How to be HR Strategic

For years, pundits have been talking about how Human Resources (HR) needs to be more strategic. Today’s environment brings that into focus as never before. While that is true, the focus here, is more about being strategic with your HR. What is the difference?

Strategic HR or HR Strategic?

Strategic HR involves HR having a “seat at the table” They want to be a business partner bringing value to strategic planning around business growth, being a member of and helping the C Suite in developing and implementing programs solving major business objectives.

Being HR Strategic is more about having a people plan. While all organizations must understand the importance of their people, large organizations typically have HR Departments with a full staff. For smaller and medium size organizations, this is typically not the case. Therefore, the struggle to manage business and build high performing teams is more difficult. Here are some ideas that can help you be more strategic with your most valuable asset – people, grow your business, and be more profitable.  

• Looking Back. Review the previous year and dig deep into what is and is not working. Analyze your budget, how well last year’s planning is doing, and learn from mistakes. Bonus Tip: Make it a “family affair.” This means asking employees for their input. Information your front-line employees provide can be crucial for future success.
• Talk Trends. Talking with executives in your own company as well as in your networking circles can provide you with a perspective on coming trends. Keep up with trends, or better yet, staying ahead of them helps you to plan and prepare, take advantage of opportunities your competition is not aware of, and head off or better manage a crisis. Bonus Tip: If you know your people the way you should, you can strategically place them in areas for research trends and planning to implement the findings.
• Going for the Gap(s). What technology do you lack? What resources are missing? What can you outsource? What processes do you need to build or tweak? Bonus Tip: Understanding your people’s talent tells you where they best fit to fill job and performance gaps. You cannot build high performance teams without this knowledge and understanding.
• Strategic Thinking: Strategic Thinking is not just for executives. Small and mid-size organizations need everyone to be a strategic thinker. Building high performance teams requires strategic thinkers. Strategic thinkers are good problem solvers, better decision makers, and critical thinkers. Anyone can learn to be a better strategic thinker. Bonus Tip: Assessments can tell you which team members already have strategic thinking skills.
• Continuous Education: Today there are many ways to provide inexpensive learning for your staff. Keep in mind that the talent you have today is who you will build your succession plan with for tomorrow. Bonus Tip: Creating a culture of learning helps motivate people to continue learning and helps build employee engagement.

Summary

Being strategic with your human resources is not rocket science nor does it have to be expensive, but it is necessary to create winning experiences for you, your people, and your organization.

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