The future of HR Business Partners

“Human Resources Business Partner” (aka HRBP) is a common job title among Human Resources professionals. This type of HR job was first introduced in 1997 by Dave Ulrich who included the HRBPs as one of the pillars of a new organisational model for the HR function he described in his book Human Resource Champions. According to Ulrich, the existence of the Human Resources function makes sense as long as it contributes to the organisation's competitiveness through a set of management practices that need to be aligned with the business strategy and other particular circumstances of the company. To ensure this value contribution, Ulrich argued, companies needed to rethink the way most HR departments were organised combining functional specialists (payroll, industrial relations, training, recruiting, etc.) and generalist roles (typically HR Managers). Ulrich proposed an alternative structure where most administrative and