HRM 498 Week 5 HR as a Strategic Business Partner Example

Earning a Seat at the Bid Table: Redesigning Front Range Infrastructure Group's HR Function as a Business Partner With Analytics, Clear Roles and Measures Leaders Trust

[Student Name]

University of Phoenix

HRM/498: Strategic Human Resource Management and Emerging Issues

Week 5 Assignment

[Instructor Name]

[Date]

Front Range Infrastructure Group and all details are composites written for a model paper; HR models and research findings come from the sources listed and are stated generally.

The firm studied throughout the capstone now has a strategic HR plan, a change plan and positions on emerging issues. Its HR function, however, still spends most of its time on payroll questions, benefits enrollment and paperwork, and its leaders learn about bid decisions after they are made. The chief executive asked the chief people officer what HR must become for the plan to succeed. A strategic HR plan needs an HR function built to carry it out, with the structure, data and skills to influence decisions before they are made. This paper redesigns the function.

Models of HR's Roles

Ulrich (1997) described HR professionals as playing four roles: strategic partner, administrative expert, employee champion and change agent. A function that excels only as administrative expert leaves the other roles empty. Ulrich et al. (2012) later argued that HR should be judged from the outside in, by its value to customers, investors and the business, rather than by its internal activities.

Assessing Front Range's HR Function

Front Range has 22 HR staff for 1,800 employees. About two thirds of their time goes to transactions, payroll corrections and benefits questions, and recruiting is handled reactively by generalists. HR receives the bid pipeline only after decisions, so staffing problems surface when projects start. Leaders see HR as helpful but not strategic, and several operations leaders admitted they rarely think to involve HR until a problem has already grown.

The Redesigned Operating Model

The new model has three parts. Business partners, one for each region and one for the engineering division, work with operations leaders on workforce plans, talent reviews and organizational issues, and attend bid strategy meetings. Centers of expertise in talent acquisition, learning and development and total rewards design programs such as the project manager academy and pay structures. A shared service center, with an online help portal and a small team, handles payroll questions, benefits and records, freeing business partners from transactions.

The Seat at the Bid Table

Each business partner will bring a staffing assessment to bid strategy meetings: whether qualified project managers and engineers will be available for the project, what hiring or reassignment would be needed and the risk to other projects. Bid decisions will consider staffing capacity alongside margin and risk.

Workforce Analytics

Marler and Boudreau (2017) reviewed evidence on HR analytics and found that its adoption was still limited and that its value depended on linking HR data to business outcomes and on analysts' ability to answer meaningful questions. Front Range will start with three questions leaders ask: Can we staff this bid? Why are project managers leaving? Which engineers are ready for the academy? Answering them requires combining HR, project and finance data.

The Capacity Model

The first analytics product is a capacity model that matches the bid pipeline against project managers and engineers by skill, region and availability, forecasting gaps six and twelve months ahead. It turns staffing from a surprise into a planning variable.

Turnover Analysis

A second analysis links project manager turnover to workload, project type, pay position and manager, identifying which factors predict departures so that interventions target causes.

Measures Leaders Trust

HR measures will be tied to business outcomes in the HR scorecard from Week 2: the share of available bids the firm can staff, retention of project managers, how many academy graduates win promotion, how quickly engineering roles are filled and the share of projects finished on schedule. Activity counts, such as courses delivered, will be tracked internally but not reported to the executive committee.

Building HR Competencies

Business partners need business knowledge. Each will spend time on project sites, attend project reviews and learn the basics of construction finance, such as how a project's margin is earned. HR staff will also build analytical skills through training and by working with the finance team.

Staffing the New Model

The redesign does not add many people; it changes what they do. Of the 22 HR staff, five become business partners, eight move into centers of expertise and seven staff the shared service center, with two analysts hired over the year. Generalists who become business partners receive training in workforce planning and business finance. The shared service center's online portal and knowledge base are expected to resolve about 60 percent of routine questions without staff involvement, freeing the capacity the strategic roles require.

What HR Will Stop Doing

Partnership also means stopping some work. HR will no longer produce monthly activity reports that no one reads, approve routine schedule changes that managers can handle or run generic training programs unconnected to the strategic plan. Dropping low-value work is as important as adding new roles.

The Employee Champion Role

Partnership with leaders must not crowd out advocacy for employees. HR will keep engagement surveys, open channels for concerns and fair processes, since trust from employees is part of what makes HR valuable to leaders.

Risks

Business partners could be pulled back into transactions if shared services are weak, so service levels will be monitored. Leaders could ignore HR's staffing assessments, so the chief executive will require them for every bid over $20 million.

The First-Year Agenda

In the first quarter, the chief people officer will appoint business partners and launch the shared service portal. In the second, the capacity model will be piloted for bids. In the third, turnover analysis will inform retention actions. In the fourth, results will be reported on the scorecard and the operating model reviewed.

Conclusion

For Front Range's strategic HR plan to succeed, HR must move from processing paperwork to shaping decisions. A three-part operating model frees business partners to work with leaders, workforce analytics answer the firm's real questions, outcome measures build credibility and business knowledge equips HR staff. With a seat at the bid table, HR can help the firm stop turning away work for lack of people.

References

Marler, J. H., & Boudreau, J. W. (2017). An evidence-based review of HR analytics. The International Journal of Human Resource Management, 28(1), 3-26. https://doi.org/10.1080/09585192.2016.1244699

Ulrich, D. (1997). Human resource champions: The next agenda for adding value and delivering results. Harvard Business School Press.

Ulrich, D., Younger, J., Brockbank, W., & Younger, M. (2012). HR from the outside in: Six competencies for the future of human resources. McGraw-Hill.