By David Fairhurst, Founder & CEO, OrgShakers

For many years, HR professionals have spoken about earning a strategic seat at the executive table. Yet today, that ambition has taken on new urgency. Organizations are grappling with rapid technological advances, evolving workforce expectations, and an increasingly unpredictable operating environment. These pressures demand leadership that can unite people, culture, and capability with commercial performance.

HR is uniquely positioned to provide that leadership. But positioning alone isn’t enough. To influence decisions that shape organizational success, HR must build something deeper and more enduring: credibility.

Credibility is what transforms HR from a supporting function into a trusted strategic partner. It is earned through consistency, insight, and the ability to elevate thinking in the rooms where the future is decided. Drawing on decades of experience and the OrgShakers model, this article outlines the four essential stages through which HR leaders build lasting credibility.

1. Building the Relationship: Trust as the First Strategic Asset

Long before HR contributes to strategy, it must first build trust – and that trust begins at the relational level.

In recent years, senior leaders have become increasingly attuned to the power of people strategy. The pandemic highlighted a truth we have always known: workforce resilience is business resilience. This shift has created an opening for HR to step into deeper partnership.

Credibility begins when HR leaders:

• Listen intentionally to leaders’ goals and pressures
• Show up consistently, even when no immediate HR issue is on the table
• Use inclusive language that positions HR as part of the business, not adjacent to it
• Share credit, take accountability, and prioritize partnership

When leaders instinctively turn to HR for broader perspective—not only for policy or process—trust is firmly underway.

2. Delivering Business Alignment: Commercial Acumen as a Catalyst

HR credibility accelerates when HR speaks the language of business with fluency and confidence. Today’s landscape demands a stronger grasp of financials, customer drivers, operational levers, and data-informed insight.

Advanced analytics and AI give HR unprecedented access to meaningful, actionable people data. This empowers HR to articulate clear, measurable connections between workforce decisions and business performance.

To build business alignment, HR must:

• Understand the P&L, margin pressures, and strategic priorities
• Anchor HR initiatives to tangible business outcomes
• Translate analytics into narratives that leaders can act on
• Prioritize initiatives that drive executive-level value, pausing what does not

This is where HR moves from supportive to indispensable—where leaders see HR as a commercial contributor, not just a people advocate.

3. Leading Through a Strategic Lens: From Deliverer to Direction-Setter

When credibility is established, HR gains the opportunity to shape the strategic agenda.

Strategic HR is not about volume of activity; it is about clarity of direction. It requires looking beyond immediate needs to identify the capabilities the organization must develop to succeed in the years ahead.

HR leads strategically when it:

• Frames conversations around business outcomes, not HR activities
• Helps leaders shift from short-term fixes to long-term capability building
• Operates on dual horizons – delivering for today while preparing for tomorrow
• Simplifies complexity by connecting culture, structure, talent, and leadership

True strategic impact emerges when HR can elevate conversations, reveal interdependencies, and guide leaders to the right decisions with clarity and conviction.

4. Influencing with Intent: Turning Credibility into Impact

Influence is the culmination of trust, alignment, and strategic contribution. It is the moment when HR’s voice directly shapes the choices that determine organizational performance.

Intentional influence means:

• Presenting options with clear trade-offs, not just highlighting problems
• Using scenario-based storytelling to guide decision-making
• Applying structured frameworks, such as Situation–Target–Proposal, to create clarity
• Linking recommendations to measurable success indicators on the organizational scorecard
• Demonstrating consistency, reliability, and strong follow-through

Influence is not about exerting control – it is about enabling leaders to make better, more informed decisions.

Sustaining Credibility: Adapting as the Landscape Evolves

Credibility is not static. It must be nurtured and renewed, especially as organizations evolve and external pressures shift.

To sustain credibility, HR must:

• Stay externally aware – bringing market, industry, and workforce insights forward
• Maintain strong relationships, not only during moments of crisis
• Challenge constructively when strategy and reality begin to diverge
• Demonstrate resilience, curiosity, and adaptability

The HR leaders who maintain long-term influence are those who continue learning, continue partnering, and continue shaping the future—not reacting to it.

