How to be a communication business partner

Introduction

Introducing business partnering

Will AI accelerate the business partner role?

A business partner model for communication

Implementing a business partner model, things to consider

Competencies

Five responsibilities for PR and communication practitioners working at strategic level

The Business partner as a lone practitioner

What else does a business partner need?

Business partner model: options

Final thoughts: Some things to think about if you are implementing the model

References and useful links

Introduction

We are hearing more and more about how AI is going to change radically the practice of PR and communication.  While exciting, it can also sound a bit scary. Will it create jobs or put practitioners out of a job?

I was a bit put out to read Bill Gates say there won’t be a need for teachers and lecturers. (I might challenge him on that!)

I found a slightly more positive angle in a 2025 article in PRovoke media suggests that as AI tools increasingly take over the bulk of administrative and analytical work, the industry must grapple with the challenge of redefining roles and responsibilities. (This article is a really good read BTW.)

So AI will probably pretty soon take on a lot of the tactical and admin work we do, such as writing, content creation/curation, crunching data for measurement etc.

But how soon will it be able to act as a provider of strategic advice and support to the organisation?

Now is the time for practitioners to skill up on:

• Critical thinking
• Problem solving
• Relationship building
• Knowing how to understand your organisation and clients

In short, being a trusted partner and adviser.

These are exactly the themes that are covered in many CIPR qualifications.

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But what is the best model for being able to enact this more strategic communication advisory role? One model is business partnering. The term ‘business partner’ is much more than a job title, it’s a whole different and usually very rewarding way to work.

I’ve written this briefing to help us to understand the role and think about how to implement it in our organisations. And if you have the title of business partner but are still getting stuck with only tactics – this briefing might help you to explain the role to those around you.

Introducing business partnering

The term ‘business partner’ is perhaps more established in the world of HR where the concept was introduced as part of a wider operating model that encompasses shared services for transactional work plus centres of excellence with specialist expertise and responsibility for HR policy setting. The model is underpinned by technology which enables an element of self-service for employees, for example booking holiday and updating personal details, thus removing this transactional work from the HR role. It is sometimes known as the ‘three-legged stool’ model.

The model is based on the work of David Ulrich and was launched back in 1997 in the book ‘Human Resource Champions’.

It was born out of a need to modernise HR practice and exploit the technology that was becoming available. This modernisation included HR moving to be a much more strategic function with business partners working as part of a management team as a trusted advisor.

The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) sum up business partnering like this:

You can say exactly the same for PR and communication – the people bit is more HR related but absolutely still applies if you are an internal communication business partner.

Will AI accelerate the business partner role?

The benefits of business partnering in the HR context include:

• A better level of advice that is more consistent
• Financial benefits as technology reduces the number of people needed for transactional work.

Importantly, the model is designed to integrate the function into the business and align activity more clearly with business goals. This is equally important for PR and communication and a key reason for the business partner model being adopted.

While there hasn’t to date been the same industry-wide drive to modernise PR and communication functions or transformational opportunities presented by technology, artificial intelligence could change all that.  Will AI do for PR and communication what systems such as Oracle and SAP did for HR?

The UK Government Communication Service has a guide to the role (last updated in 2021 but still useful) it explains that business partners can:

• Provide high-quality advice, challenge and support to the teams they work with
• Ensure effective collaboration and co-ordination between the communication team and other teams across the organisation
• Lead the development of integrated communication plans and strategies, drawing on the various communication disciplines
• Enable long-term communication planning and horizon scanning.

A business partner model for communication

Taking the HR model as a starting point, the PR and communication equivalent of the three legged stool could be described as:

• Strategic business partner – working with a business area.
• Central delivery – specialist skills and delivery such as events, content creation supported by AI, AI-enabled measurement and evaluation
• Corporate communication – strategy and policy set at organisational level.

Let’s look at each of these a bit more closely:

Balancing these three elements can be a challenge, in particular there may be competing demands on the central delivery team’s time and unplanned work that needs to be delivered.

For this reason, it is important that there is a process for managing demands on this team.

