How Many HRBPs Do You Need in 2025?

Jun 19, 2025

How many HRBPs should your company have in 2025? We analyzed real-world benchmarks across 1,000+ companies to help HR leaders scale smarter.

While AI is streamlining everything from payroll to job descriptions, not all roles in HR can, or should, be automated. The Human Resources Business Partner (HRBP) stands apart. Why? Because when a company restructures, wrestles with low morale, or prepares for hypergrowth, it's the HRBP who steps in, not a dashboard.

These are the people who sit next to leaders during re-orgs, guide them through difficult conversations, and sense tension before it becomes attrition. They're not just HR, they’re change agents, cultural translators, and coaches. In a world where automation is eating the back office, the strategic role of HRBPs is becoming more, not less, critical.

So... how many HRBPs should you actually have?

There’s no universal answer, but there are patterns. We analyzed real-world data from Compensara users and recent compensation reports to find the benchmarks that high-performing companies are using in 2025.

HRBP Benchmarks by Company Size

Company Size	Median Employees per HRBP
50-150	53
151-500	77
501-1,000	103
1,001-5,000	143
5,001+	185

As companies scale, the number of employees per HRBP grows fast. That’s not just a cost-saving measure, it’s a reflection of process maturity. Larger companies tend to have stronger internal systems, self-service tools, and shared services teams that take on operational HR work. That lets each HRBP go deeper into what they’re best at: people strategy.

But there’s a tension here. More scale often means more complexity, multiple regions, diverse teams, and bigger stakes. Which raises a second question:

Are we empowering our HRBPs or just overloading them?

Key Takeaways

HRBPs are supporting more people than before.
The median HRBP is now covering over 100 employees in companies with just 500+ people.

Automation is enabling this shift.
With tools like Compensara handling benchmarking, compensation modeling, and reporting, HRBPs can stay focused on coaching managers, not wrangling spreadsheets.
Lean is the new normal.
Just like in finance and IT, HR teams are expected to do more with fewer people, and HRBPs are no exception.
But benchmarks aren’t destiny.
Your ideal HRBP ratio depends on how complex your business is, how fast you're growing, and how much strategic support your managers really need.

How does your company’s FTE-to-HRBP ratio compare to the latest benchmarks, and is it helping or hurting your people strategy?