Essential HR Business Partner Skills in 2024
Want to excel at your job as an HR business partner? We’ve got some essential skills to master to become a better HR business partner.
The role of an HR business partner is dynamic. You must think and plan strategies for talent acquisition through proper communication with business leaders and human resources managers.
In addition, an HR business partner does not recruit, but they do help with all hiring processes. The major skills required in a human resources business partner role are decisive decision-making, sheer determination, and leadership.
This article provides details on the essential skills you must acquire to become an HR business partner.
1. Networking and Relationship Building Skills
Networking and relationship-building skills help an HR business partner communicate with SMEs and business leaders to perform their day-to-day duties. These skills also boost work efficiency.
Below are practices that enhance your networking and relationship-building skills:
- Friendliness: Being friendly with junior and sometimes senior colleagues, such as an HR manager.
- Respect: Respect affects your ability to develop networks and positive relations with HR managers and business executives.
- Interpersonal Skills: Interpersonal skills are tactics that an HR business should adopt for effective networking with colleagues.
- Active Listening: Active listening means paying full attention to what an opposite partner or co-worker says.
The HR business partner must be proficient in communicating with leaders and executives from different backgrounds. It is also essential to understand the right strategies for a business in the mind of SMEs.
Good networking skills allow an HR business partner to connect with experienced workers to seek:
- Professional tactics of hunting the right talent for a position.
- Tips to hunt for ads that add value to a business and help accomplish the business objectives.
Thus, networking and relationship building are two of the most fundamental skills required as an HR business partner.
2. Cross-Cultural Skills
In addition to that, sometimes, a potential employee belongs to a different culture. Thus, an HR manager must have cross-cultural skills, which means:
- Embracing agility: Agileness is the ability to understand personal opinions. As multinational companies are expanding globally, workers from different cultures and nations are present. Thus, agileness allows us to understand their point of view.
- Facilitating meaningful conversations: Insightful conversations promote cross-cultural awareness in the organization, thus creating better working environments for employees from different cultures.
- Being open-minded: For an HR business partner, being open-minded is an elementary trait. Open-mindedness allows for digesting one’s culture and customs. Such practices develop better working environments.
- Increase awareness: Awareness provides the power to influence. It leads to clear communication while understanding the intentions of employees of diverse backgrounds. Thus, it is a mandatory skill an HR business partner must-have for effective communication. An HR business partner must also have cultural awareness of the regions in which an organization operates.
This means that having a sound understanding of:
- Different business practices in a specific region
- Compensation frameworks
- Various labor laws
An HR strategic business partner must have diversified thinking to understand different cultures, labor laws, workforce-leading tactics, and the approach of an HR manager and other employees. This way, an organization can become global, diversified, and cross-culture competent.
You can master all these skills for the HR business partner role through our certifications:
3. Digital Literacy Skills
In an HR business partner’s role, digital skills play a huge role. Big tech companies prefer candidates with software proficiency. Here are the four most important digital tools an HR business must be well-versed in:
- Collaboration tools: These tools aid HR business partners in training, hiring, and onboarding talent. They also allow nonverbal communication, making it easy for different HR teams to communicate with human resources professionals.
- Developmental tools: Help HR business partners judge performance metrics, manage labor statistics, and perform other technical tasks.
- Digital analysis tools: Allow HR business partners to analyze employees’ performance and efficiency. Such tools also assist human resources business partners conduct statistical analyses of massive employee datasets.
- Software management tools: Allow an HR business partner to manage their team. As most HR department workers work under an HR strategic business partner, proficiency with a digital human resources management tool is mandatory to manage their tasks.
An HR strategic business partner can also require various digital tools for technical tasks like:
- Business intelligence
- Data visualization
- Decision support
- Information sharing
Thus, a human resources business partner’s role is dynamic and strategic, so proficiency with digital tools and software is a fundamental requirement.
4. Analytical Skills
Analytical skills are necessary so the HR business partner can take clues from analyzing the ongoing market trends and a competitor’s organizational strategy. Good analysis skills allow identifying potential candidates for a role, thus allowing an HR business partner to hunt for the right potential in favor of the business’s objectives. Some specific analysis skills are:
- Research: Research aids the analytical skills of an HR business partner, helping them understand market trends.
