HR business partnering....

This week during the NHRD meeting, the theme was 'HR Business Partnering'. Even though this topic has been discussed in length in various forums and books, yet it seems very intricate. Has HR become a proper business partner yet??? Of course not in many companies.

Hence it makes sense to discuss this further in forums. Indeed we had a great time listening to Mr D Harish, Leadership Consultant & Executive coach and Tarun Kochhar, CEO, Carpediem .

A few thoughts by Mr D Harish:

• In order to make a transition from HR expert to a HR business partner there has to be a shift from providing answers to asking the right questions, analyzing to synthesizing, controlling to collaborating, supply expertise to supply insights.
• The HR business Partner's job is to Build Trust, Listen for Insights, Providing Personal Guidance, Aligning to the agenda.
• The way forward for the partnership is through contextual business awareness, professional mutuality, passionate commitment and value consciousness.
• A few competencies that would really help the HR business partners are functional knowledge, business acumen, consulting skills and coaching approach.
  

He also mentioned how the HR business partner must have 'selfless confidence' to have the courage to speak what is right for the company's long term goal.

Mr Tarun Kochhar gave insights towards two successful cases: Sathyam Cinemas and Isteel.
He explained how in these two companies the HR team plays a very inclusive role towards achieving the organizational vision. The cases were simple to understand and made a lot of impact on me because I could relate to them especially the Sathyam Cinemas case.

For example: It was observed that Sathyam Cinemas had a major amount of their audience among the 'teenager women' category but their security was a concern initially. However, the HR team recognized this and recruited many more security guards with the right prerequisites [they had strong appearance with pleasant personality]. Also a lot of thought was invested on finer details like their grooming and uniform colour[Bright so that the teenager women could easily spot them and feel secure]. The business leaders were also fully supportive of this because the HR could articulate the need for recruiting the security guards by aligning to the business vision of creating 'magical moments'.