In any organization, the people resources are the most valuable asset. Thus, it makes sense to invest in those resources with an extremely well thought-out, well-executed strategy.
Do you feel as though your HR department needs an overhauling? Maybe a more clearly defined HR strategy to better support your employees? Then you’re in the right place. In this article, we’ll cover all of the steps that one needs to know to create a phenomenal human resource strategy to execute this year.
Create Core Values
The first step to create an HR strategy is to create a list of core values that are absolutely crucial to the business’s operations. Many companies, especially recent startups, have made core value definition a part of their starting process.
Some other companies that may be a bit older, however, may not have adopted the core value philosophy yet.
By concretely defining the values that are most crucial to your business, you can better attract top talent that aligns with those values.
Create a Mission Statement
If you ask your average employee what the human resources department does, the chances are that they won’t have any idea. They’ll know about the recruiting aspect, sure. But beyond that? Nada.
That’s because employee interactions with HR are typically very limited once the employee has been onboarded. After the employee integrates into the company, he or she has little connection with HR.
A clearly defined mission statement to broadcast to the world will educate your customers about the HR department. The mission statement should identify the basic principles behind the various functions HR serves, and why it does so. This is where having already-defined core values will be extremely helpful.
Identify the Customers You Serve
Before we get into the nitty-gritty of organization analysis, it’s important to first analyze the different customer’s HR department serves.
While an HR department’s focus is strictly internal, one should still think of the employees that HR supports as customers. By adopting the customer mentality, one will have a better appreciation of the service to perform.
To best support, those customers, identify the groups of employees your department serves. Identify what each group wants out of HR. Learn how your department can partner with them in order to enable their completion of the tasks they have to accomplish.
Remember that this will often be very different from team to team. A sales department will have very different requirements and wishes from HR than an operations team.
Incorporate Personal Development and Training Programs
One significant responsibility of any human resource strategy is personal development. Any good HR department will institute and operate personal development and training programs. In order to get the most out of an organization’s people resources, it’s important that those employees are trained up as best as they can be.
By incorporating personal development into HR strategy, your department will accomplish two things. It will help create better employees that are better-equipped with technical and soft skills they need to perform their job. Second, it will also help to build the HR brand.
Once employees see how HR creates these development programs for them, they’ll have a better appreciation for your department.
Set Concrete Goals
As with any strategy, it’s important to have concrete goals to work towards. Take your customer analysis, along with your core values definitions, and figure out what your department doesn’t do now that you want it to do a month, a quarter, or a year from now.
Then, tack those goals up where it’s visible for everyone to see. After all, goals are worthless if one doesn’t hold oneself accountable to them. By making those goals visible to all, one can ensure that those goals are at the forefront of every HR employee’s mind.
When setting goals, make sure to set SMART goals that are specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and time-based.
The last factor — time-based — has always been the most important one in my estimation. It’s all well and good to know how and in what ways you want to improve, but if you don’t set a time limit on your improvement, then there’s no way for you to actually hold your department accountable to that improvement. They can always kick the can down the road.
Figure Out What You Don’t Want
An HR department often has negative connotations within the workforce. They’re the people who say no to doing fun things in the office. They’re the folk you have to see if someone lodges a complaint against you, and they’re generally seen as the anti-fun people in an organization.
You want to change that brand by figuring out what behaviors your customers don’t want from their HR department and letting your employees know that those behaviors aren’t acceptable. The best way to remove those negative connotations is to ensure that there isn’t a grain of truth behind those rumors!
If need be, interview current employees to figure out what they don’t like about how HR handles things right now. Some employees may not be comfortable doing this in-person, so make sure that you offer an anonymous survey option as well.
Monitor Strategy Execution with Numbers
Last but not least, once you have your HR strategy all ready to go, it’s important that you have a set of KPIs that you use to monitor the execution of the strategy. After all, why waste all of this time-consuming planning that you’ve just done by not tracking the implementation of the strategy?
HR Strategy, Made Simple
A well-executed HR strategy can take any company from good to great. By clearly defining goals, investing in employees, and tracking successes, even the most sluggish human resources department can take things to the next level and really have a positive impact on its company.
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