Yes HR is Team Company - ultimately they pay us and we are employed to design the people architecture to deliver the business objectives. But certainly not "no questions asked" - our role is to ask the difficult people questions (and often the non people ones as well) and ensure that all decisions that impact on our arena have been as far as possible well thought through and are balanced and thoughtful.

It doesnt always happen and sometimes organisations balance other things over and above the people agenda and in those cases we have to make the best job out of a bad lot. In these cases its also important about how you challenge and how you put a case for a UK centric way of doing things - building up a clear picture that you get that you are on "the team" and working for the common good.

Not all American companies operate in the way you describe, mine doesn't for one and as a UK management team we have wide autonomy to make the decisions we need to run our business - but within corporate guidelines. You are a relatively small business unit and its likely the Senior UK Managers are "relatively" junior to the C suite and therefore controlled more than many.

Its sounds to me a little like this probably isnt the culture for you. When ever people start talking as staying so they dont surrender it rings loud and clear alarm bells for me

No I don't think so at all Emma, personally I think that's a bit old fashioned and in my experience it is possible to balance the two - employees who are looked after and treated fairly are bound to have less ER issues which benefits the business.

Ultimately employment law and 'best practice' is fair so a HR person promoting that is by default team company as well as team employee IMO.

I have experience of working with a company like yours with an overseas office throwing their weight around when it comes to UK law/best practice and not understanding that its not "team employee" its "team doing the right thing legally and morally". After 3 years I left after several issues that never would have happened before they started sticking their beaks in, because I didn't want my name to be associated with a Glassdoor employer review nightmare waiting to happen (which it has in the last 2 years, shame as it was a great company before they waded in).

Here is an idea that may kill two birds with one stone.
How about arranging cultural awareness (US) training for the whole of the UK lead team
Adapting to US ways of working ( and communicating/ presenting proposals) could be half the battle in building confidence to the point where authority is delegated to you and your UK lead team.

In reply to Kevin Elvidge:

Working for foreign companies is always a challenge because their cultures are different as well as their employment laws.
European companies are just as much of a struggle as American ones but for different reasons.

People looking down on HR as just an admin function is however not a culture specific problem, It is about gaining respect where possible and leaving where not.

Your US C suite is correct that HR is "Team Company". The challenge lies in educating the C Suite that there is a difference between being "Team Company" and being "Team Rolls Over And Does Whatever We're Told". And it's not easy. You've been in place two years, which is a good length of time to have had that opportunity, so there's a risk that you've been pushing on a door marked "pull".

How I have learned to manage this, through bitter experience, is to try to be as hypere-efficient as possible when it comes to doing things that fit well with good practice and sound business sense. That way, when you do push back and go "Um..." they know that it's not because you want to be deliberately obstructive.

And when you do push back, you have to do it in a language they understand: money.

I had to persuade my Board to authorize a pay-off to an employee last year. They bitterly resented it, because they felt the company had done nothing wrong. I had to frame it in terms of risk: that the risk of facing a legal challenge was high and that our odds of winning the argument were very low, and that the potential costs were therefore ten times what we were proposing as a settlement agreement.

It was through gritted teeth that I extracted an agreement from them, but as the consequences - better record keeping, more proactive management of problem employees, and a structured approach to performance appraisal - rolled out from this incident, they gradually came to terms with the fact that I'd made the right call and I gained credibility as a consequence.

That said, I still get emails along the lines of "All HR ever does is cost us money, I don't know why we bothered employing you". It's not the highlight of my day.

Quitting in the face of that isn't surrender. And two years is a perfectly respectable length of time to have on a CV.