Does your organisation have a Human Resources Strategic Plan? If it is a plan for this year only, then it is probably an operational plan. Genuine HR strategies take anywhere from 5 – 10 years to implement.

Like all of the other major business functions, human resources must accomplish a wide range of activities from basic transaction processing to strategic planning in order to be successful.

The importance ascribed to each of those functional activities in large part represents the company’s human resource strategy.

A Human Resource Strategic Plan identifies a long-term vision, supporting success factors, and the most immediate priorities needed to achieve the business strategy (together with detailed action or operational plans to implement the priority projects.)

If you are having trouble convincing your management that an HR strategy is required it might help to point out that a detailed strategy is required in order for HR to meet the strategic goals and operational plans of your organisation.

So often people also see strategies as rigid plans that can not be changed. The opposite is in fact the case.

The only way to plan for the various scenarios that might come up is to plan for them.

A good strategy will never only consider one eventuality but instead will remain flexible so that your organisation can manage change if the future is different than anticipated

A typical human resource strategy will address issues surrounding:

• resourcing (planning, recruitment, internal promotions and transfers),

• development (training, career management),
• performance management (productivity improvement),
• reward (pay and benefits, job evaluation),
• employee relations (consultation, communication, discipline and grievance),
• culture (organisation development),
• and the efficiency of the HR function in delivering timely cost effective services.

A good HR strategy will add value if it summarises the explicit HR elements from all other plans in the organisation and picks up on the implicit HR issues which underlie other plans and need further development or further action.

The HR strategy should also raise fundamental organisation-wide issues which must be addressed before any plans are capable of succeeding.

Finally an excellent HR strategy will highlight developments in the world beyond the immediate confines of the organisation which will impact on its people and their ability to meet its objectives.

An organisational strategy has been defined as ‘a road map to the future’ and as such, seeks to answer two fundamental questions: where do we want to go and how do we want to get there?

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Shirley Haddock
Managing Director
Workinfo.com

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