In my last post, I have introduced “HR for HR” and completed the last of Ulrich’s roles. But to get them to cooperate and successfully deliver on HR’s agenda a governance model is needed.
The usual Governance Model that we see in companies is hierarchically driven. There is a clear top-down mechanism enforced by a clear “Head of”. Ulrich has drastically changed that classical model of hierarchy in his thoughts of how HR should be run. He doesn’t really lay out his reasoning for that change but in his model it does make sense.
Ok, so what is different in Ulrich’s Model? – the absence of any hierarchy! For Ulrich the different roles (CoE, BP, Shared Service Center, etc.) are all on one level, working in a horizontal set-up. This means that there is no hierarchical escalation or decision making process. Ulrich has based his model implicitly on the ideas of the internal market. Meaning the usual exchange between supply and demand. This is true for all of the HR roles.
The demand is personalised through the HR Business Partners. They are the one’s presenting the demand as a stand in for the real HR customers. Supply is realised by the Centers of Expertise as well as the Shared Service Center. In this hierarchy-less set-up these roles have to align themselves to each other to ensure that a) the demand is met and b) also new, innovative ideas to bring forward the whole of the company are presented to the customers.
This set up is very fragile and it is often not implemented in its pure way. This is due to the fact that most companies cannot execute a clean and clear internal market model when it comes to HR. I talk more about that in my PhD, but I don’t want to bore you with theory. Often the set-up is either that a hierarchy instance is institutionalised by a clear HR Leadership Team overseeing and guiding the three Ulrich roles, or even that the HR Business Partners are placed on top of the pyramide.
There is no right or wrong, it all comes with advantages and disadvantages. However, it is important to understand how Ulrich wanted his roles to interact to enable the full power of his model.
Chief HR Officer 