(Re)Designing the HR Organization
Amy Kates, Downey Kates Associates

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any HR functions have gone through the process of transformation over the past decade. This redefinition of the work of HR is intended to allow a more strategic focus on talent management and organizational capability while systematizing
HUMAN RESOURCE PLANNING 29.2

and controlling the cost of transactional work. Little formal consideration has been given, however, to how these new complex HR organizations should be configured to best achieve these goals. This article highlights the operational challenges created by the most common organization design used by HR departments—the

business partner model—and presents an emerging model— the solutions center—that is intended to address these flaws. Each model is described and discussed and a set of considerations for the HR leader is offered in order to maximize the effectiveness of the chosen organization design.

Over the last decade there has been a profound shift in the work of the HR function. The publication in 1997 of David Ulrich’s Human Resource Champions spurred HR leaders across various industries to realign their organizations in order to undertake “strategic business partner” work. At the same time, a focus on cost-cutting and efficiency aimed at staff functions in general—and at HR in particular—has pushed much HR transactional work into shared services or to outsourced vendors. For many HR departments, this process of “transformation,” as it is popularly called, has been a wrenching experience. It has required rethinking the fundamental role of the HR function and shifting the definition of the HR “customer” from the traditional focus on the employee to an almost total focus on the management ranks. The goal has been to create an organization that can deliver the necessary, daily (but low value-added) transactional