US industrial company moves to the HR Business Partner Model

The company’s HR function was operating with an old model of HR generalists supported by experts in Compensation,  Benefits and training. As part of the expansion of the business the approach to ‘managing the workforce’ was put under review.

We found HR Managers to be deeply embedded into the company’s operational locations  and global HR guidance was limited to the scope of merit increases. The client asked us to bring in an up-to-date HR service delivery model:   

• Broadening and strengthening the role of CoE for Compensation & Benefits, Training, Talent Development. This included a redefinition of their mission to become thought leaders within the organization.

• Training all HR Managers on the new role as HR Business Partner; they became expected to be knowledgeable in the business as they were seen as eye-level counterparts to local top management.

• Creating an HR community to exchange knowledge, mutual coaching and collaborate on bigger changes like a new Human Resources Information system (HRIS), Talent Management systems and Training approaches, ultimately operate as one unified function.

All this allowed the organization to create a best practice high value place to work, with an innovative, empowered, strategically managed workforce, new hires were much faster up-to-speed. Employee engagement scores neared global HPO standards (81%) and attrition went down to 2%.