1. Why do you think is it important for HR to be a strategic partner to the business?
Strategic partners (also called strategic allies) are two or more companies that work together in joint ventures. Strategic partners often share long-term relationships and all parties within the partnership strive towards similar goals. Partners also do not get in the way of each other. Instead, they reinforce one another in order to obtain their set business objectives. For an HR department to be a strategic partner for a business, they must understand the strategic plan of that business, and vice-versa. Strategic planning produces fundamental decisions and actions that shape and guide what an organization is, what it does, and why it does it. It requires broad-scale information gathering, an exploration of alternatives, and an emphasis on the future implications of present decisions. Planning simply improves decision-making. And, all levels of management and partnership engage in planning.
It is important for an HR department to be a strategic business partner because it allows them to be able to work in (and with) every other department in an organization. There’s even a strong need for the HR function to adopt a more strategic and business-like approach too. Due to this type of involvement, workers at all stages of employment will become familiar with, and trust, the HR team. Some corporations may even find it beneficial having HR members present in corporate business meetings, so that they can witness every facet of the business (see what the workers are seeing). To truly support the critical objectives of an organization, a strategic human resources planning approach is most effective. This approach is part analytical process and part creating the staffing and services based on the strategic goals, eliminating anything that does not support those goals. A proper HR team should help with moving business in the right direction. In essence, if an HR dept. knows what the goals of the people they manage are, then we will have an understanding of what “motivates” them to move forward.

2. What benefits do you think the employees derive from this arrangement?
By arranging HR to be a strategic partner, employees will develop a greater understanding of how the business that they work for truly functions. This is essential, because employees that are blindly working towards an unknown goal tend lose motivation and question there position. Having HR strategically partnered means that a business will be able to have a direct positive impact on employee performance. A strategically planned HR is able to work with human resources on a more personal level, while maintaining the strategic goals of the overall corporation. It’s all about trust and instilling motivation in my book. HR should have confidence in employee integrity and their ability to achieve results. When corporations forget about the human element, or don’t have a properly aligned (arranged) HR team, negative side effects tend to occur. As in, employees will attempt to restore equity through various means, some of which may be counter-productive to organizational goals and objectives. For an example, employees who feel their work is not being appreciated may work less or undervalue the work of other employees. Another benefit of having an arrangement like this is the influence HR has on change management. Being able to cope with (manage) change is one of the sole capabilities needed to gain or keep a competitive advantage against competitors. Working in team environment is becoming a competitive advantage in today's market too. The synergy of all the teams associated within a business is crucial to overcome obstacles. Having a human resources team that it working with you, worrying about the company’s most valuable resource (the worker), yet keeping the overall strategic goals of the company in mind, is an amazing thing.

3. What do you think are the risks involved (to HR, the organization as a whole) if HR does not make this a priority and instead remains a purely task-oriented department mostly administrative in nature?
Imagine an HR department that was both not strategically aligned with a business but focused more on its administrative duties (tasks) than the employees doing the work. This would mean that the best interests of the human resources department would be the goals of the company, not the overall goals of the humans working there. Honestly, if you ask me, the best interest of those in HR should be the workers and the strategic plans of the business. Both of these things, the workers and strategic plans, coincide with one another. If HR is boosting employee morale, then employees are more motivated and are more likely to be effectively completing strategic goals. The responsibility of HR should focus on the four basic functions too: staffing, training and development, motivation, and maintenance. However, according to the course text, “more than half of all HR departments also offer administrative services to the organization” (Fundamentals, 40).
The risks of a purely task-oriented, strongly administrative HR team would be abundant. Mainly, because this would mean that HR wouldn’t directly be involved in a company’s decision-making process. It’s here where most of the risks would occur too. For instance, this would cause management responsibilities to be improperly distributed throughout the company (change, project, quality, task management, etc.). Lastly, an HR department not forming a strategic alliance with a business would cause a huge disconnection of communication between the two potential partners. This disconnection would lead to things like HR not being completely accommodating to company managers. Managing the change process is very important here too. People tend to resist change because of uncertainty, threatened self-interests, different perceptions, and feelings of loss. Participation, education, communication, facilitation, and force-field analysis are methods for overcoming this resistance.
Works Cited
Fundamentals of Human Resource Management, 10th Edition. John Wiley & Sons p. 40).
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