We often see posts from business publications trashing Human Resources (HR) for being a nuisance or even an impediment to business.  This is tough on our egos as we feel so passionate about what we do and tremendous pride in our knowledge and expertise. No one wants to believe that our services are not valued or in fact restricting operations.

HR today has an interesting struggle between its multiple personalities really. It must keep supporting the business by managing risk of employment and safety legalities, walking the line between employees and managers, and maintaining core practices to track and pay people.  Layered onto this is the need to be the expert in the latest and greatest practices, controlling salary and benefit costs and staying on top of what is happening within the business.

So at what point is a HR practitioner perceived as adding “strategic value”? Our opportunity lies in moving through the following four phases of progressive HR contribution to become a true executive partner.

1. Keeping the employee house in order —

To most organizations this means maintaining the traditional payroll, benefits, hiring and terminating, policies and legal/safety compliance processes operating without errors, managing costs and minimizing legal risk.  Fulfilling well on these functions earns HR the right to work on other things.  When there are errors, legal issues or complaints HR must hunker down to fix them.  Keeping these administrative activities functioning well is time absorbing and often leaves no room for other types of support to the business.  At the same time, just keeping them in order may mean you are taken for granted and overlooked as a partner to the core business.

2. Counselling employees and managers —

Another role many HR folks often take on is counselling employees on their issues and coaching managers on how to manage issues with employees. Providing this safety valve assistance for employees and managers has some further, but limited perceived benefit to leaders.  Since leaving internal HR, I have come to realize that HR fills this role because there is often a vacuum of effective communications between manager and employee. Being an advisor to employees, employee advocate or mediator isn’t perceived by tough bottom-line or client- oriented Leaders.  HR can build their Leader relationships through “advising”, but it is a stepping stone not an outcome.  HR’s time spent on improving managers’ effectiveness in dealing directly with employees has greater impact than being the actual counselor or go-between. Teach them to fish rather than fishing for them.

3. Improving employee productivity and effectiveness —

Now we are start to talk about areas in which HR can demonstrate real contribution to business effectiveness. Ultimately, Leaders value productivity, cost control, service, quality and client experience, period. This means having the right people, doing the right job at the right time and servicing the company’s clients or internal processes to service clients efficiently. HR processes that help to manage performance goals, collaboration, leadership, hiring, succession, employee feedback and organizational effectiveness truly help the business when done well.

Getting Leaders to understand the value of these programs may be more challenging because they are not traditional and often mean added program costs.  To dismiss Leader doubt HR needs to show program impact through employee and business results analytics. HR demonstrates value when employees have clear goals and are rewarded by feedback, attrition drops, job vacancy time is reduced, internal promotion is evident, managers hold robust conversations with team members and employees report to be engaged. And then when productivity and client experience is increased out of HR driven outcomes.

4. Acting like a strategic business partner —

“Strategic business partner” is a fancy HR term that has been thrown around by industry experts for 15+ years. What it means is acting as a consultant to Leaders by providing strong HR and business-supportive recommendations to demonstrate to them you are “in it with them”.  The traditional HR manager can get trapped when they say no first without providing a creative solution. Demonstrating you are a partner means living in the world of “and”.  For example, when a leader wants something that doesn’t fit with a policy a Partner says, “we have a safety restriction to work within and we can help you find the right solution to fix that problem.”

In this world, a HR partner also communicates strategically to show they understand business needs and priorities.  They interpret HR priorities within those business needs and priorities and think ahead about creative solutions for when the business needs them. Leaders won’t avoid HR partners who bring creative options and results, and count on them for genuine balanced business advice. HR will have earned the right as a respected advisor to hold frank conversations with Leaders. This means giving important input on business challenges and giving feedback to leaders about their personal effectiveness when no one else will. The HR partner negotiates with leaders on how HR’s contribution to the business will be measured and celebrated.  In the end, a HR partner is counted as part of the organizational leadership group and together plays a respected role in planning and driving the business.