Monica Donahue is Human Resources business partner for TELUS Communications, Inc. TELUS Corporation is the largest telecommunications company in Western Canada, and the second largest in the country. TELUS offers customized solutions, integrating a full range of products and services through six customer-facing business units. TELUS employs over 24,700 people with offices in key centers throughout Canada.
Centers of excellence can design sophisticated programs but the real action is with the HR business partners who need to make HR successful on the ground.
Ms. Donahue shares the challenges she's faced supporting her unit.
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HR.com: Tell me how you came to be an HR business partner.
MD: In 1999, I came out to Toronto to help set up what was originally a free-standing business unit. Originally, my focus was to look at the best way to provide payroll, compensation and benefits functions to the start-up unit, but as is so often the case, pressing business needs superceded that issue.
We had significant expansion plans and were competing in the ''dot-com'' space for IT staff. Recruitment became the issue and so I had to hire some recruiters to work with the hiring managers and also to start looking at what were, for us, new compensation elements, like stock options. We hired very quickly, as most firms did at that time. Too quickly, as it turns out and when things slowed down, we ended up restructuring the organization. A new CEO had been appointed and it was decided, in support of our new business model and strategy, to integrate our regional HR more closely into the national HR programs and processes. We moved to a business-partner model supported by centers of excellence in the specialty areas of human resources.
We also developed our on-line human resources, eHR, which allowed us to deploy programs and practices nationally with relatively lean human-resources support in each region.
HR.com: So in a short period of time you were pulled between different issues as the business needs and direction changed. It's always amazing how many stories start with, "And then we got a new executive team..."
The use of eHR to help get consistency nationally is common. What's uncommon is to develop eHR in-house instead of bringing in third-party vendors. What was the rationale?
MD: These things are always supported by a business case. Our situation may be different from most because we had, in-house, the talent to develop the intellectual property, the Intranet and the self-serve applications. Also, at that time, there weren't a lot of firms that had much expertise developing the kind of e-learning and self-service applications we wanted.
HR.com: What are the accountabilities of a business partner?
MD: The business partners are the only people in the HR organization who have a double reporting line. They report to the vice-president of human resources, as well as the president of the business unit that we support. Our primary customers are the senior team, that's the president and the vice-president of the business unit, and the senior group there.
We are really responsible for helping to devise a human-resources plan that is consistent with our corporate HR strategy, policies, and programs, which pulls them into the business unit in a way that is consistent with where an individual business unit is going. We also want to draw on the resources of that central HR unit.
HR.com: How much freedom do you have to introduce programs to the business units that are different from corporate programs?
MD: The company promotes a ''one brand, one strategy'' doctrine, so that means we are going to be fairly consistent between the different business units. My role as a business partner, then, is to be in touch with the challenges an individual business unit has and if something's not working, to go back to the centers of excellence and have a conversation about what we can do to solve this business problem in the context of how we run human resources.
HR.com: What kind of issues has your business-unit head come to you with?
MD: We have a pretty successful leadership development program that focuses on the top 100 people in the organization; people who are considered to potentially be future vice-presidents. The business unit I was supporting asked, "What do we do with the high-potential people who aren't yet at that level?" So we developed a program for my business unit that somewhat mirrors the senior leadership programs, but it gives high-potential people at other levels of the organization a little bit more individual care and feeding.
We don't have the resources to do that right across the organization, but we will expand it beyond our business unit in places where we can have the most impact. So that's an example of a program we started and incubated within a business unit that''s now being adopted in other areas of the organization.
HR.com: What are the things you need to get right for this business partner role to work?
MD: To a large extent it's about understanding the business. We can't be the business experts, but we have to understand the strategy and the business drivers. On the other side, sometimes we have to be the conscience for the business. And obviously, we're the knowledge experts in human resources; we determine what we can and can't do, what will and what won't work. Sometimes we have to hold things from going too far out of the corporate box. It's a system of checks and balances between the right thing to do from an HR perspective, and what is the right business decision.
HR.com: What characteristics do you look for in an HR business partner?
MD: There has to be a fundamental knowledge of human resources practices and policies; it's a generalist position, the only real generalist role in the HR organization. We are business consultants as well so we have to have that across the board, basic understanding of the business, too. We have to have the ability to interact with senior folks in the business. As well, you absolutely have to be able to work with a virtual team, across time zones. You have to handle a huge volume of workload, you have to keep your HR skills up, and develop your knowledge of the business.
HR.com: What else makes it work?
MD: One of the things that makes us successful in our HR strategy is that over time there is more and more linkage into the business strategy. Everything we do--whether it's our e-enablement, our e-learning programs, our development or our reward program--has been very tightly linked into our key business strategic initiatives and our corporate values.
HR.com: Is the key element in making that happen the HR business partners?
MD: The Business partners have tremendous support from the rest of the HR organization, though the partners and consultants are more directly connected with the business day-to-day. The more we have people from human resources interacting on a daily basis with the business, sitting in on the senior team meetings and involved in organizational change, the more we are likely to succeed in supporting the business unit, rather than running to catch up all the time.
HR.com: One common problem with HR business partners is that people who have grown up in HR have a hard time understanding the business.
MD: In my case, I had a certain amount of operations experience before joining TELUS. A number of our HR business partners grew up in the telecommunications industry in areas like customer services, field services, operator services, labor relations and so on. People have a balance of business and HR expertise, which absolutely helps them speak the same language as the people they serve.
HR.com: On an on-going basis, what do you do to keep in touch with your business?
MD: I participate in a monthly senior meeting. Where time permits, I attend meetings that our VP´s groups have. I also have regularly scheduled one-on-one meetings with our customers.
The other thing I've found successful is that I've built what I call an extended team in human resources. I have folks on a dotted-line basis who support my business unit. We get on a call once a month to talk about the business unit strategy, the key business initiatives, the HR initiatives, who owns what and what's the progress report. Those people are at various locations working with the business unit all the time, so it's another feedback mechanism for us.
HR.com: Thanks for taking the time to share your experiences as a business partner.
Monica Donahue is a Human Resources professional with experience supporting organization business plans in service/professional services industries in both Canada and the United States.
With an undergraduate degree in Pharmacology and Physiology, and an MBA from the University of Toronto, she has worked also in specialty Human Resources areas including employee relations, compensation, recruitment and benefits. She´s been a member of the TELUS Human Resources team since 1995, and relocated to Toronto in 2000 in support of TELUS´ national expansion.
She also currently serves on the Board of a non-profit community health care organization in Toronto.