By Nicola Perkins, Founder of FE HR Hub | November 2026
Is FE changing its HR job titles faster than its organisational culture?
A LinkedIn post by Eleanor Deem of Face2faceHR caught my attention recently. Its opening line was brilliantly provocative: “When everyone’s an HR Business Partner, no one is.”
Eleanor's post sparked a lively debate about the growing use of the HR Business Partner title and whether some organisations are relabelling operational HR roles without changing what those roles involve.
It got me thinking. Not so much about job titles, but about something more fundamental.
Are we changing the titles of our HR professionals faster than we're changing the cultures, expectations and management practices of the organisations they work in?
And what happens when we recruit people into roles promising strategic influence, but the organisation isn't ready to let them deliver it?
What's in a job title?
Through the FE HR Hub, and more recently FE HR Jobs, we have an interesting window into HR recruitment across Further Education.
Since August, our vacancy tracking has captured over 90 HR and people-related vacancies, with a remarkably diverse range of titles.
Alongside traditional HR Advisor, HR Manager and Head of HR roles, we're seeing People Partner, HR Business Partner, People and Culture Manager, Head of People Partnering and Executive Director of People and Culture.
Titles evolve, of course. The HR profession has changed considerably, and the language we use should reflect that. But how much can we really tell about a role from its title?
An HR Business Partner in one college might work closely with senior leaders on workforce planning, organisational design and cultural transformation. Someone with the same title elsewhere might spend most of their week managing disciplinaries, grievances, sickness absence and recruitment.
Both are doing valuable work. But are they doing the same job? And are the expectations of the individual and the organisation aligned?
The promise of partnering
HR business partnering isn't new. At its heart, it's about working alongside organisational leaders, understanding their priorities, challenging their thinking and helping them make better people-related decisions.
In a college, that could mean aligning workforce planning with curriculum development, anticipating the people implications of funding pressures or building leadership capability to deliver organisational ambitions.
It's about looking beyond immediate problems to their underlying causes.
But genuine partnering requires more than a capable HR professional with a strategic job description.
It requires an organisation that's willing and able to be partnered with.
Imagine a college recruiting an experienced HR Business Partner. The job description promises influence, close working relationships with senior leaders and opportunities to contribute to organisational development.
The successful candidate arrives, enthusiastic and ready to make a difference. But managers still expect HR to handle difficult conversations. Employee relations cases are handed over rather than managed with support. Senior leaders involve HR once decisions have been made, rather than in the conversations shaping them.
And workforce planning? Too often, it starts when a vacancy arises or a budget requires restructuring.
Before long, the new HRBP is absorbed in the very operational work they were supposedly recruited to move beyond.
The problem isn't necessarily their capability or confidence.
The organisation may have recruited for a role that its culture and operating model aren't yet equipped to support.
A new title won't resolve that.
When organisational habits get in the way
This connects to my previous onlyFE article, Accidental Dependency: When Helpful HR Becomes Too Helpful, where I explored how HR professionals can inadvertently create dependency by taking ownership of responsibilities that should sit with managers.
Having spent many years leading HR within FE, and subsequently working alongside colleges as a consultant, I've seen how difficult it can be to shift these expectations. Looking back, I can recognise occasions when I probably contributed to that dependency myself. When you're committed to helping managers and keeping things moving, stepping in can feel easier than stepping back.
But creating space for strategic HR isn't something the HR function can achieve alone. Leaders and managers have to work differently too.
What happens, then, when we introduce a business partnering model into an organisation where dependency is already embedded?
We might restructure the function, introduce new titles and communicate a more strategic approach. Yet if managers still see HR as the people who will sort out difficult people issues, little has changed.
The HRBP becomes trapped between the strategic contribution they're employed to make and the operational dependency the organisation continues to reinforce.
And there's an irony: the more time HR spends handling problems that managers could be better equipped to manage, the less time it has to build the very capability that might prevent them.
Are we transforming the way HR works, or asking the same people to do the same things under different titles?