This is a defining moment for the HR profession. Organizations need leaders who understand the interplay between people and performance—leaders who can navigate uncertainty with confidence and clarity.

When HR builds credibility through relationships, business alignment, strategic framing, and intentional influence, it does more than earn a seat at the table. It becomes one of the driving forces shaping an organization’s future.

And in today’s climate, that is not only an opportunity – it’s a responsibility.

Human Resources Business Partners (HRBP) are professionals that help align an organization’s people strategy with their business strategy. It’s been nearly 30 years since the concept was created by Dave Ulrich and, to this day, being a HRBP is seen as arguably the toughest job in HR, with a relentless focus on consistently demonstrating that HR is an added value strategic function.

Alarmingly, a Gartner survey discovered that CHROs believe that 82% of their HRBPs are ineffective at strategic activities, and 61% are unable to prioritize strategic partner activities.

This got us thinking – what is stopping HRBPs from achieving their strategic objectives?

In a recent poll conducted on our LinkedIn page, we discovered that only 8% of respondents believed their HRBPs were achieving their goals. Meanwhile, 15% believed that the pace of business change was the problem, 22% said a change in the required skills of the job, and a whopping 55% of respondents believed that it was simply the sheer volume of work that HRBPs were responsible for overseeing which was making their objectives effectively unreachable.

These are just some of the factors that can act as roadblocks to a HRBP’s success, but this doesn’t mean that the role is a redundant one. If crafted correctly, your HRBP can be the defining factor of your strategic success, and to achieve this reality, employers must be identifying the challenges they face in order to find remedies for them:

• Challenge 1: Role Clarity – in some organizations, the role of a HRBP is not well understood by the business or even by HR, particularly if the HR function is evolving to introduce the HRBP role.

Tip: To overcome this challenge, don’t just define the HRBP role and responsibilities, but also define every HR process that goes with it and assign responsibilities for each.

• Challenge 2: Operational Demands – as evidenced by our poll, there is no shortage of daily operational demands, and typically HRBPs want to be responsive problem solvers. But how is this possible when the volume of work is so great?

Tip: This is where it can be extremely helpful to be crystal clear with what the HRBP’s responsibilities are. They need clear parameters around what it is they are responsible for overseeing rather than ambiguous and broad responsibilities – the more detailed and specific, the better. This will mean that HRBPs will allot their time correctly and efficiently, giving them more time to focus on their strategic responsibilities.

• Challenge 3: Lack of HR Strategy – and we don’t mean a complete lack of strategy, but rather a lack of a quality one. Without this, it can be very difficult to operate strategically.

Tip: Establish clear, quality HR strategies at enterprise and business unit/portfolio level, and ensure that there are strong links between the organizational and business unit strategies and the HR strategies (with shared goals where appropriate). It’s also important to engage leaders to co-create/review the HR plan to ensure that the HRBP plays an active role in contributing to the business plan for their portfolio. Essentially, align business and HR KPIs wherever possible.

• Challenge 4: Culture – a company culture that values HR as a strategic partner is essential. Without buy-in from senior leadership, even the most capable HRBPs will struggle to make a meaningful impact.

Tip: By shifting this mindset at the executive level, HRBPs can be positioned to drive positive, sustainable change within the organization that poses no internal limitations to the strategic objectives they can achieve.

• Challenge 5: The Right Fit – it’s important to acknowledge that a strategic HRBP role is not suited for everyone; it requires a particular personality and skill set, and without this, it can make the job even more overwhelming.

Tip: To thrive strategically, an HRBP needs to be a ‘big picture’ thinker, confident, and highly people orientated. Not every HRBP fits naturally into this mould, and that’s okay.

The role of the HRBP is no doubt a challenging one, but with the right support and the right skillset, HRBPs can thrive in their pursuits to marry up people strategy with business strategy in a strategically effective way. If you are an HRBP, or a HR leader leading HRBPs, and have questions or challenges you would like help with, you can get in contact with us today via our private consultation service OrgShakers CL!CK to gain instant access to one of our seasoned HR professionals. Equally, you can contact us via our website!