What Makes HR a Strategic Partner?

Headnote

The Strategic Partner Role

The HR function has at least three identifiable roles that it can play. Its longest-running role is the delivery of clerical and administrative services, often consisting of satisfying legal and administrative compliance requirements. During the last several decades HR has been encouraged to increase its activities in a second role-business partner. In this role, HR is expected to implement and deliver HR practices and services that support the organization's business model and meet the demands of managers and employees.

The last 10 years have seen an increasing call for HR to take on a third role - strategic partner. In this role HR is a member of the senior management team and is directly involved in the major business decisions of the organization, including the formation of strategy, the design of the organization and the implementation of the business model (Lawler, Boudreau & Mohrman, 2006). These three roles can also be thought of as corresponding to a paradigm reflecting compliance, services and decisions, respectively (Boudreau & Ramstad, 2007).

The case for HR being a strategic partner is becoming stronger, as it rests on the reality that human capital and how it is organized are increasingly pivotal to organization effectiveness. There is ample evidence that how human capital is recruited, developed, organized and managed has a direct and strong influence on organizational performance (Huselid, 1995; Lawler, Mohrman, Sc Benson, 2001; Combs, Yoimgmei, Hall, & Ketchen, 2006). Thus HR leaders can make important contributions to strategy development and implementation, as well as improve the quality of decisions related to strategy and talent.

It is one thing to say that HR should be a strategic partner; it is quite another to define what that looks like and what it takes to make it happen. In this article we present data from a continuing study of the role of HR in large U.S. corporations. The study is a joint effort of tbe Human Resource Planning Society (HRPS) and the Center for Effective Organizations at the University of Southern California. It began with a survey of HR executives in 1995, and has continued with surveys every three years since then.

The most recent data were collected in 2007. In 2007, senior HR leaders in 106...