7. Org Design
The Ulrich Model
The three-legged stool, and where it cracks
Use when
Designing or fixing how the HR function itself is organized
Shared services
Transactional volume at scale, standardized and measured
Centres of expertise
Design depth and standards for the programmes
Embedded business partners
Strategic work close to the business
The seams
Where it actually breaks: the handoffs between the three legs
“What breaks is never a leg; it is the seams.”
How to use it
The dominant HR operating model for nearly thirty years. The logic is specialization: transactions get scale and standardization, design gets depth, partners get proximity. Work falls between shared services and the partner, partners get pulled back into transactional escalations the service centre cannot resolve, and centres of expertise design programmes the front line cannot run. Two conditions the model needs and rarely gets: enough scale to staff three legs properly (under roughly 500 employees you are pretending), and explicit seam agreements naming who owns what at each handoff. Watch-out: the label is often adopted while the behaviour is not; if your partners spend most of their week on transactions, you have one leg wearing three hats. Test it by auditing where partner time actually goes for a fortnight. See also: Centralize, CoE, or federate.
Card details
- Model type
- Grid
- Origin status
- Established
- Content last reviewed
- 28 July 2026
Origin
EstablishedDave Ulrich, Human Resource Champions, 1997, and subsequent work.