What Is A Strategic HR Plan
What Is A Strategic HR Plan
It provides information on how the HR function will support the goals and strategies
of the organization, while also ensuring that HR planning and practices are
consistent.
The ideal Strategic HR Plan outlines how the gaps between present and future
capabilities will be addressed, enabling businesses to effectively pursue their
company goals.
For your business to be successful in these areas, you need to have the right
people, with the right skills, in the right place, at the right time to carry out the
strategy.
A comprehensive Strategic HR Plan will ensure that you have the capacity to deliver
on strategy and the ability to monitor progress towards your organization’s goals. It
should also establish:
The process for developing a Strategic HR Plan begins by identifying where your
organization is now in the life-cycle of an enterprise: the start-up stage, the growth
stage, the mature stage, or the decline stage.
Once you’ve decided where your company is today, formulate a clear picture of your
company’s future along with ways to get there. Your Strategic HR Plan will be built
upon the foundation of this strategic business plan.
Using your business’ strategic plan as a guide, identify the future HR needs of the
organization. Ask questions like:
What is the nature of our work?
What type of culture will support productivity?
What skills do we need to deliver results?
Where are those skills and how are we tapping into them?
How large is our organization?
What systems and processes do we need?
How are we making sure peoples’ skills match our needs?
What risks are associated with this future?
Step 2: Consider Present HR Capabilities
Compare your future HR needs from step 1 with your present HR capabilities from
step 2, and identify any significant gaps that appear.
Gaps can develop in a number of areas including policies and procedures, capability,
and resource allocation. Start with these questions:
Next, work to develop strategies that will address the gaps you identified in Step 3.
These gap strategies may affect:
Job/Work Design
Selection/Staffing
Performance Management
Compensation/Rewards
Training/Development
Employee Relations
Safety and Health
Workforce Diversity
Not all gaps will be of the same strategic importance, so you will need to set priorities
for addressing them.
For example, imagine you discovered a need to update your HR information system.
Investing in a new system would provide you with employee progress data that you
deemed essential for your future company goals.
Questions you can ask to help you determine the priority of your needs include:
Sharing the Strategic HR Plan with your senior leadership and those connected to
the HR function of your organization is a crucial component of its success. The more
your team understands and supports the plan, the more empowered they will be to
help the company achieve its goals.
It’s also important to monitor the progress of the Strategic HR Plan you develop and
to communicate successes or modifications to your team.
At the very least, you should review the plan on an annual basis to verify that the
goals on which the plan was based are still accurate and to make adjustments as
needed.