As an HR partner I’ve found the following things to be mindful of:
-Lack of Strategic Connection between HR Leadership team and the broader org. HR Leadership team seems very detached from the business and HR team realities.
Level: HR roles are levels very low in comparison to the leadership teams they support. I’ve been in other organizations where the HR partner role is mapped within a similar peer group as the direct reports to the main business leader supported. In Microsoft, an HR partner is usually between 2-4 levels below those of the supported organization leadership team and +5-7 levels below it’s main business customer. This creates a real gap in the experience/ maturity level of the partner and the supported leadership team, which does not allow the function to really step up at the strategic level the function expects.
-Workload: HR partner orgs are extremely lean and not only interacting with the direct business customer bit also with a number of COEs in HR, which is similar to other models. However, the big level of variability between one org and the other is such that the HR partner ends up filling a number of gaps without the appropriate resources to do the job. COE’s are also very disconnected to the business strategy and needs which often results in the need to customize. There’s opportunity for better alignment.
Empowerment: Given the two items above, the HR partner role is not as empowered as what I’ve observed in other similar roles with much smaller business scope.
Long work hours: You can expect very long work hours.
Career progression: very slow. Talent stay very long years in their roles. Due to the limited number of VP roles, growing to a leadership level position is very unlikely.
