Hi All,
I am in the process of writing an article for the Estonian HR Practitioner's magazine and thought of writing about HR professional's role in Estonia vs other European countries (esp. UK). Whilst in Estonia, HR Manager in essence is still a good Administrator (despite the title of Manager), then more and more I hear my UK contacts using the term "HR Business Partner". I have also looked through the job ads and this term seems to be used a lot in UK. Is the "HR Manager" on its way of becoming a "dinosaurus"?I would really appreciate everyone's views on it and to gain some more insight what the trend is (HR Manager vs HR Business Partner vs HR Architect etc.) and what it in reality means in your country ( i.e. is the title and essence of the role in alignment, what are the companies' expectations to the function, and what HR professionals themselves aspire to be or become).All personal observations, opinions, and experience are very welcome and a great contribution to my writing.
Many thanks in advance,
Katri
Replies
Many thanks for the swift feedback and your contribution- really much appreciated! :)
Kind regards,
Katri
Looks like you've had some great responses to help with the article.
Luke mentions Ulrich and I came across this slideshare that refers to the Ulrich model around HR Business Partnering. It might be useful anyway.
Good luck with the article and make sure you post it in the DPG Community as well :)
Absolutely- got some good material to work with and really appreciate everyone's contribution.
Thank you for the slideshare and I will definitely post the article once it is published. Going to print next week, so very exciting indeed!:)
Best,
Katri
Hi Katri,
The HR Business Partner does usually operate within the manner that Alison has provided you i.e. HRBP's partner with specific areas of the business where they can support business objectives from the HR/people side.
The HRBP model came about from Dave Ulrich who introduced a 3 element model of HR - business partners, centre of expertise and shared service centres. The business partners aim is to be involved in the strategic aspects of HR to prevent getting bogged down in the admin and to support business objectives and add value. Shared service centres are basically an admin centre where all the HR administration is completed. Centres of expertise focus on providing line managers with guidance and support in particular areas of HR; this tends to involve resourcing, reward, performance management and employee relations. This model has been developed over the years but this is the model more commonly adopted. I believe the premise on these developments is that the business partner does not need to be a specific role per say but that HR should be a key business partner and perceived as such.
There a number of companies who have introduced this structure over the last several years and from memory include businesses such as Nestle, Royal Mail and Sainsbury's. You might be able to find more information if you look specifically at these organisations. Clearly these are large companies and have the resources to operate such a structure and therefore the role of HRBP may operate in a different sense in smaller sized organisations.
Hope this provides some useful information in terms of how HRBPs have become a common/popular HR role within the UK.
Luke
I am pleased to hear that the article is going well and glad you found the culture comment useful. I can imagine the word limit is difficult given the issues the topic brings up - it could be an essay given the discussion!
I am happy for you to use the title of Senior given the translation query, 'Advanced' is specific to my company so it doesn't matter too much.
I look forward to seeing the final piece :)
Kind regards
Luke
Just a quick question: is it fine by you if I quote part of your response in my article? If so, then please inform me of your full professional title as well as the company you are working for.
Thank you for the swift feedback and best regards,
Katri
Hi Katri
I did reply to your comment yesterday but having looked at it again today and it doesn't seemed to have worked! I was going to suggest that it might be beneficial if you look at it from cross cultural perspective as well as the economic/financial stance you have mentioned (economics of scale, etc). It might help evaluate why a strategic model of HR hasn't been adopted in Estonia?
Oh and yes, I am happy for you to quote me in your response. My professional title is Advanced Personnel Officer and the company I work for is Horton Housing Association.
Please do share your article on here as I am interested to read the full article - I hope it's coming along well :)
Regards
Luke
Completely agree with your suggestion and have also consulted in that regards with my British mentor who was working in Estonia for 6 months, so some interesting insights also from there.
Excellent, and in am very pleased you agree me to quote you. Just a little specification since I am writing in Estonian: is your title Advanced in that regards as Senior? Just to ensure as some titles can be quite tricky to translate, so want to get the meaning 100% correct. Please advise.
The article is coming along and there is so much to say, yet too strict limits with the allowed number of letters. But I will manage and I will be happy to share it here once it is ready and out from print. :)
Best,
Katri
Thank you very much for taking the time to share your thoughts on the matter- much appreciated!:)
This once again confirms that UK is in practice a "big step" ahead in regards to HRM compared to Eastern Europe, the function and people-related aspects are here considered as soft issues, hence strong administration is the only main need. To my knowledge there is currently only one company in Estonia that has a HRBP and this is Skype. Highly possible that TransferWise will be following the lead, otherwise it is mostly either HR Manager or HR Specialist where the roles in essence are pretty much the same and only title and salary are different. The main issue is that the proportions and the economical scales of organizations are also much smaller than those in UK, hence having a HRBP couldn't be afforded here in many organizations.
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