How to Become a HR Business Partner

Planning to be an HR business partner and have all the required skills for this post? If you are at the right point, you benefit yourself with a detailed guide explaining how to become an HR business partner with the correct skills. Today, the HR business partner graph has taken an upward trend in businesses. The HR business partner position is the main goal of many of you. In the role of HR business partner, you get deep into real business problems. You play the role of a bridge between business leaders and recruiters to maintain a line of connection between the hired talent’s competency and the business mission. Furthermore, as an HR business partner, you determine whether acquired talent is necessary for passive business growth. In this blog, we shall be discussing how to become a HR business partner.

Who is an HR Business Partner?

The vital role of filling the gap between a company’s business side and human resources is carried out by the HR Business Partner (HRBP), allowing the latter to achieve its goals. They include the company’s value as well as decision-making, mostly when there is a change in the organization. HR business partner’s main focus is on the managers of the company by providing them with the necessary services that cater to their needs. The line managers understand the company very much, and so the HR business partner has very close cooperation with them to decide its priorities which will be crucial. HR business partners are more likely to be in place in bigger companies and are sometimes responsible for managing numerous employees. Usually, the more workers they supervise, the more important and strategic the role they are playing. An HR Business Partner (HRBP) may have varying roles within an organization.

• Operations Manager – Establishes reviews and monitors preexisting policies and procedures.
• Emergency Responder – Who prompts instantaneous solutions for acute emergencies
• Strategic Partner – designs and applies strategic plans aimed at solving major challenges across the organization.
• Employee Mediator – The role of the employee mediator is to assist in establishing some solutions for urgent issues regarding individual employees.

How to Become an HR Business Partner?

Different kinds of HR soft skills that an HR business partner should have to support in achieving his/her goals would be considered. Let’s look into how to become an HR business partner.

Step 1: Attain the certified HR Business Partner credential.

There are no high schools, colleges, or universities that are designed in a form so that the subjects are such as the HR business partners. But, you may still be asking yourself how you acquire the skills that are necessary for this job. In addition to the established online learning courses found at well-known online platforms, there are also detailed courses designed for HR business partner roles. Additionally, a valid certification will normalize your journey as you lead to becoming an HR business partner. Taking classes online provides you with the opportunity to knowledgeably communicate with HR managers and executives so that you can effectively perform your role. Obtain a sound technical knowledge of what a strategic partner for business in HR should know. Along with this, you need to acquire knowledge of the techniques of effective workforce planning. The terms listed below are things you should know before applying to be an HR business partner:

• Business strategy
• Human resources rules
• Strategic planning
• Business partnering
• Organizational development
• Diversity
• Business leadership
• Executive communication skills
• Human resource management

Step 2: Learn how to be an HR pro and know the business partnership.

The HR business partner’s attitude is deeply strategic and complex. Besides the vocabulary of tech terms, working along with business leaders, and sharing ideas with stakeholders and holders of the enterprise is the later-mentioned task. The following are key essentials for any HR business partner to be aware of:

• Demonstrating proficiency in specified hardware products and digital tools 
• Data analysis skills
• Business strategies
• Cross-culture competencies
• Ability to obtain good outcomes by evaluating results side by side.
• Supervising HR operations and redistribution of money.

As an HR business partner, you have to learn how to support business expansion. HR business partners are tasked with helping the HR director and the organization maintain its long-term goal through the hiring of qualified personnel. In addition, being able to distinguish between short- and long-term strategic goals is helpful. It is especially important because you will be assigned to HR managers and other HR professionals’ offices to transmit the information so that they can recruit the right person who brings more leads to the business. Additionally, expert HR business partners practice the techniques of hiring and perform the screening process correctly by a job description. Furthermore, it is key to analyze how to allocate the HR budget between the top management and the high positions.

