Glenn Templeman - The HR Business Partner Handbook: A Practical Guide to Being Your Organization’s Strategic People Expert

Developing a strategic mindset is an essential skill for all HR professionals. It is never too early to develop such a mindset and this book neatly shows you how.

Dr Dina Gray, strategy academic and consultant

A step-by-step roadmap on how to be a simply brilliant and fulfilled HR business partner. Eloquent, funny and thought-provoking by turn, in an age of machine learning and HR bots, it is heartening to focus on the human nature of this role and how a really effective HR partner to a business area can make a transformative difference. Sage advice for all in HR, regardless of which stage they are in their career.

Sarah Stacey, Director HR Business Partnering, NATS

A compelling read for both aspiring and practicing HR business partners, written in a style that is informative and relatable and equipping those navigating the perennial challenges of this keystone HR role.

Nick Sloan, FCIPD, HR transformation specialist, management consulting industry

A great insight into strategic thinking with practical applications and a wealth of real experiences. A valuable read for all those in HR who want to make a difference.

Nigel Daly, FCIPD, HR learning and development specialist

This is an incredibly helpful, easy-to-read book with a witty slant. It provides wise advice and is an essential read for HR professionals and people leaders alike.

Rachel Gardner-Poole, Chief Operating Officer, innovation and technology sector

The HR Business Partner Handbook is one that the profession has been waiting for. It is a complete guide to understanding the depth and breadth of the role of an HR business partner and the value it can bring any organization. Coupled with expert insights from Glenn, it will help you to achieve day-to-day excellence through its informative and empowering approach as it sets out expectations to help anyone be an awesome HRBP.

Whether youre new to HR or looking to transition from a HR generalist or specialist role, this incredibly practical guide is a must-read on your journey.

Andrew Mina, People and Customer Experience Manager, HR SaaS company

This is an excellent read. It provides valuable insights, guidance and advice to someone starting out on the course of becoming an HR business partner the sorts of insights which you dont normally get from a textbook. It gives the reader a glimpse into the authors own personal story and his views on what makes a strategic HR business partner stand out. It is thought-provoking and offers a really interesting perspective.

Elaine McIlroy, employment and immigration law firm partner

Before we begin this journey together, I want to take a moment to attempt to contextualize the content of this book for you as best I can. In human resources, as in life, there are many aspects of one-to-one communication that are non-verbal. Throughout this book I wish to speak to you directly and individually as if we were having coffee together. After all, what cannot be solved over coffee cannot be solved at all.

So primarily, I need you to understand that I am a person who prefers to communicate, and influence, through the medium of relationship. I do not expect anyone to heed my words unless they are already invested in the relationship with me. Which is where writing a book for people, whom I have not met and do not know, to purchase and consume is a little concerning for fear of being misunderstood. Therefore, I have expended considerable effort to articulate and present my thoughts in what I hope is a relationship-based way, the way I would to a colleague or friend. Im treating you the same way. I want you to get to know me through the reading of this book, to understand my way of thinking, and in turn grasp the heart and intention behind the words.

Most of all, I wouldnt want you to misunderstand what I will say in the pages of this book in case you were to miss something that could be of benefit to you or those around you. I want to help you however I can. I hope in this preface I can give you a little context to set us on course to establishing our personal relationship through which I can communicate my experiences and ideas on this subject we call HR business partnering. Relationship must come before instruction.

Not many people would profess to feeling called into a life as a human resources professional. In fact, most HR professionals I have spoken to throughout my career have said they simply fell into human resources as if by the work of a random career selection generator, dishing out career choices at the pull of a lever. Calling aside, it does seem many of my HR colleagues have made a conscious decision at some point early in their working lives, or academic studies, to pursue a career in human resources.

Things were a little different for me. I cannot say that I fell into human resources as it was instead something that I actively chose to pursue a career in before I entered the workplace, strange as that may sound. For me, HR was a career path that was floated whilst I was still in secondary school. Other students in a similar position considering future career choices will more often select doctor, firefighter, police officer, engineer, or of course for a younger cohort, astronaut! Seldom if ever would you hear a young person say they wish to become a human resources professional when they grow up! For me, I did not want to be any of those things, but by the time I was finishing secondary school I did know one thing for certain whatever I were to do next, working with people would be my main aim and the most important factor of any career choices.

Throughout my life up to that point, I had not been particularly excellent at mathematics, science or anything of that sort, but instead, to put it simply, I was good at people. In my case this manifested not only in having a wide group of friends but also being comfortable with befriending the full spectrum of people in my sphere. The realization that there was a people profession, a career in being good at people so I thought, made HR (or personnel as it was still often referred to back then) the ideal fit for my lifetime aspirations of working with people. Little did I know how these simplistic ideas would all play out more than 20 years later.

In the writing of this book, my thoughts and ideas are not constructed from a place that I happened upon by pure chance or happy coincidence. Instead, the ideas presented for you in this book are the result of a sense of vocation, a feeling of calling, borne out of a genuine, natural and unforced interest in people as my perpetual motivation. Nothing is interesting to me without people in the equation.

I am, at the very least, an advocate for human resources professionals, but I have personally discovered that I am also really rather biased towards my belief in the absolute benefit to the business world of perfectly constructed HR business partners. My belief in the power of a good HR business partner is unrivalled, there are no limits to what they can achieve where people are concerned.

Therefore, this book is not intended to be an even-handed theoretical study of the pros and cons of the role of HR business partners, although it does go some way toward that. Instead I hope you find it to be a somewhat biased and entirely partisan view of the very essential role a valuable HR business partner plays in business. It is my own love letter to HR business partners everywhere and I make no apologies for that. Hopefully, as a reader of this book you werent expecting anything less!