| Detail | For this role |
|---|---|
| Department | Human Resources |
| Level | Manager |
| Reports to | AVP HR |
| Direct reports | HR Business Partner |
| Experience | 10 to 14 years in HR, with 4 or more years as an HR business partner to senior leaders |
Senior HR Business Partner job description template
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Job title: Senior HR Business Partner
Department: Human Resources
Reports to: AVP HR
Location: [City], [office, branch or site]
About the role
A Senior HR Business Partner is the HR adviser to a business unit head and a member of that unit's leadership team. The role shapes the unit's structure and workforce plan, runs talent reviews and rating calibration, leads change such as reorganizations, and coaches senior managers on people decisions. It usually leads one or two HR business partners and reports to the AVP HR or HR Director. A good Senior HRBP is judged by the unit's attrition, bench strength and the quality of its people decisions.
Key responsibilities
- Join the unit's leadership meetings and translate its business plan into the year's people priorities.
- Build the unit's workforce plan with finance, covering roles needed, skill gaps, location mix and hiring timelines.
- Advise on structure, spans of control and role design when the unit grows, merges teams or changes direction.
- Run talent reviews for the unit, identify high performers and successors, and agree development moves for each.
- Lead rating calibration and increment distribution for the unit within the company's guidelines.
- Coach senior managers on difficult conversations, performance improvement plans and conflicts within their teams.
- Study attrition and engagement data for the unit, and drive retention plans aimed at critical roles.
- Lead the communication plan for reorganizations, relocations or policy changes that affect the unit.
- Guide the HR business partners in the team, and make sure operations, payroll and TA services reach the unit on time.
- Handle sensitive cases in the unit, such as senior misconduct, POSH complaints or exits of key people, with the employee relations team.
Requirements
- Postgraduate qualification in HR, such as an MBA, PGDM or MPM
- Graduate in any discipline
- Coaching or organization development certification is an advantage
- 10 to 14 years in HR, with 4 or more years as an HR business partner to senior leaders
KRAs and KPIs for a Senior HR Business Partner
Key result areas for the appraisal form, each with a KPI you can measure every month or quarter.
| Key result area | How to measure it |
|---|---|
| Regretted attrition | Regretted attrition in the unit below the agreed target, reviewed quarterly |
| Succession | Successors named for at least 70 percent of the unit's critical roles |
| Workforce plan | Hiring and headcount within 5 percent of the approved workforce plan |
| Calibration | Calibration completed on schedule with ratings inside the company's distribution guideline |
| Manager coaching | At least two coaching sessions a year held with every senior manager in the unit |
| Unit engagement | The unit's engagement score higher than in the previous survey |
Skills and tools
Tools used day to day: HRMS, Power BI or Excel dashboards, Engagement survey tool, MS PowerPoint, Psychometric tools.
Reporting line and career path
Next roles: AVP HR, Senior HR Manager, HR Head
Interview questions for a Senior HR Business Partner
- The unit head wants to remove a management layer. How would you advise them?
- Tell us about a talent review you ran. What changed afterwards for the people discussed?
- How do you handle a senior manager who refuses to rate anyone below meets expectations?
- Attrition among top engineers is rising. What do you do in the next 60 days?
- How do you decide when to escalate an issue to the AVP HR rather than solve it yourself?
- Describe a time you changed a business leader's mind using data.
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What does a senior HR business partner do?
A senior HR business partner advises a business unit head on everything to do with people: structure, workforce planning, talent reviews, succession, calibration, retention and change. They sit in the unit's leadership team, coach senior managers and usually guide one or two HR business partners.
What is the difference between an HR business partner and a senior HR business partner?
An HR business partner usually supports a department or function of a few hundred people and handles its day-to-day people issues. A senior HRBP partners a whole business unit head, shapes structure and workforce plans, leads calibration and talent reviews for the unit and often manages other HRBPs.
What makes a good senior HR business partner?
A good senior HRBP understands how the business makes money, uses data to back recommendations, gives honest advice to senior leaders and follows through on decisions. They are trusted enough to be consulted before people decisions are made, not only asked to process them afterwards.