What is Business Partnering? To understand business partnering we’ll start by identifying who are Business Partners. This may help you determine whether you are one or should become one. Here’s a start: Business Partners are practitioners of critical business functions like HR, Finance, IT, Legal, Project Management, and others. They’re internal consultants. These professionals act...
As a Human Resources (HR) or Support Services professional, you have expertise that is critical for the survival and growth of your organization. You have expertise, and you can offer it by playing anyone of three consulting roles at work. Unfortunately, you may often find yourself being underutilized, overworked with transactional tasks, and being told...
As far as buzzwords go, “flexibility” is now rivaled in prominence only by the novel work model it is so often used to describe: hybrid work. Together, these words have taken over the way we speak about the future of work and constitute a whole series of new ways to think about the further integration...
Having a hybrid work schedule is one of the few things a majority of workers agree on these days. In one survey, for example, almost 70% of US firms say they plan to adopt some form of it. In other countries, the demand from workers is at least as high. Plus, there are plenty of...
Returning to in-person work can be a tricky process that comes with a complicated mixture of feelings. Whether you’re excited or anxious about reentry, you can expect being around other people to require a lot of energy that you probably haven’t had to expend in a while. Why is in-person interaction such a drain, and...
The pandemic has challenged managers as never before, but one powerful leadership strategy is being overlooked, say Boris Groysberg and Susan Seligson: Be kind. “Three things in human life are important. The first is to be kind. The second is to be kind. And the third is to be kind.” —Henry James As a professor of business administration in...
If there ever was a year when corporate leaders were made to feel how little control they have over events shaping their organizational future, it was 2020. The upheaval of the pandemic; the switch to remote work en masse; the protests for racial justice; political strife and growing tensions have created a challenging, tumultuous environment....
Remote work options were supposed to keep employees engaged and loyal. The latest jobs data shows it isn’t quite working out that way. The Great Resignation. It’s been the headline of the day and the topic that looms large at any company trying to snap back to business quickly. The question is, which group is...
Chief human-resource officers in Europe say a shift to employee-centric policies is long overdue. The pandemic is a big factor in their thinking, but process fatigue has been building for some time. For years now, human-resource leaders have found themselves on a cost-efficiency treadmill that applies analytics and big data to existing HR operating models. Their...
How many of us are currently living without margins — the space to handle life’s simplest stresses. I know I’ve fallen into this trap myself. It can happen after being mentally stretched and dealing with chronic stress for too long. Basically, we are left with zero margin for error. It also means that we don’t...
