Article Series
- What is Strategic HR?
- What isn’t Strategic HR?
- Is Talent Management Strategic?
HR Strategy is any activity to shape the workforce for the purpose of enhancing the business operational requirements. Anything can be strategic, but tasks are not when mis-applied to the wrong objectives.
HR is here to support business critical functions. As “human resources” it’s our job to optimize the performance of that resource in the business function. Here’s a short list of how we do that:
- Recruit to enhance overall productivity when all other (non-human) resources are considered
- Design benefit plans to attract and retain the demographics with the highest concentration of competencies your business needs. Understand how plan design attracts demographic groups
- Contribute to the growth plans of your business. Understand how local populations increase your chances of success as you move into new geographies
- Training and communicating to the business critical objective.
Therefore, it’s easy to define what HR strategy is not.
- Recruiters who recruit to job requisitions without understanding how this role fits into the business strategy are not strategic
- Benefit managers designing their plans without understanding how the benefit affects the demographic of their workforce
- The deployment of HR technology without understanding the end result business rational of “why”
- Most compliance crap
- Most tactical processes such as payroll gross to net, benefit enrollment
- Communications that forget the brand
What it basically comes down to is your focus on the business. Each and every task performed should be with your executive team’s strategic business plan in mind. In other words, HR is not strategic when it is not coordinated with the business strategy.
I like this clarification of “Strategic HR” because it aligns with the definition of being strategic in other parts of the organization. It is all about aligning actions with the right goals. Unfortunately, defining what it means to be strategic is only the very first step in actually achieving that status.
As you can imagine, success ultimately depends on the capability of your organization’s strategic planning process. This process can fail in a number of different ways. For example, process failures include; creation of incomplete plans that are too vague, no mechanism to collaborate across departments during plan creation, and lack of communication about the plan or the planning process.
So, if you’re lucky enough to in an organization with a robust strategic planning process, then the really tough part is done. Now all you need to do is focus on how to make yourself or your HR organization act strategically. That’s a topic for another day.
Gap Analysis and HR…
Systematic HR has an excellent post on HR strategy, both what it is and what it isn’t. While the piece will likely ruffle a few feathers, I think it is interesting to look at the gaps in perception between HR and the business as a whole.
What it b…