in this video we're going to talk about how people can become good business partners it's a common job title and an important concept that's coming up right now hello everyone welcome to hr shop talk where you'll get some expert insight into hr i'm your host andrea adams i encourage you to subscribe to our show by clicking on the button at the bottom of the screen to continue learning from those who have in-depth hr experience today my guest is todd bassett who's a senior hr leader with diverse experience across a variety of industries including public and private big and small union and non-union he has a saying it's business first and then you sprinkle in hr hi todd how are you good yourself good i'm good so todd you suggested this topic and i thought it was a good idea having been a business partner for a long time so would you share why partnership in hr is important and something you're passionate about well i think uh for me the business partner model as it sounds requires a true partnership so we have to have the business in the forefront of how we can best help them or you know solve different problems and so that word partner is really important to me that's how i view you know the role certainly as a generalist goes of where we've got to be that partnership also is a coach that that partner is also somebody who can be somewhat intuitive of what they're hearing but they really have to understand the business well in what ways do you think hr needs to work at understanding the business i think there's a number of different ways there's certainly the documents that people read but i think that's just a fraction of really what it is i think our listening skills are really important so for example if i have a meeting with a business leader for 30 minutes 20 minutes of that is listening to them asking business questions specifically about what's keeping them up at night operational questions all of those things until the last 10 where i might offer some things that hr can maybe help or support them given on whatever their challenges might be and so really asking thoughtful and curiosity type questions to make sure that you understand the business in a very intimate and direct way the other thing that you know i tend to do a lot of is go out and shadow jobs you know get out there in the field see what they do what why people are attracted to certain work and see if you can see anything glaring out there i've learned a lot from shadowing the front lines just to get a sliver of what their day might look like as a business partner as well in general you're part of the management team so again how you contribute is really important so making sure that you understand every department how it works and i take a systems thinking approach so how is everything interconnected how do things work what is their main drivers and make sure that you understand the business drivers just as much as you need to understand the hr drivers okay so to provide some context the business partner model is prominent right now that's pretty clear if you ever look at a job posting what other models preceded it well historically there it's more of a policing model hr was a very separate department it was very governance driven very administrative driven right it didn't have really any interaction with business other than sort of telling what they had to do what forms they had to fill out when they did it and it really had no business driver element to it except for this is what we have to do yes some of it was legislative driven you know the law but a lot of it was just that hr practitioners were not trained or expected to think of the business outcomes of all those activities so the end user for example we never really focused on that in hr it was just this is what we do this is what we ask of everybody to do regardless if they're busy regardless if for some reason this doesn't make any sense yeah you know and so it was very much of to find out people are not doing it and then basically police them and go from there and that's what historically hr was until it really evolved into the hr business partner model all right uh so what are some qualities of a good hr business partner well i think a couple things i think one is it is a relationship so i think people that are good relationship builders people that communicate well and again listening is a really big piece of that i think people who have an intuitive nature about them to understand their audience to take the cues from them that also have a sort of a broad level of acumen so like we talked about earlier sort of the business side of of things the financial side to be able to toggle back and forth between talking business like pure business and then sprinkling in hr the the other piece is is knowing when to champion something knowing when to challenge something so being confident enough to say you know what that's not that's not the right way to do it here's here's what we should be considering because you're right you know we do have a responsibility for sort of that governance piece but we can do it in a way that helps them self-discover the right thing to do so somebody who has some influencing skills makes a good business partner obviously conflict management you know is one of those ones because again helping people through some of their roadblocks and knows again how to listen well and then how to execute so if you find value in this video hit the like button and my question for you today is what's made it hard for you to be a business partner what have you done about it tell us in the comments section below can i give you an example of a situation i was partied to quite a while ago but it was tough there was a mid-level manager he was quite popular and there was a sexual harassment complaint against him and there was grounds for the complaint and that was tough to see through how do you balance the policing and the partnering well again i think you know policing might be a little bit of a strong narrative to what you're talking about is there is a point where things like what you just described and i've gone through a lot of those myself and unfortunately some of the outcomes of those investigations mean that people who you had a level of respect for people who again like you said were popular you have to kind of draw the line even if you have this at a different level some senior people will say well geez but they do such a good job i wouldn't want to terminate or or have some disciplinary action against them our jobs is really then okay to say broaden the picture out a little bit everybody is replaceable yes there's a bit of inconvenience here but what's the right thing that we want to stand for what are our values of of the company that said we would allow this type of behavior to go unchecked like i've seen it happen where you know again our best advice sometimes is ignored and guess what it happened again then you put the company at great financial risk reputational risk again back to our influencing skills you know we've got to be able to create the clear case to say why this action should be taken remember though that we have to be clinicians we can't be putting our own unconscious bias and prejudice into the mix it actually has to be evidence-based a fair investigation what we're trying to say is the outcome is based on that and not just our own opinion and i think sometimes for hr practitioners that can be very challenging because we've all had personal experiences that shadow our clear thought but i think when you have offenses like what you're talking about which are severe as much as it affects you i think if you have a solid process you've done it fair that even if the outcome is maybe you're going to impact someone's life like losing a job for example at least you can say i'm comfortable because we did the right thing in the right way okay so what advice would you give to someone who's just starting out on preparing themselves to be a better partner you know what i think the 70 20 10 approach to development 70 percent experiential 20 just through others mentoring and 10 through formal education there's not a lot of educational events to talk about hr business partners except for some internal things that are created but i would say is to seek out some mentorship for those that really do it exceptionally well to give some you know some tips and especially as you go through it you and i both know that on a day-to-day basis we have good days and bad days sometimes that the relationship you know goes well and then other days it becomes very hard and and frustrating but i do think you know to protect sorry perfect our skills in listening you know taking a breath and making sure that whatever we do we take a lot of interest in the business and we've got to practice at communicating in business terms and when we present an idea it should be sort of like a business case all the elements should be there just as much on the hr side as it is on the business initiatives that we see and how they get approved as the relationship goes just like you might imagine have some good practices meaning how you stay connected with those that you are meant to support and what things you bring forward to them and adding value of what's your value proposition what i will say though is that we're all individuals and we all approach a relationship a different way we have different personalities so don't be afraid to be yourself either i wouldn't want us all to be the same but there's certain foundational pieces that i think we all have to bring we just have to bring it in our own way that's natural if you're not connected to the person that you're serving it's really hard to get things done so we need to work at being better business partners you might be interested in an episode on performance management an episode on that is coming and i'll add a link when it's available thanks and see you next time