- Data mining: Data mining allows an HR business partner to gather insightful information. With proper data mining skills, an HR business partner can analyze tactics for profitable business production and employee operational adjustments.
- Troubleshooting: Through proper analysis skills, an HR business partner can troubleshoot the hurdles an HR manager faces in finding the right candidate. Troubleshooting enhances one’s ability to analyze.
On top of that, data analysis is a mandatory requirement to become an HR business partner. Through proper data analysis, they can evaluate:
- Labor needs
- Job applications
- Performance metrics
- Productivity monitoring
Analyzing business from these standpoints enables effective HR business partners to enhance their strategic planning skills. Furthermore, this allows them to become more productive in planning for uncertain situations and competitive markets.
5. Integration Skills
Integration is the ability to embed technology in the business to enhance work efficiency and drive more leads. It also means integrating two skills for better results. By mastering these skills, you can choose the right technology moves and generate more work leads in your HR business unit.
An HR business partner can increase worker engagement. Good employee engagement leads to effective business communication through the use of the right tech tools.
However, this must be done carefully as a slight mistake in choosing the wrong tech tool can sometimes hinder the worker’s productivity by increasing workload. This situation may also lead to employee frustration, which is a loss for the business.
Thus, professional integration skills are mandatory for an HR business partner to increase work efficiency; therefore, driving mode leads to a business.
6. Business Acumen Skills
Business acumen is a fusion of knowledge and the skills gained from the experience. Here, knowledge refers to understanding business and HR processes, and abilities refers to tactics to embed that knowledge into the business for the best outcome. You can enhance your business acumen skills with these tactics:
- Understand the core business principles: By understanding the core principles and business objectives, you can acquire good business acumen skills.
- Proficiency in internal and external operations: As an HR business partner, you can leverage acumen skills by understanding internal and external business operations and spreading them in the HR department.
- Strategic tailoring of the policies: Good acumen skills demand that an HR business partner be able to strategically tailor their policies so they can serve the business to its fullest.
- Grasp the understanding of how a business works: If an HR business partner can grasp the understanding of how businesses work, they can not only enhance their business acumen skills but also use this knowledge to create business strategies that drive more leads and enhance the business’s competitiveness.
Apart from that, business acumen is not just about having the right skills; it also requires understanding the risks and rewards that might result from a process.
To understand this point, let’s consider a manufacturing industry that manufactures sewing machines. If an HR business partner does not know the whole process behind the manufacturing of this machine, they can’t succeed in their role.
Thus, a human resources business partner must be both business and tech-savvy. As you already know, an HR business partner’s role varies from industry to industry, so a sound understanding of industry-specific technology is necessary for effective work in the HR department.
7. Strategic Planning Skills
A human resources business partner must be able to analyze the latest market trends and embed these trends into their business with a strategic plan. In addition, as a human resources business partner, you must understand the business strategy to embed the new HR strategy into the existing one without disturbing the workflow.
HR business partners adopt the following four roadmap steps to implement a strategic plan:
- Planning: HR business partners plan a human resources strategy to find suitable candidates for a role and then present it to business leaders and stakeholders.
- Prioritizing: An HR organizational strategy rarely is done on time. So, certain sections are prioritized in the implementation. Some factors in the talent acquisition strategy are prioritized based on the business goals.
- Execution: Executing a strategy is time-consuming to obtain the desired results of how well that strategy is performing. But still, they execute the developed strategy and start recruiting candidates according to prioritized factors.
- Measurement: After some time, HR business partners track employee progress and productivity metrics to judge how well the strategy performed in recruiting the right talent for a seat.
Strategic planning is not just limited to planning and implementing; it also includes evaluation skills. When a new strategy is implemented in a business, the human resources business partner must evaluate how well the execution is performing and thus take mandatory steps to either remove or improve a strategy section.
In general, a strategy allows for determining a business’s future vision and objectives. Thus, it is a crucial skill that HR business partners must exhibit for the HR department.
8. Advocacy Skills
The primary job of a human resources business partner is to advocate for the business in its support. This process also involves the advocacy of business employees.
A company cannot succeed if its workers are not treated and rewarded well. This prevents a business from unwanted outcomes, lawsuits, and dissatisfied employees.
If the employees are taken care of, they work their best, and thus, a business generates more leads. So, a human resources business partner must evaluate whether the employees are being treated well, as employee treatment affects strategic planning and business productivity. This is why advocacy is an important skill.
