The HRBP model splits the HR function into three parts: HR business partners who advise business leaders, centres of excellence (CoEs) where specialists design policies and programmes, and shared services that handle transactions and employee queries. It grew out of Dave Ulrich's work in the late 1990s and is often called the three-pillar or "three-legged stool" model.
Most explanations stop at that diagram. The harder questions are how the three parts actually divide the work, why the model so often slides back into HRBPs doing admin, and whether it suits a 300-person Indian company at all. This article answers those, with a worked example, a RACI table and a simple test for when not to use it.
Quick Summary
- Origin: Dave Ulrich, Human Resource Champions (1997) and "A New Mandate for Human Resources", Harvard Business Review (1998).
- Four HR roles (1997): strategic partner, change agent, employee champion, administrative expert.
- Five HR roles (2005): employee advocate, human capital developer, functional expert, strategic partner, HR leader.
- Three pillars: HR business partners, centres of excellence, shared services.
- Works best: mid-size and large organisations with enough HR volume to specialise.
- Main risk: if shared services is weak, HRBPs get pulled back into transactional work.
What Is the HRBP Model?
The HRBP model is a way of organising the HR function so that advice, expertise and administration are handled by different people. Before it, most HR departments were organised around activities: a recruitment team, a payroll team, a training team, each serving the whole company. The business had no single HR person who understood its goals.
The model changes that. Each business unit gets an HR business partner who knows its targets and problems. Specialists sit in centres of excellence and serve every unit. Routine work moves to a shared services team and self-service systems. For the basics of the partner role itself, see what an HR business partner (HRBP) is.
Ulrich's Four HR Roles
The three-pillar structure came later. Ulrich's original contribution was a set of roles that HR must play, which he set out in Human Resource Champions (1997) and the 1998 Harvard Business Review article "A New Mandate for Human Resources". He placed them on two dimensions: a focus on the future and strategy versus day-to-day operations, and a focus on processes versus people.
| Processes | People | |
|---|---|---|
| Strategic / future | Strategic partner — aligning HR with business strategy | Change agent — leading transformation and building capacity for change |
| Operational / day-to-day | Administrative expert — running efficient HR processes | Employee champion — representing employee concerns and building commitment |
Strategic Partner
Turns business strategy into HR priorities. In the three-pillar structure, this is the role the HRBP is designed to play.
Change Agent
Helps the organisation move through restructuring, mergers, new systems and culture change. HRBPs and specialist organisation development teams usually share it.
Employee Champion
Listens to employees, represents their concerns and builds commitment. It sits with HRBPs, employee relations specialists and line managers.
Administrative Expert
Makes HR processes efficient and accurate. In the three-pillar structure, this largely becomes the job of shared services and HR technology.
In 2005, Ulrich and Wayne Brockbank revised the framework in The HR Value Proposition. The five roles are employee advocate, human capital developer, functional expert, strategic partner and HR leader: the employee champion role was split into the first two, and HR leader was added for running the HR function itself (SAGE Encyclopedia of Management Theory). If you are studying for an exam, learn both versions; many textbooks still teach only the four roles.
The Three Pillars
HR Business Partners
HRBPs are attached to a business unit, function or region. They attend its reviews, diagnose people problems, plan headcount and talent, and bring in the right specialists. They are generalists in HR knowledge but specialists in their part of the business. The full list of what they do is in HRBP roles and responsibilities.
Centres of Excellence
A centre of excellence (CoE) is a small team of specialists in one HR discipline who design policies, programmes and tools for the whole organisation. Common CoEs are total rewards (compensation and benefits), talent acquisition, learning and development, talent management, organisation development and HR analytics. CoEs set the standard; HRBPs adapt and apply it to their unit.
Shared Services
Shared services handles high-volume, rules-based work for everyone: payroll inputs, onboarding paperwork, letters, HR records, leave and policy queries. Most organisations run it in tiers so that simple requests never reach a person:
| Tier | Who handles it | Typical requests |
|---|---|---|
| Tier 0 | Employee self-service (portal, HRMS, chatbot) | Payslips, leave balance, policy documents, address changes |
| Tier 1 | HR service centre or helpdesk | Questions self-service cannot answer, form processing, basic cases |
| Tier 2 | HR specialists | Complex payroll, benefits or policy questions |
| Tier 3 | CoEs and HRBPs | Sensitive, complex or strategic matters |
This tiered structure is how most shared services centres are run today (Workday). It matters for HRBPs: the more that is resolved at Tier 0 and Tier 1, the less admin finds its way to the HRBP's desk.
How the Pillars Work Together: An Example
Take an illustrative scenario. A delivery unit in an Indian IT services company sees resignations among mid-level developers rise sharply over two quarters. Here is how the work divides.
- The HRBP spots the trend in the monthly dashboard, meets the delivery head and holds stay conversations with a sample of developers and managers. The pattern points to two causes: pay below market for two in-demand skills, and three managers whose teams account for a disproportionate share of exits.
- The rewards CoE benchmarks pay for the two skills and designs a targeted correction within the unit's budget.
- The talent management or learning CoE puts the three managers through a structured manager-capability programme.
- Shared services processes the revised salaries in payroll, issues the letters and updates records.
- The HRBP tracks attrition for the next two quarters and reports back to the delivery head.
The HRBP owns the problem from diagnosis to result, but does not personally design the pay correction or process the letters. That division is the whole point of the model. The HR analytics training covers how to build this kind of attrition reporting.