For example, ensure that the central team is never committed to more than 80 per cent capacity.  This allows for new unplanned work plus other factors such as an increase in scope on current projects, work over-running, sickness absence and delays caused by external suppliers.

Implementing a business partner model, things to consider

It might seem easy to implement business partnering by simply re-badging current roles and assigning individuals to look after different parts of the business. However, this is an approach that is unlikely to deliver business benefits or provide rewarding work for the business partner.

The organisation’s expectations of the role can differ greatly, with many calling for strategic input and tactical delivery. While this approach may work and some practitioners may embrace the diversity of work, a business partner model would usually mean this tactical work being delivered centrally.

Competencies

A business partner will be working at a senior level within the business area that they are partnering, acting as part of the management team for that part of the organisation. This requires a high level of account management skills.

It’s important to accept that some PR and communication practitioners simply won’t want – or be suitable for – a business partner role.

Speaking in the context of HR, David Ulrich said:

I think this is a bit of a damning description of those who don’t make the transition to business partner. Of course in the field of PR and communication, things are different, the function doesn’t really have that history of purely administrative work as in HR. However, the comparison could be made with those in PR and communication who prefer tactical delivery to working on strategy.

But lets just pause for a moment. This is not to be dismissed as a negative – in fact good tactical delivery is absolutely crucial to a successful business partner model. A business partner can’t be expected to be taken seriously on strategy if tactical delivery is poor.

A consultant I once worked with on the implementation of an HR business partner model explained that no HR business partner can expect to be taken seriously if the function couldn’t get the payroll right!

So is tactical delivery part of the business partner role?

According to Anne Gregory and Paul Willis writing in Strategic Public Relations Leadership:

The key point here I think is that any tactical/technical activity is high-level.

Anne Gregory and Paul Willis’s book is an excellent source for understanding the role of PR and communication at a strategic level. The book’s focus is particularly around PR support for the CEO, but the principles can be applied to being a strategic business partner.

They identify five responsibilities for PR and communication practitioners working at strategic level:

• Planner: Public relations leaders know that unless this fundamental business discipline is grasped and demonstrated, credibility is put in jeopardy.
• Catalyst: The role of the public relations leader is to identify where the ‘reality needs fixing’ to reflect the aspirations and values which are being espoused.
• Expert technician: Expertise builds personal authority and gains the confidence of others.
• Internal educator: Building communicative competence throughout the whole organisation. Includes those operating at the most senior level of the organisation who look to public relations to coach and mentor them.
• Consultant: The objectivity of the consultant is a crucial skill for the in-house practitioner to acquire.

If you’re studying with us, Anne and Paul’s book Strategic Public Relations Leadership is available in our online library.

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The business partner as lone practitioner

We’ve talked about the business partner practitioner working as part of a wider business partner model. But is it possible to enact the role if you are working alone, as  many practitioners are?

How do you juggle the different demands made of you? How can you manage the expectations of your organisation?

I spoke to Simon Cavendish who provides strategic advice in his role as an internal communication, change and engagement consultant (and a very good one IMO!). Simon is also Chair of IABC EMENA.

Simon goes on to explain: “If you’re a team of one, partnership becomes even more important. You need to work with your leaders to define the true priorities – you cannot do it all. Every project you engage in, and every request you receive, needs to connect to business strategy and outcomes: how will delivering that work help your organisation to achieve its goals, keep customers happy, make more money, and so on.

“To really be successful, you need to learn and speak the language of your business. Internal Communication business partners don’t just ‘do the newsletter’; we understand the priorities and help stakeholders connect the dots, demonstrating how a particular project or piece of work will move the needle and help the organisation advance.

“Measure what matters, not what’s easy. What are the objectives and key results (OKRs) for your organisation? What is your pulse or employee survey measuring? How can you connect your work to this – for example, you can make a connection that a well-delivered change programme will improve an employee Net Promoter Score (eNPS), or improve perception of your organisation’s technology. Look for ways to demonstrate that what you did had a material, business benefit.”