Step 3: Acquire critical thinking

You must acquire strong critical thinking skills. This enables you to think objectively, logically, and empathetically. This is the skill you will require the most to become an HR business partner and the ability to think beyond the box and help propel the business in a positive direction. Hence, learning to develop and create a critical mentality sets you up to have a diversified way of thinking which you can use to think of alternate strategies and solutions that are bias-free and in favor of your team as well as the entire organization. Besides that, when you get a solid grasp of the companies’ management and human resources policies with critical thinking, then this leads to an understanding of how to do strategic planning. Leadership skills are highly affected by diversity in knowledge too. Above all, it is excellent interpersonal skills that will aid you in sharing the business vision properly within the HR team and ultimately leading to the right talent recruitment and employee engagement.

Step 4: Provide trainees with business acumen skills

Taking into account that this kind of knowledge is complex in understanding business principles, operations, HR processes, and business goals. For the HR and functional partner’s role, it is imperative to understand the technicalities of other departments’ operations working as a routine most of the time. Keeping in mind that, sustaining a young firm’s business acumen is one of the most vital skills you can pull off so that you can develop HR policies and activities that perfectly mesh with the company goals. So in this case developing such a mindset creates benefits for your company, directly results in increased revenue and profit, and allows you to develop skills that improve your business thought process.

Step 5: Grower stakeholder management

Apart from being aware of the outside, the stakeholders should also be internal factors. External stakeholders refer to your customers, business partners allied with your agencies including the government. Although internal stakeholders include business employees, executives, and directors, their influence is enormous because every organization sets out to achieve its mission and vision. The job of a stakeholder involves balancing business goals through constant intercommunication. In this case, the best way of stakeholder management skills is to know who their first ones are and then do the identification of these stakeholders. Finally, keeping in mind the influence of the stakeholders, define the reason why you are handling and communicating with them. It is no longer possible to execute business functions without correctly referring to the communication tool. Therefore, effective management and successful communication with the internal and external business stakeholders require the ability to operate digitally.

Step 6: Be a negotiator.

For productivity, building a great negotiation skill with HR business partners is very necessary. If you’re intent on going into the facilitating function in HR, then you must learn to negotiate. High negotiation abilities sometimes help to incur the best performance, not only from the employees but also from the other stakeholders of the company; it brings no extra costs spent. Hence, it is pivotal to control the unhealthy views of winning and losing. Good negotiation can be done only if you know your opposite party; hence you know enough to go deeper with your stakeholders and your employees. Furthermore, make sure to control your emotions as emotion-based strategies are shown to account for the best solutions in some cases.

Step 7: Create a full-fledged understanding of HR Partnership.

Getting a certificate and understanding the HR business’s basics is not enough to start an HR business partner career. An in-depth knowledge of each of the smallest details is also given. Having an “Agile” working principle helps businesses adapt to changes as the market becomes more uncertain, especially in global/local markets. Businesses sometimes experience difficulty because once they identify particular challenges, they need to quickly upskill the business, adapt, and hire people who can match the organizational requirements.

Step 8: Seeking a degree in human resources is a must

Whatever the role may be you have to possess certain general skills to be a successful occupant for this position. In the hierarchy of skills, we can mention the fact that it is necessary to have at least a bachelor’s level degree, preferably in business or human resources. Among the junior roles, i.e., HR associate executive, a bachelor’s degree in human resource management is preferred and among the senior roles, for example, HR business partner, organizations prefer a bachelor’s degree and specialization in strategies. This also applies to the minimum requirement that a person should at least have a four-year bachelor’s degree to apply for this kind of job. On top of that, it can be added to your CV as well. 

Step 9: Practice your business partnership skills and get experience 

For sure, you are asking yourself which is the right course of action if you don’t have specific experience in the field of Human Resources. Don’t worry. Experience, too, has some categories, and you don’t necessarily have to work for some corporation or group. The major purpose is to verify whether the skills you have fit in context or not. By searching on the internet for a relevant task, you can do that task and try to match the outcome of it. Besides that, freelance work and paid/non-paid internships are great ways to perfect your skills during your studies. While this is not widely practiced, many firms take in freshers and train them according to their business plans. More importantly, we recommend that you practice your skills as this will increase your chances of getting selected. At times this phase is useful in the progress of a business career in a good partner role. Previous work experience as an HR manager and HR generalist can also provide a solid ground for career growth.

Hopefully, the foregoing guidelines will provide you with all the details on how to become an HR business partner.