HRBP vs CoE vs Shared Services: Who Owns What
Confusion over ownership is the most common reason the model fails in practice. A RACI table settles it. This is a typical split; agree your own version and publish it inside HR.
| Activity | HRBP | CoE | Shared services | Line manager |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Unit headcount and workforce plan | R/A | C | I | C |
| Compensation structure and policy design | C | R/A | I | I |
| Rating calibration for the unit | R | C | — | A |
| Increment processing in payroll | I | C | R/A | I |
| Learning programme design | C | R/A | — | C |
| Employee relations case (PIP, grievance) | R | C | I | A |
| Onboarding documentation | I | — | R/A | C |
| Hiring for a critical role | C | R (talent acquisition) | I | A |
R = responsible (does the work) · A = accountable (owns the outcome) · C = consulted · I = informed.
Note how often the line manager is accountable. The model only works when managers own their people decisions and HR supports them, not the other way round.
HRBP-to-Employee Ratio and Structure by Company Size
There is no fixed ratio, and it changes with size. Pave's analysis of 1,341 companies found a median of 68 employees per HRBP at companies with 51–100 staff, rising to 225 at companies with 501–1,000 (Pave Data Lab, October 2024). That data comes mostly from technology growth companies; manufacturing plants and high-attrition operations in India usually need more HR support per employee.
The structure changes with size too:
| Organisation | Typical HR structure |
|---|---|
| Small (a few HR people) | HR generalists who do everything; no formal pillars |
| Mid-size | A few HRBPs, one or two specialist leads (often rewards and talent acquisition), a small HR operations team |
| Large or multi-location | Full three-pillar model: HRBPs per business or region, several CoEs, a shared services centre with self-service |
Strategic vs Operational HRBP
The title is the same, but in practice there are two kinds of HRBP. A strategic HRBP spends most of the time on workforce planning, talent decisions, organisation design and advising leaders. An operational HRBP spends most of it on employee queries, case handling, documentation and coordinating processes.
Which one a company gets depends less on the person than on the structure around them. Where shared services is weak or CoEs do not exist, even a strong HRBP drifts operational, because someone has to do the work. When you assess an HRBP role or design one, ask who handles Tier 1 queries and who designs programmes. The answer tells you which kind of HRBP the job really is.
Advantages and Disadvantages of the HRBP Model
| Advantages | Disadvantages |
|---|---|
| Each business unit gets an HR advisor who understands its goals | Handoffs between three teams can confuse employees and managers |
| Specialists build deeper expertise in CoEs | CoE programmes can be designed far from business reality |
| Routine work becomes cheaper and more consistent through shared services and self-service | Needs investment in HR technology and a service centre before benefits appear |
| Clearer career paths inside HR (partner, specialist, operations) | HRBPs slide back into admin if shared services underperforms |
| HR decisions are tied to business outcomes | Smaller companies may lack the volume to justify three separate teams |
When an Indian Company Should Not Use It
The model is designed for scale. Before restructuring HR around it, check three conditions:
- Is there enough transactional volume to justify shared services? If payroll and queries take one person part of their week, a service centre adds cost without benefit.
- Is there enough specialist demand to justify CoEs? If you redesign compensation once in three years, a part-time consultant may serve better than a permanent CoE.
- Are managers ready to own people decisions? If managers expect HR to handle every conversation, HRBPs will become a buffer rather than advisors.
If the answer to all three is no, an experienced HR generalist team, supported by good HR software and outside specialists when needed, will usually serve the business better. Many growing Indian companies adopt the model in stages instead: HRBPs first for the largest units, a rewards or talent acquisition specialist next, and shared services once volume demands it.
For a deeper treatment of operating models with templates you can use at work, see the HRBP operating models in the From HR to HRBP eBook.
Frequently Asked Questions
What are the three pillars of the Ulrich model?
The three pillars are HR business partners, who advise business leaders; centres of excellence, where HR specialists design policies and programmes; and shared services, which handles transactions and employee queries, often through self-service and an HR helpdesk.
What are Ulrich's four HR roles?
In Human Resource Champions (1997), Dave Ulrich described four roles: strategic partner, change agent, employee champion and administrative expert. In 2005, with Wayne Brockbank, he revised them into five: employee advocate, human capital developer, functional expert, strategic partner and HR leader.
What is a CoE in HR?
A centre of excellence (CoE) is a small team of HR specialists in one discipline, such as total rewards, talent acquisition, learning and development or HR analytics. The CoE designs policies, programmes and tools for the whole organisation, and HR business partners apply them in their units.
What is the ideal HRBP-to-employee ratio?
There is no single ideal ratio. Pave's 2024 analysis of 1,341 companies found a median of 68 employees per HRBP at companies with 51–100 staff and 225 at companies with 501–1,000. Manufacturing and high-attrition operations usually need more HR support per employee.
Is the Ulrich model still relevant?
Yes, but it is applied more flexibly than it once was. Self-service technology now handles much of what shared services used to do, and many organisations adapt the model in stages rather than adopting all three pillars at once. Its central idea, that HR should be judged by business outcomes, remains widely accepted.
Related Tools and Guides
- What is an HRBP? — meaning, role and career path
- HRBP roles and responsibilities — KRAs by level and a working checklist
- Functions of human resource management
- HRBP Certification Online · From HR to HRBP eBook
Sources and Disclaimer
References: Harvard Business Review (Ulrich, 1998) for the four HR roles · SAGE Encyclopedia of Management Theory for the 2005 five-role revision · Workday for tiered HR service delivery · Pave Data Lab for HRBP-to-employee ratios.
Written by Vishvass Yadav, PGDM-HR (XLRI Jamshedpur), with 17 years in Indian HR and payroll. Last reviewed 3 October 2026. The worked example and the RACI table are illustrative; how HR responsibilities are split varies by company. This is general guidance for HR professionals and students.