman's terms can someone explain HR business partner (HRBP) please

In the Civil Service a HRBP is assigned to a particular team of policy makers etc so they have a greater understanding of the needs of that particular operation than a more stand alone generalist function.

its certainly puzzling at best its like the bosses say we want to achieve this, then the Hr business person says to Hr can we make this happen etc but i guess its the details of it all thats puzzling to me

It's like an account manager in an advertising agency - a nominated representative from the HR department who is your first point of contact. In a previous role in the NHS we had about five who were allocated to different parts of the organisation - so our one, let's call her Nancy, was the HR Business Partner for Communications, PALS and Medical Administration. Her colleague, let's call him Fred, was the HR Business Partner for Nursing Staff. Then there were the others who were allocated to Doctors, AHPs, etc.

so is it like having a specialist that knows the hr side of things but also knows what the business project is trying to achieve ?

A business partner is someone with expertise in their area who helps their colleagues in the business with that expertise. So for example:

You need to performance manage someone and have read the policy but have some questions about some nuances

You have a request for flexible working and you're not sure how to handle it

You want to understand what the costs are of the people in your team (if you're a budget holding manager for example) and whether you are within budget or not

Same with any business partner: a Finance Business Partner does the same but for Finance questions. It means your business doesn't expect you to be an HR expert but wants to provide you with someone who is and can make sure HR is managed consistently and fairly across the business

so rather than directly going to any hr worker in the organisation instead you have one nominated that helps your team, say warehouse team wants to recruit x workers and replace fred, instead of general hr request etc its a set person that would help with the plan ?

Think of them as HR managers for a specific dept(s) in the organisation, so they should have dept specific knowledge that an overall HR manager wouldn't have because they wouldn't work as closely with the depts.

so its like the hr business person fills in the missing gaps of when eg a hr worker makes x company wide documents ?

i think im slowly understanding and getting better. much appricated everyone so far

We don't call them that any more, it's the People team and People Partners. Each business unit has a dedicated people person.

I'm trying to buy into it and not find it all just a bit cringe-

so its like different offices eg office 1, office 2, then hr office, the HR business partner (HRBP) would then be in office 2 and if office 2 needs x then they would talk to Hr office to achieve it, then office 1 could be running different projects with their own HR business partner (HRBP) ?

Yes, that's how it worked for us - it was a very large organisation and so it was a sensible way of ensuring that HR strategic expertise was applied where needed. and in your recruitment example Nancy would have managed the recruitment process for my role because she had an understanding of the work that I did and Fred would do the same but for a nursing vacancy.

your first sentence is what i understand, its the whole why we need the HR business partner (HRBP) that puzzles me

I'm not in that role anymore but when I was there wasn't a separate recruitment team - although the nuts and bolts of recruitment (e.g. advertising online, dealing with the shitshow that is Crapita) was done by generalist HR officers.

Elusive and uninterested in our organisation. I presume they do things like analyse the annual staff survey in the hope people will stop moaning about crap pay, awful conditions and rubbish managers.

If the government is serious about sorting out waste in the public sector they could start with HR. Or procurement (not the ordinary workers but the higher ups who genuinely think that scrutinising every request for a box of paperclips is a cost effective way of cutting expenditure). Or God knows, IT....