What else does a business partner need?

• Ability to plan strategically. Including using research to inform plans, setting SMART objectives, measurement and evaluation.
• Knowledge of the business and business knowledge. An understanding of the organisation and the nature of business. Knowledge of the sector in which the organisation is operating is also important.
• Good interpersonal skills. Understanding the communication preferences of key stakeholders.
• Stakeholder management skills. Business partners should understand who their own personal stakeholders are and have a plan in place to engage with them.
• Reporting and presentation skills. Ability to present a clear, succinct case for a course of action and provide evidence of success using data.

Writing for the PR Academy Reader (our book that supports studies for the CIPR Professional PR Diploma), Richard Bailey says that being a trusted adviser is a position sought by all professionals, and the traits of the trusted adviser are common across professional services firms (encompassing law and accountancy firms and management consultancies). So, for advice on being a trusted adviser, we can look to the literature from professional services.

Richard explains: David Maister is a respected name as author of Managing the Professional Service Firm, True Professionalism, Practice What You Preach! and co-author with Charles Green and Robert Galford of The Trusted Advisor (note the US spelling of adviser). In the introduction to this book, the authors note that “becoming a good advisor takes more than having good advice to offer. There are additional skills involved, ones that no one ever teaches you, that are critical to your success. Most important, we learned that you don’t get the chance to employ advisory skills until you can get someone to trust you enough to share their problems with you.”

This suggests that listening and empathy are vital to success.

Maister and colleagues emphasise the three basic skills that a trusted adviser needs: “(1) earning trust; (2) giving advice effectively; and (3) building relationships”. On the second of these they write: “advice giving is almost never an exclusively logical process. Rather, it is almost always an emotional ‘duet’, played between the advice giver and the client. If you can’t learn to recognize, deal with, and respond to client emotions, you will never be an effective advisor”.

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Business partner model: options

Internal, external or combined? The business partner role can be a combined one that looks across all stakeholder groups or a business partner can focus just on employees.   Where there is a split between the external and internal, then a close working relationship needs to be established between the two as often integrated communication programmes will be needed.

There is no right or wrong answer to the question, it depends on the complexity of the organisation and where internal communication is located, for example if it is the responsibility of HR then a combined model is harder to achieve.

Embedded or central line management? A business partner may be line managed either by the part of the business that they support, or by a central communication team (or perhaps HR in the case of an internal communication business partner). Again, there is no right or wrong answer and both models have advantages and disadvantages.

In either case there needs to be a strong dotted line of responsibility into either the business area or central team. In making a decision, an understanding of the organisation’s culture is needed. For example, is it very ‘command and control’ where a local management team may feel more comfortable having line management responsibility for their business partner? Line management may give a greater sense of buy-in to the model but could leave the business partner feeling isolated and over-looked by their profession.

Where the role is embedded and line managed in the business area it is likely that the line manager will not be a communication professional. The GCS guide recommends involving a senior manager from the communication team in performance reviews and ensuring that the business partner is involved in the communication team’s learning and development programme as well as talent management discussions.

Final thoughts: Some things to think about if you are implementing the model

• It isn’t just a change of job title Select the right person for the job. Equip them with the skills and understanding of the role. Just because somebody is good at tactical delivery, for example, does not mean that they will want to make the transition to business partner.
• Tactical delivery matters. Ensure that there is good tactical delivery and demand management in place to support business partners. The business partner will not be taken seriously at a senior level in the business if tactical delivery is falling short.
• Launch, promote and manage expectations. The role needs to be explained to managers, but not over promised. Expectation management is important, there needs to be clarity about what the business partner is there to do.

References and useful links

To understand more about business partnering in the HR sector and for learning that can be applied to PR and communication see the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) website.

Human Resource Champions: the next agenda for adding value and delivery results is David Ulrich’s 1996 book published by Harvard Business School Press.

Strategic Public Relations Leadership by Anne Gregory and Paul Willis (2013) is published by Routledge. It is available in electronic form to PR Academy students via the online learning centre.

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