9. Ability to Address and Transformation Skills
An HR business partner advocates how organizations change their work strategy to do business. This also demands aligning business objectives with personnel decisions. Usually, HR business partners adapt this road map:
- Identify: A human resources business partner identifies a plan and creates a human resource strategy.
- Address: Effective implementation of the plan requires good addressing abilities. You must effectively address the changes and the need for these changes to business employees so they are aware of the future goals and work.
- Transform: Transforming without negatively impacting the business and employees. Good addressing leads to exceptional business transformation with more leads.
Thus, good addressing skills and the ability to transform a process into a more productive process are mandatory skills.
10. Communication Skills
Good communication skills are one of any employee’s most basic yet fundamental skills. Such skills are required in situations like
- Executive presentations
- Business crisis
- Unwanted conflicts
- Negotiations
As these complications are of different levels, such as employee-to-employee conflict, business crises among stakeholders, and presentations to managers, proficiency in different communication streams is necessary.
Good communication skills come from:
- Listening: The more you listen to others, the better knowledge you gain to talk like an expert.
- Understanding other’s level of comprehension: You can only make the best out of a conversation if you are aware of the opposite party’s level of mind. This way, you can talk to them on the same page and thus improve your communication skills.
- Proper use of body language: To make a greater impact and achieve effective communication, you should learn to use body language and posture while communicating.
- Thinking before speaking: Abrupt talking is a non-professional tactic, thus thinking before speaking is a great tactic to enhance your communication skills.
In short, it is fundamental for HR business partners to have good communication skills to manage the executives and stakeholders and to add value to the business with insightful additions.
11. Stakeholder Management Skills
Understanding the political landscape is crucial to doing the right business. This can only be done by:
- Gaining awareness through business leaders’ and stakeholders’ points of view. You must know what they know and how they imagine a human resources strategy they want to implement.
- Appropriate dealing with the executives through good stakeholder and human resource management skills allows effective communication in the best favor of the business.
Above, we have provided a detailed insight into the skills of an HR business partner. In addition to these, you must exhibit a problem-solving nature to tackle hurdles and conflicts that arise in a situation. You must also know what tasks to prioritize in the best interest of the business. Good strategic and workforce planning and efficient stakeholder and human resources management skills are the most fundamental skills of a human resources business partner.
Take Away
To become an HR business partner, you must exhibit strong potential in technical, digital, cross-cultural, and communicational skills.
Check whether you have the potential to master the skills mentioned above or not. You can also learn them through our Human resources course and later apply them to your dream HR business partner’s job.
FAQs
Here are the most frequently asked questions about the HR business partners:
What qualities define successful HR business partners?
Successful HR business partners typically exhibit strategic thinking skills, allowing them to align HR practices with organizational goals. They understand the broader business landscape and can anticipate the organization’s needs. Effective communication and interpersonal skills are also essential, particularly in fostering positive employee relations. These qualities enable HR business partners to act as trusted advisors.
How does strategic thinking benefit HR business partners?
Strategic thinking is crucial for HR business partners as it allows them to develop and implement HR practices that support the overall business strategy. By anticipating future challenges and opportunities, strategic thinkers can create proactive solutions that enhance employee engagement and productivity. This forward-looking approach strengthens the HR function and positions HR as a key player in driving organizational success.
What role do HR practices play in employee relations?
HR practices are foundational in shaping employee relations and establishing the framework for communication, conflict resolution, and employee development. Effective HR practices foster a positive workplace culture, where employees feel valued and heard. When HR business partners implement thoughtful practices, they enhance trust and collaboration, improving performance and retention rates.
How can HR business partners enhance their strategic thinking skills?
HR business partners can enhance their strategic thinking skills through continuous learning and professional development. Engaging in workshops, seminars, and mentorship programs can expose them to innovative HR practices and strategic frameworks. Additionally, collaborating with cross-functional teams provides valuable insights into different business areas, further refining their ability to think strategically about HR initiatives that drive employee relations and overall business success.
If you are new to Human Resources and are looking to break into an HR Business Partner position, we recommend taking our HR Certification Courses, where you will learn how to build your skillset in human resources, build your human resources network, craft an excellent HR resume, and create a successful job search strategy that lands you a sought-after HR Business Partner job.
