The 5 Themes That Define Tomorrow's HR Business Partner

Navid Nazemian, Global HR Business Partner at F. Hoffmann-La Roche AG, and acknowledged global HR thought leader – in principle as well as practice – holds forth on the 5 themes that he believes will significantly characterize HR services’ evolution from "shared support service" to "global business partner." Interview by Eva-Maria Winteroll, SSON, Germany Eva-Maria Winteroll: How do you see HR' srole within tomorrow's organizations playing out? Navid Nazemian: The role of HR will evolve fundamentally. I think you can break this down into five different areas: in future we’ll be focusing more on strategic talent management, organization and capability management, business partnering, and return of investment. We are also witnessing the impact of cloud computing, which is becoming more and more interesting to HR. There is significant potential for enhancing the interfaces between shared service centers and the business partners. How is this shift being acknowledged by senior management today? As an executive committee, management in general, and the CEO in particular will have the following perspective on the Chief HR Officer: they will come to see the head of personnel as atrustworthy and efficient partner, and managing employee demographics will be a key role. Irrespective of which study we consult, is generally agreed that there willbe a shortage of human resources in future. The question is thus: how will the Chief HR Officerdeal with that? Scandals, reputation management, etc, will all be on the agenda, as well, as they are relate to and in the long run will lose all their own only ad in. If you look at what has happened in some big companies in the last years, and the effect that this has had on the organization as a whole – the same issues will continue to move onto centre stage in future. Equally important will be the flexible management of employee costs. Take some of the market-listed companies in the US and consider how they have shouldered health care costs over the last thirty, forty years. Today, that is no longer sustainable, so I think that this is something that will become highly relevant, too. But there are also areas such as technological innovation, and the improvement of the profitability of employees. [inlinead] You’re calling this HR Transformation 2.0. What distinguishes Transformation 2.0 from other transformation projects? During earlier transformations, the focus was more about HR roles and costs and the discussion was around defining these roles, and deciding which areas and processes could be managed internally and which ones should be outsourced. Part of this discussion was an evaluation of which infrastructure was most appropriate given this new constellation. The goal, from the start, was often to downsize the role of HR, and shift from administration to effective business partnering as a secondary effect. From the present point of view, this is far too narrow a perspective, and, incidentally, it did not lead to the cost reductions that were hoped for. So cost is still a key topic. In HR Transformation 2.0, cost effect or infrastructure are not the main arguments. It's about HR solutions. Which solutions can we, and do we want to, offer to internal clients? From there, you can deduce the capabilities that are needed in an organization, and only then can we think about costs and infrastructure. Accordingly, the focus is on solutions with the client in mind. Dave Ulrich, who has published a lot on this subject, calls it the outside-in approach. Let’s project the "HR-as-a-business-partner" perspective forwards. What does the future look like? I think the question is not so much around which models we should establish, whether administration is completely outsourced or whether it stays inhouse, or even whether you re-incorporate it – because that is even happening now … from my personal perspective, none of that is decisive. What is relevant is whether the business model achieves the goals that were set out beforehand – whether these goals are product related, cost related, about the distribution of roles, or about process. In the medium and long run that's what has to happen within the cost limit that was stipulated from the start. And the solutions have to reach a satisfactory quality, as well. Again, I see the greatest potential in optimizing HR interfaces. So when it is all about how business partners interact with centers of excellence and other shared services teams, these are the kinds of topics we will need to be considering for several years to come. Editor's Note: Any statements merely convey the personal opinion of the author/interview partner.

The 5 Themes That Define Tomorrow's HR Business Partner

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