Everything in a name- BHRP is next frontier in HRM!

BHRP- Does this mean anything to you HR folks? Possibly, you might shrug it off as a typo error instead HRBP! Are we that consumed in our own selves that we even refuse to recognize assembly of alphabets in a certain fashion? Let me clarify to you, BHRP stands for Business Human Resources Partner. Without even going into semantics, this particular arrangement of four-words makes strong case for ‘self-discovery’ by Human Resources function at best and a common-sense meaning at worst. Let’s go into the literal meaning of BHRP and it turns out to symbolize each business representative as a human resources partner. You might wonder if all this efforts as a mere jugglery of words! Hey, no way, pause a while and try to see the deeper sense coming out of this pattern. All these bring us to the topic- Has HR chewed more than it can eat? Name HR today, and you can picture the guys attempting to play catch-up in possibly every hue of business function. Sometimes, it goes to the extent of being over-jealous in guarding and furthering its own turf. HR in business process re-engineering, strategy meetings, reorganization, cultural sensitization, diversity & inclusion besides the usual stuffs such as hiring, staffing, performance appraisals, L&D, talent management and the list goes on. Time is ripe for setting the house in order and it calls for a transformation in approach.

Simply, Too much to digest!

While no hint is being made that HR shouldn’t proactively engage business, listen and learn from it and accordingly, intervene through multitude of programs and initiatives. There are certain scopes where it needs to create space, enable and let-go. BHRP is one such concept. Simply put, it seeks to create every business-representative a HR custodian- be it, talent management, L&D or performance appraisal . HR needs to democratize itself within and outside of the function. Difficult to let-go of things, right? Here comes handy the digital technologies- S.M.A.C acronym for Social, Mobile, Analytic (read, Big data) and Cloud. These technologies have level-played the game. Every constituent right from the prospective employees, new-recruits up to the CEO every-one is as empowered or as much vulnerable. Recent developments at Mozilla are still fresh in minds. What it means for HR? Philosophically put, let-go of the control to gain command and be more effective in partnering the business. The trend is deepening and showing up in some progressive and out-ward looking companies

Competition over Collaboration

I recently read this piece somewhere- it briefs one of the new product launches for Microsoft. Chairman Gates was on the dais and towards the end of his presentation to the audience when the screen popped out ‘Battery low- remaining 6%’. Enough to create flutter among the scores of Microsoft staffs supervising the show. They realized that someone had forgotten to plug-in the power source.

People started to scurry around to fix the glitch when suddenly Steve Balmer sprang up from the front row in the audience and stopped the guy from doing so. He announced to the audience that this was a real opportunity to showcase that their products can weather out such challenges and sudden demands on the performance of such products. Thankfully, Bill’s presentation went through uninterrupted.

This event reveals the underlying mindset behind the man- the then CEO of Microsoft! Under his leadership the software giant grew almost ten folds in sales to ~74 billion dollars. It is still regarded as an epitome of meritocracy and technocracy at their very best. The hallmark of Balmer’s leadership was of ruthless competition within and outside Microsoft. While this helped the software behemoth gain the pole position, it bode ill for certain softer aspects of organizational competitiveness. Examples might include innovation, organization-wide culture of listening and sometimes setting up for failures!

The bigger question that I ask here, do some leaders obsess with over-competitiveness at the cost of collaboration a culture of risk-adverseness? How do these elements build the soft-power of organizations and societies? Leaders must reflect on these traits and encourage them in teams and societies in order to ward-off many of the current conundrums facing the legendary software company.