1. Ulrich’s model of HR

2. Four key roles
Strategic Partner – Aligning HR and business strategy: ‘organisational diagnosis’
Administrative Expert – Reengineering organisation processes: ‘shared services’
Employee Champion – Listening and responding to employees: ‘providing resources to employees’
Change Agent – Managing transformation and change: ‘ensuring capacity for change’

3. The Ulrich Model

4. Strategic Partner
Working closely with senior business leaders on strategy execution. In particular designing HR systems and processes that address strategic business issues: a big departure for HR from the responsive approach adopted in the past
Most commentators agree that today’s HR function needs to be much more business focused
In practice this means being more customer-focused; cost efficient; innovative, and structured in such a way that it can quickly respond to changing priorities

5. Administrative Expert
Practitioners operating as Administrative Experts can play a strategic role; an example would be putting together a business case for implementing a shared service, something which if not implemented effectively can damage the employee relationship

6. Employee Champion
Employee Advocate or Employee Champion is a core HR role. HR has to represent employees, protect their interests and make sure that strategic initiatives are well balanced
HR runs regular Voice of Employee satisfaction surveys to identify gaps in the corporate culture and HR and managerial practices
HR ensures that employees have a fair chance to apply for new roles in the organisation
HR runs training and development sessions to develop skills and competencies of employees
HR leads initiatives to improve the experience of employees in the organisation
HR manages the regular grievance and compliance procedure to ensure that employees enjoy fair treatment from the management

7. Change Agent
The change agent is a second strategic role of Human Resources
HR participates in change management teams and takes the responsibility to communicate changes internally and gain the trust of employees
HR leads initiatives to prepare employees for change
HR plans the internal communication and intervenes to plans to make them achievable and understandable by employees.
HR plans training sessions for employees and helps them to gain new skills and competencies, which are required for a changed role
HR updates job descriptions, consults changes with employees and helps them to transform their job habits
HR continuously collects feedback from employees, transfers it to teams and requires project teams to introduce changes and adjustments, which are positive for employees
HR supports changes in the organisation and leads initiatives to make changes easier for employees.

8. Research by CIPD
Research into the changing HR function indicates that although Ulrich’s model appears to be a popular structure adopted for the HR function in the UK, in practice less than 30% of survey respondents had introduced the model in full. A further 30% indicated that they had partially introduced the Ulrich model

9. Three-legged stool
Research identified that a variation of Ulrich’s model the ‘three- legged stool’ model has been adopted by several larger organisations when re-structuring their HR function. Broadly these three functional areas include:
Shared services, Centres of excellence, Strategic business partners

10. Shared Services
A single, often relatively large, unit that handles all the routine ‘transactional ‘ services across the business
E.g. Resourcing, payroll, absence monitoring and advice on the simpler employee relations issues
Shared services’ remit is to provide low-cost effective HR administration

11. Centres of excellence
Usually small teams of HR experts with specialist knowledge of leading- edge HR solutions
The role of centres of excellence is to deliver competitive business advantages through HR innovations in areas such as reward, learning, engagement and talent management
Some major multinationals have ‘centres of expertise’ focused purely on developing the HR talent pipeline

12. Strategic business partners
Senior HR professionals working closely with business leaders influencing and steering strategy and strategy implementation
The role can vary enormously depending on organisational size and business priorities
Some activities may include – organisational and people capability, longer term resource and talent management planning, intelligence gathering of good people management practices internally and externally

13. In groups Do you think it works – why?
Why would organisations embrace it?
What organisations would it work best in? – think of sector, size of organisation , institutional etc
How does the environment influence the approach used – think of culture, national/regional/global etc

14. Does it work?
For business partnering to work successfully there needs to be good working relationships between HR practitioners in different functional teams. If not, the reputation of the whole HR function will be in jeopardy. As business partners work more closely with seniors they are the ones that will have to deal with negative feedback about the HR function overall

15. Why are organisations embracing business partnering?
Cost efficiency – The introduction of shared services is seen as being particularly important to achieve savings, these cannot be realised without other roles operating effectively
Accelerating competition – HR has become central to business competitiveness. Organisations need HR functions that can deliver skilled, creative, motivated, flexible and committed employees
Rising expectations of HR – Organisations are beginning to expect more from HR. Business leaders will ask how their own HR functions need to change to make real differences to their businesses

16. Implementing business partnering
Ensure that there is a clear rationale for the proposed changes and that it is a joint decision between the business and HR
Assess and prepare the ground for change
Ensure sufficient time to openly discuss partnering, what it means and what adjustments are needed both within HR and across the wider business
Assess the skills needed to perform the business partner role

17. The challenges
The capabilities required by business partners are different to those required in other HR roles. They need to develop different skill sets, such as:
Strategic thinker
Consultancy skills
Relationship management
Expert networker
Business and financial understanding
Change Management
Influencing and political awareness skills

18. Finally - beware
Some writers have commented how HR, with its increasing allegiance to strategic business partnering, is taking its eye off employee needs. It’s important that the need to engage employees, so they are willing to give discretionary effort, is not overlooked!