Twenty years ago David Ulrich presented a new concept asking HR to move away from administration and routine and to become strategic. By using new technological developments (newly developed software, the internet, and the segmentation of HR services) he created the foundation for HR to become a ‘business partner’. However, contemporary HR departments still seem be dominated by administrative tasks, now executed by new IT systems. This is reinforced by the Roffey Park “Management Agenda 2014” which states that the vast majority of HR professionals view themselves as “too reactive” spending “too much time on unimportant things” (p.33). Working as a consultant in HR I am confronted with these realities and the impact of Ulrich’s model on relationships between HR and its customers. By interviewing experts and surveying line managers and employees, the evidence indicates that the relationship between HR and employees faces disturbances, as benefits from business partnering are not obvious to HR’s customers. Hence, HR is at a crossroads as a function; it can either contribute to business by using current (and future) technological tools, or increasingly lose significance within the business. This research develops an ‘in-partnership’ approach that aims to re-connect HR and business. The in-partnership approach addresses relationships and helps to overcome the segmentation in HR by entering into a dialogue between HR and business. This research therefore provides novel insights into HR by understanding the importance of the relationships with the different communities which need to benefit from Business Partnering, allowing a useful contribution to practice that values the relationships to HR customers, internally as well as externally.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:739294 |
| Date | January 2017 |
| Creators | Lischka, Andreas |
| Contributors | Simpson, Colin ; Ward, Philippa |
| Publisher | University of Gloucestershire |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Source | http://eprints.glos.ac.uk/5446/ |
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