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

My experience of HR Business Partners is that they are there to advise and consult on larger projects and strategic issues. They didn’t get involved in any problematic employee issues - these were for line managers to deal with.

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) ?

Sort of. They're basically part of HR, but only look after the HR functions for their nominated depts. it means they have a more in-depth knowledge of the depts they partner for which an overall HR director wouldn't have and can provide strategy and advice specific to that dept.

Ours are like HR consultants - so, suppose a manager is considering agreeing a pay-rise for someone, they might send the details and rationale to the HRBP to get their expert view on it. Or if a large scale people thing is happening, like awarding annual bonuses, they will send out timescales to everyone and be on hand to answer queries. I've always thought it must be an interesting role.

Eww. Sorry, but no. We aren’t there to manage.

HR officers then. Providing specific HR support and advice. Note your organisation may have BPs working in a different way to others...

so in a sense a trouble-shooter but that can handle different projects as needed rather than being in only one dept ?

holy trinity

I don't work in HR but where I work it's like this:

HR team - offers support re recruitment, sickness, absences, PIP, disciplinary matters etc - day to day general stuff. (Operational)

HRPB - offers much more support on Hugh level strategic planning. I.e restructuring, changes to long held key positions, overall impact on staff numbers given automation changes, strategy to increase Gen Z retention rate, etc (Strategic)

@PunnyRobin Look at this CIPD fact sheet. Tells you everything on their web site.

so its like manager a says can we do this project , eg the overviews of it, then the original depts eg Hr then handle the nuts and bolts of it ?

They are specialist, strategic partners to specific areas of the business and know the area they partner with in great detail. They will be working with the senior leaders.

To use a building analogy (not 100% accurate but might help you)…

They’re like architects, they’d partner with the client to understand the full vision, what the end goal is and then advise on ways to achieve that, using their expertise to highlight things (usually legal) to consider, experience from other projects on how to achieve things the best. They’ll help to work out a plan for how to achieve it.

Once that high level work has been done it’s then usually handed to the builders (HR Managers / line managers) to actually implement on an operational level.

A Business Partner and a HR Manager can be quite different skill sets.

so its like they figure out what x dept wants, then highlights the details and whats needed, then eg they pass it to hr or eg office supplies dept and says x dept needs all of this ?

its my way of trying to figure it out, to me it seems an unnecessary role,

so its like the peace maker between departments where one wants to achieve x, the other wants to achieve x, so then you would be the go between and try to achieve x ?

IME, it's just a fancy title. It's an HR adviser assigned to a specific department. So you'd have an HR business partner for Legal, one for Finance, one for Communications etc. Just so there is a named point of contact between the other departments and HR.

what exactly are they ment to do ?

Nope - that is an HR Adviser.