When a sideways move becomes a step forward
Over the past few years, I've noticed something interesting among HR professionals in my FE network: people I've known as experienced Heads of HR or HR Managers in colleges moving into HR Business Partner roles in universities.
And it's made me curious.
On paper, that might look like a sideways move, perhaps even a step backwards in seniority. But are we looking at career progression through the wrong lens?
Could those moves offer the opportunity to operate more strategically, with clearer boundaries, stronger support and greater influence in an organisation with a more developed HR operating model?
I'm not suggesting that every university has got business partnering right, or that colleges are getting it wrong. There are excellent examples of strategic HR practice across both sectors. Nor can we assume why individuals make career moves.
But it makes me wonder whether some highly capable HR professionals see opportunities outside FE to do the strategic work they've been aspiring to.
If moving from Head of HR in a college to HR Business Partner in a university feels like progression, what are we really measuring when we talk about seniority, influence and professional opportunity?
This matters for recruitment and retention too.
Advertising a strategic role creates expectations. Candidates may be seeking greater influence, professional growth and the chance to shape organisational decisions. If their working week turns out to be dominated by reactive casework, with little opportunity to address its causes, how long before enthusiasm becomes frustration?
The college risks losing precisely the capability it wanted to attract.
The challenge can also run the other way. An HR Advisor promoted into a Business Partner role may be expected to challenge senior leaders and influence strategy without the development, support or authority needed to succeed.
Neither situation serves the individual or the organisation well.
So here's an uncomfortable question:
Are we losing talented HR professionals because they want to leave Further Education, or because they want opportunities their college hasn't yet found a way to offer?
Operational HR isn't the problem
None of this is an argument that operational HR is somehow less valuable than strategic HR. Far from it.
Good employee relations advice, sound employment law knowledge and responsive HR services are fundamental. Colleges need skilled professionals doing this work, and those roles don't need dressing up as something else.
Some of the best HR Business Partners I've encountered have a deep understanding of operational HR. It helps them spot patterns, recognise risks and challenge recurring problems.
The distinction isn't simply between someone who handles employee relations cases and someone who doesn't. It's what happens beyond the immediate issue.
If a college is experiencing repeated grievances or high absence in a particular area, an HR professional can help resolve individual cases. Genuine partnering also asks: what's driving the pattern? What does the data tell us? What leadership or cultural changes could prevent it recurring?
That's where HR can make a transformational contribution. But it needs time, authority, relationships and an organisation willing to listen.
Is your college ready to be partnered with?
We often ask whether HR professionals are strategic enough, commercially aware enough or confident enough to operate as Business Partners.
Those capabilities matter. But how often do we ask whether the organisation is ready for genuine partnering?
Do managers accept responsibility for managing their people, with HR's guidance rather than HR taking over?
Are senior leaders prepared to involve HR early enough to influence decisions, not simply implement their consequences?
Does HR have access to the information, relationships and organisational insight needed for meaningful workforce planning?
And do we share an understanding of what business partnering actually means?
Not every college needs a large HR function or a corporate-style operating model. FE institutions differ enormously in scale and resources. But whatever the structure, there must be honesty about the role HR is expected to play, and willingness to create the conditions in which it can succeed.
Business partnering isn't simply an HR transformation exercise. It's an organisational development exercise.
It calls for changes in expectations, behaviours, accountability and relationships far beyond the HR department.
So perhaps next time we're recruiting an HR Business Partner, we should spend less time debating the title and more time examining the organisation they're joining.
What do we want this person to achieve? Will they have the opportunity to influence decisions? And what are we prepared to change to help them succeed?
Recruiting a strategic HR professional is one thing. Creating an organisation in which they can genuinely operate as one is quite another.
And that, perhaps, is where the real work begins.
About the author
Nicola Perkins FCIPD is the Founder of FE HR Hub, a specialist community connecting and supporting HR professionals and leaders across Further Education. Through the Hub, Nicola brings together sector-specific insight, practical resources and development opportunities designed to strengthen people practice, build leadership and management capability and help FE colleagues connect, share and grow together.