Developing and Implementing
an Effective HR Strategy
Having an HR strategy is important
because it determines how HR
processes work in your company and
ensures they are in alignment with the
organization's goals. HR practices can
increase employee productivity,
positively impact employee learning and
improve a business's overall
performance.
Reminder
Creating an HR Strategy
Implementing an HR Strategy
HR Strategy is the strategy adopted
by an organization, which aims at
integrating an organization’s
culture, its employees, and system
by coordinating a set of actions to
get the required business goals. Another way to say this might go something
like: HR strategy is all about creating
alignment around an organization’s people,
processes, and operating philosophies
2.Creating an HR Strategy
How to create an HR strategy
While there isn’t necessarily a “right” or a “wrong” way to build a successful HR strategy, there are
certainly some best practices to follow. This is especially the case if your goal is to build an HR
strategy that goes well beyond the ‘tactical’ to transform your organization—and its people—from
the inside out. And because business-level strategies often ebb and flow alongside the world’s
various social, political, economic, and cultural tectonic shifts, how organizations approach HR
strategy today may be very different than how they had approached it even a year or two ago.
So to dig a little deeper into what really moved the needle today, we asked our very own HR
experts to weigh in on the discussion. Here is what they’ve suggested are the five steps for
developing and implementing an effective HR strategy:
A business strategy dictates how a
1.Align to business will achieve its goals and grow
business in both the near- and long-term. An HR
needs strategy complements this by creating the
internal infrastructure that can effectively
activate its people and processes to
reach those goals.
Here’s an example of what this might look like in practice. Let’s say a
company, having suffered during the economic downturn of the COVID-
19 pandemic, decides to shift its focus in 2021 away from new
customer acquisition and, instead, double down on customer retention
in an effort to reduce churn. The best way to do this is to create an
exceptional customer experience that puts ‘strengthening customer
relationships’ on the top of its priority list.
Ask yourself: “What does success look like?”
How will this strategy fix, change, amplify,
or even transform certain aspects of the
Culture day-to-day leadership and employee
experience within your organization?
2. Identify
How will this strategy optimize the
what success hierarchical structure of your
looks like Organization organization, refine reporting lines,
and identify new job role needs?
How will this strategy support the
People ongoing development, growth, success,
and happiness of the people within your
organization?
Work with stakeholders to collaborate on
3.
Focus on
priorities, identify what is most important
collaboration or achievable in the coming year, and
then chart a clear path towards achieving
those goals as well as the KPIs you’ll use
to measure progress against those goals
While strategic human resources management is typically perceived as a top-down mandate, the truth is, it
can’t be fully mobilized without buy-in from the leaders and teams who will ultimately be responsible for
helping HR turn strategy into a reality. Sure, everyone within an organization may agree on the broader
goals set forth by the HR strategy in principle, but different departments may have different ways of
reaching those objectives. Deploying an HR strategy across an organization requires an apples-to-apples
application across every department and team. Anything less will create a measurement nightmare.
Jean-Stéphane Arcis, Chief Executive Officer, Talentsoft
Not everyone in an organization needs to
4. Drive hear HR’s strategic elevator pitch directly.
engagement But there always are people
through in every department who can carry the torch
communication on your behalf. These are the people you
need to reach out to first and eventually
convert into ambassadors and advocates of
your strategy, vision, and properties.
5. You’ve established KPIs in order to have a
Measure results consistent way to track progress against your
in real-time goals. Now you just need to make sure that
regular reporting, either monthly or quarterly
(or both!), on key data and analytics is part
of your broader and ongoing strategic plan.
Reporting on data and analytics doesn’t
simply mean throwing all metrics onto a
dashboard and calling it a day. No one
wants to be overloaded with data. Be sure
to keep your reports focused by providing
only the data and insights that matter most.
– Elodie Champagnat, Director Global
Presales & Product Marketing, Talentsoft
What does a good HR strategy look like?
3.Implementing an HR Strategy
