People often assume that working as an HR business partner (HRBP) for public and private sector companies are very different experiences. To some extent that's true: a large governmental organisation will have different HR pressures to those of a small private bank, for example. But what about the people in the role?

Does it take the same qualities to be a successful HR business partner in both sectors, however different their issues may be? Until now, this has been a difficult question to answer - there are plenty of competency models around that define the key skills required to be an HR business partner. But they don't really reveal the extra quality that makes the best HR business partners stand out from their peers, and even less any difference in qualities between the two different sectors. You might have heard about our research into what makes top HR business partners really successful. Among other things, the results shed some interesting light on this public versus private sector debate.

Our research involved interviews with HR business partners acknowledged by senior managers as having made a positive impact on their businesses. They came from public sector organisations like HM Treasury, Transport for London and the Crown Prosecution Service and private sector financial services, manufacturing and retail companies. The interviews were split into five parts, focussing on their working environment, behaviour, beliefs and values, capabilities and identity.

The research found that successful HRBPs share a set of beliefs about themselves and their role, that it's these beliefs that really make a difference, and that these beliefs are the same across the two sectors. In fact, there's remarkably little difference between them. They both believe in the importance of:

• Their role and their ability to make a positive impact on the business. When interviewed, one private sector HR business partner highlighted that they always 'had to believe in the project or advice', another that 'HR can make as much difference as any function'. Their public sector counterparts shared the view that their role was essential, one saying that: 'it's my job to raise the un-discussable', another that: 'it's impossible to convince the client of something you don't believe in'.
• Understanding the client's business, working in their way, speaking in their language, and focusing HR efforts on achieving specific business objectives. Almost everyone we interviewed agreed, saying, for example: 'It's no good just knowing the numbers. You need to know what products, customers and employees make the numbers.' 'You must present ideas and data in the same ways as the business would to their clients.' 'You need to position ideas so the business understands the benefits.'
• Building relationships to make the most of the role. One interviewee told us: 'if you genuinely want the best for the client, they can sense it, and it becomes an attractor’. Almost all of the people we interviewed told us of the importance of 'listening to the words, tone and emotions' of clients, and 'putting yourself in the client's shoes'. Others pointed out that these relationships shouldn't just be with strategic contacts, but with the whole business and the rest of the HR function too. After all, 'employees deserve the same support and advice as management'.

There are some differences between the outlooks of HR business partners in the two different sectors. Many of the small changes found in the research were predictable - HR business partners in the private sector referred to profit, the public sector to organisational goals, for example. But three bigger differences are particularly interesting:

• More HR business partners in the public sector than the private sector see 'delivering the whole HR function' as part of the job. They see themselves as 'accountable but not responsible' for the delivery of HR services to the client business and believe that, to be successful, they need to go beyond their strategic duties. This difference might be because the public sector has approached setting up the HR business partner structure in a more systematic way than many private sector organisations and because they're further down the line. If this is the case, and as the role becomes more established in the private sector, this gap will no doubt shrink.
• A higher proportion of private sector HR business partners talked about the need to be role models. This might well be because more of them have teams of junior business partners to manage and set standards for than their public sector counterparts.
• While public sector HR business partners see themselves as accountable for delivering quality HR transactional services, they still see themselves as facilitators. In contrast, some private sector HRBPs told us that they use a hands-on approach to delivering these areas of HR when the client is very senior - personally following up a query about holidays, for example. It's a good way of building relationships, but it has its down sides too. Getting involved with transactional HR sends the message that it's actually part of your job, straight to those people who you should only be working with on a purely strategic basis.

So whether you work in the public or the private sector, success relies on similar attributes. They're the difference that makes a difference.