The document discusses the role of the HR function and how it can add strategic value. It notes that the HR function is under pressure to prove its relevance. To address this, the HR function should align its systems and practices with organizational strategy so employees are committed and goals are achieved. However, many HR functions are criticized for being inefficient and not understanding business realities. The document argues that for HR to add value, it needs to operate as a strategic business partner by developing people strategies to support organizational objectives and evaluating whether training and development initiatives are achieving their goals. Acting in this role of strategic partner can help HR gain recognition and justify its place within the organization.

1. How the HR Function Can Add Value as Strategic Business Partner
Samuel Tengey, PhD
Introduction
The human resource (HR) functions (departments) in many
organisations have been brought under intense pressure in recent
times largely due to developments in the external business
environment. Questions have been raised about the relevance of the
HR function. Although HR functionaries tend to defend their
importance, it would appear, in many organisations, there is little
clarity about precisely what role the HR function should be playing,
and how it should go about doing so. This paper summarises these
and related background issues, and answers the WHAT and HOW
questions raised above in order to position the HR function in its
appropriate place and improve its capacity to add value and increase
recognition accorded it in organisations.
HR theory holds that when HR experts design and implement HR
systems, policies and practices in alignment with organisation’s
strategic direction and business strategy, the organisation can more
quickly reach its goals through its people. Realising their objectives
coincides with many organisational objectives, employees commit
fully to the organisation, and the organisation no longer requires

2. relying solely on control to get its employees to do the right things.
Ideally, HR is a strategic function, serving as consultant to senior
management. Where the HR function knows, becomes proactive
about, and plays its role effectively, an efficient organisation,
stronger than any individual, evolves. In the absence of this, top
management and some individuals can, and tend to wield unbridled
power, and the entire organisation comes to be subsumed in the
mercies of the former. But what is this role and how should it be
played? I explore these questions further.
Background and Context of HR Experts’ Work
External Environment
The role of the HR function continuous to be more and more
challenging and complex due to several factors, including:
• Challenges of the current business environment: competition,
cost-constraints, innovation, instability, sophistication of
customer demands;
• Technological advances: new discoveries, methods, IT
revolution and its application to business processes –
producing losers and winners;
• Globalisation and its implications for the job and labour
markets, business processes, customer demands, employment
practices, diversity, etc.
• Changes in the structure of organisations, including the
development of virtual and networked organisations, and the

3. resultant need for a change in approach to managing
organisations’ HRs.
Internal Environment
In many organisations, HR has not performed excellently, leading to
several criticisms being raised against the HR function, such as:
– Little understanding of the business environment, corporate
and business strategy, and cost-efficiency issues
– Most HR proposals lack a clear link to business realities, hence
are seen as unrealistic, uninformed, wishful thinking
– Most HR officers can only perform mundane personnel
administrative duties, even so, often in very inefficient ways
– HR functionaries have been and continue to be used as a tool
for management control of employees rather than as voice for
employees; hence
– HR functionaries, including some HR directors are mere rubber
stamp and toothless dogs
Public Sector Organisations
In public sector work environment, the complexity and challenge of
HR role is further exacerbated by certain century-old, lingering
realities:
• The non-profit orientation, which constrains the judicious
application of economically rational and cost-efficiency
approaches to workplace and workforce management

4. • The use of grades and seniority - not necessarily skills,
expertise and experience, contribution and performance - as
the fundamental consideration for promotions and pay
determination
• Bad, negative work habits, which eventually build into
pervasive, deep-seated organisational norms /culture, and
impede efficiency
• Non-performance culture, lack of results-orientation, hence
performance-related and contingent pay systems have at worst
not been known, and at best not been successful
Perceptions about the HR Function
Various segments of management and employees certainly have
their perceptions about the HR function – and it is important to
ascertain these. The following summarise statements from my
students on MBA programmes as well as from participants on
management training sessions I facilitated.
– Top and other senior management: HR as those with no ideas
or little understanding of the realities of business?
– Middle Management: HR as department which redundant staff
are asked to go?
– First-line Managers: HR as lazy people with little to do?
– Employees: as tools used by management to control them?
– Unions: as failing to champion their cause?
HR Function as a Strategic Business Partner

5. One way of adding value is for the HR function to view itself and
operate as a Strategic Business Partner. Acting as a strategic
partner, the HR function devises strategies and plans to develop
people, processes and systems that support the organisation’s
strategic plan and its implementation. Under this role, HR will
have responsibility for:
– Developing the people components of strategy
implementation
– Training and Development interventions
– Coordination between HR, line managers and Heads of
Departments in determining training needs, training content
and training providers.
– Evaluation of training and systems to ensure that they both
direct and support strategy implementation
– Controlling, monitoring, and evaluation of progress on
aligning people development with the organisation’s strategy
– Helping various departments to device their strategy for
implementing their portion of the strategic plan, if there is
one.
In conclusion, whether or not HR people would get taken seriously
when they talk or engage with CEOs and their Boards will depend on
not only the fact that they are professionally qualified practitioners
but that their activities are adding real, measurable value to the
business of their employers. After all, the employer’s ultimate
objective is not to develop policies, train staff, reward staff, provide

6. welfare facilities and the like; it is to make profit or deliver value (in
the case of non-profits). These HR activities must demonstrate that
they are a means to an end; otherwise, HR staffs are simply a drain
on the employer’s payroll. In other words, the continued inclusion of
the HR function must be continually justified. Well, contact me via
mcsam3000@gmail.com or better still, visit
www.strategicresourcers.com for more.