HR’s Role as a Strategic Partner: Driving Business Success Through People Strategy

Leena Nair is currently trailblazing in the couture industry as CHANEL’s Global CEO, but luxury handbags and fragrances is not where she started. Serving as the first woman CHRO at Unilever, Leena dedicated 30 years of her career to transforming Unilever’s company culture and HR strategy.  

In a Learnerbly interview, Leena discusses why traditional HR practitioners struggle to connect their actions and metrics to better business outcomes.  

“We have such a complicated life in HR. These performance management systems are such a waste of time — instead of discussing which box someone should fit into, discuss the person.”

Leena’s vision for HR at Unilever started with how its people strategies could impact the overall profits of the company. By utilizing predictive analytics tools, she discovered that retaining a certain number of people would save the company $50 million in profit. That number turned a lot of heads.  

“HR should be laying down the road, rather than filling in the cracks.” - Leena Nair, Chief Human Resources Officer at Unilever

Leena’s success at Unilever stems from shifting focus to more impactful and human HR. She dedicated a lot of time inserting herself into business conversations, understanding the overall operations of the company and connecting the dots with how their teams are directly impacting results.  

Leena’s time at Unilever proved that by positioning HR leaders more as business leaders who specialize in HR, companies with these strong HR partnerships experience better retention, innovation, and profitability.

What does it mean to be a strategic partner in HR?

This concept of HR as a strategic business partner rather than just an administrative function is what led Unilever to become an adaptive company culture, rather than a reactive one.  

A strategic human resources business partner is someone who aligns human resources initiatives with business objectives to drive organizational success. Instead of focusing solely on traditional HR functions like payroll, compliance, and recruitment, a strategic HR business partner works closely with business leaders to shape workforce strategies that support long-term goals.

Key responsibilities of a strategic HR business partner:

• Aligning HR goals with business objectives: working closely with executives to ensure HR initiatives contribute to revenue growth.

• Workforce planning and talent management: ensures the company attracts and retains top talent by forecasting hiring needs and implements succession planning.

• Driving employee engagement and culture: partner with leaders to create and maintain a strong company culture and implement employee recognition programs to enhance engagement, performance, and morale.

• Leveraging HR analytics for decision-making: use data-driven insights to guide HR decisions, measure the impact of HR programs and utilize all forms of HR tech and AI to help.  

• Supporting change and culture development: guide leaders in managing change, restructuring, and cultural integration to enhance organizational effectiveness.

HR’s ability to act strategically is so important that companies are fundamentally changing how they work to enable them to spend less time on transactional work and more time on strategic work.

Strategic HR partners help drive growth through people-focused strategies. Their ability to connect HR initiatives with company goals makes them essential to an organization’s long-term success.

What is the HR Business Partner Model?

The HR Business Partner model is a strategic approach to human resources where HR professionals work closely with business leaders to align HR strategies with the organization’s overall goals.

It focusses on deliverables rather than do-ables – instead of HR measuring processes, they need to measure results.  

Dave Ulrich, Rensis Likert Professor at the Ross School of Business, has pioneered the HR Business Partner model throughout the success of his career.

“HR is less about HR and more about delivering value to all stakeholders...We are recognizing that stakeholder means “human” or person who can receive value from HR efforts. So “human” resources is not just about employees but all stakeholders who can be influenced by HR work.” - David Ulrich, Speaker, Author and Professor

How strategic HR partnerships benefit business outcomes

Chief Executive lists gaining market share as CEOs' Top Priority for 2025. How can HR provide value to this priority?

HR contributes to market share by helping build human capability (talent, organization, leadership, and HR function) initiatives that support business objectives at all levels of an organization.  

A close second on the CEO’s Priority List in 2025 is retaining and engaging existing employees.  

To excel in human capability, you need to invest in your people. Many people quickly point the finger at HR when employee retention and engagement is low, but HR isn’t the culprit in this area.

It’s your middle managers.  

People don’t leave companies; they leave bad managers. Middle managers are essential drivers for employee experience.  

“The role of a middle manager can’t be underestimated. These leaders are an important part of the experience a team member has at work, and they play an outsized role in unlocking engagement, contribution, and productivity within their teams.” says Melissa Kremer, Chief Human Resources Officer at Target.  

At The LEGO Group, 70% to 80% of their human resources business partners (HRBPs) are assigned to more functional areas – their HRBPs focus on change management, coaching, and developing senior leaders.

Focusing on middle managers is a highly strategic HR business strategy because they act as the bridge between leadership and frontline employees. Their influence on employee engagement, performance, retention, and company culture makes them essential in business success.  

How to enable and engage middle managers

Gallup’s 7 Workplace Challenges for 2025 puts recognition as one of the biggest manager blind spots, and a key growth opportunity is establishing a habit of meaningful recognition. A SelectSoftware Reviews report also put lack of recognition as the number one reason people leave their jobs.  

Simply put, managers who are not actively recognizing their teams are costing your organization money.  

This reveals a massive opportunity for HR leaders who are seeking to build strategies that will impact overall business outcomes. Investing in middle manager development can:

• Improving retention and engagement: when middle managers are trained to provide recognition, feedback, and career development, employees feel valued and stay longer, reducing turnover costs.

• Translating strategy into action: they ensure that corporate strategies are effectively communicated, understood, and executed across teams.

• Driving culture and change management: middle managers shape everyday work experiences, helping embed company values and successfully managing culture during times of change.  

This is thinking and acting like an HR business partner. The more you can move the needle on results, the more you can connect these strategies on how they directly impact business success.  

Download A Leader’s Guide to Recognition to get actionable steps on how your leaders can lead by example and boost their team’s productivity and performance through the power of recognition.

6 steps to becoming a more strategic HR partner

The ability to act as a strategic partner to the business is the ultimate indication of an HR team’s success.  

Here’s how to become a more strategic HR partner:

1. Understand the business inside and out: analyze business challenges and collaborate with leadership to align HR with company objectives that will help with those pain points.  

2. Leverage your data: track the HR metrics that matter like turnover, DEI, and survey results and compare it against industry benchmarks or your competitor results. Use your data to make informed decisions and provide proof of what’s working and what isn’t.  

3. Integrate helpful tech: don’t waste time analyzing data when a software can do it for you. Use HR tech and AI to help predict trends and anticipate issues so you can be proactive instead of reactive.

4. Strengthen your relationships: position yourself as a trusted advisor to your leadership or executive teams. Don’t just implement HR policies; help shape business strategy.

5. Coach and empower your managers: equip them with tools to improve team performance, engagement, and recognition. Prioritize your connections with them to get better insight on your people’s performance.

6. Advocate for yourself: and for HR investments. Push for resources to enhance your people strategy, recognition programs, and learning initiatives.

The best HR partners don’t just react to business needs – they anticipate them and help drive growth.

By embedding yourself in business strategy, using data, and strengthening leadership relationships, you can transform HR into a critical driver of success.