HR As A Strategic Business Partner Analysis

Analysis of HR as a Strategic Business Partner

What is Strategic Business Partner?

According to the Cambridge Business English Dictionary, a strategic business partner can be defined as:

“An arrangement between two companies or organizations to help each other or work together, to make it easier for each of them to achieve the things they want to achieve: A way of breaking into the market would be to form a strategic partnership with a large player that is already successful in the sector” ("strategic partnership - definition in the Business English Dictionary - Cambridge Dictionaries Online (US)," n.d.). HR as a strategic business partner can therefore be defined as an arrangement between different departments within an organization to help

Provide experiences and resources that drive right development (2014).

The 4R model matches employees whose personal skills match the competencies and goals that are required of the job for which they are hired. Additionally, the goals that the organization wishes to achieve should be clearly articulated to employees, and employee’s measurement and rewards systems should reflect their proven ability to achieve those goals. Other attributes of the 4R model expressed in the book include providing training to employees and learning resources that help to build the capabilities the organization seeks to perform their role more effectively

The balanced scorecard can be defined as a strategic planning system used to align business operations to the strategy of the organization, improve both internal and external communications, and monitor overall performance of the organization and its individual departments against strategic goals. The balanced scorecard views an organization from four unique perspectives: the learning and growth perspective {encompassing employee training and corporate culture}, the business process perspective {encompassing internal business processes}, the customer perspective {including the level of customer focus and customer satisfaction}, and the financial perspective (Kaplan & Norton, 1996). Organizations are urged to develop metrics, collect and analyze data as it relates to these perspectives. In addition to viewing the organization from these perspectives, the inclusion of strategy –maps, a communication tool to visually represent how these strategies work together to create value, enable the organization to improve on the internal processes that make up the business process perspective (Balanced Scorecard Institute, 2014).

Gary Cokins, Founder of Performance Management, LLC writes that a common misconception about the balanced scorecard is that it is designed to monitor results, when in fact its purpose is to report the preselected KPIs whose intent are reflected in executive strategy,