Why You Should Implement Strategic HR at Your Company

As times, trends, technology, and focuses change, companies are trying to figure out the best ways to stay current, which can often include changing how they manage their staff, or the key skills that they look for when hiring staff. Focusing on diversity and inclusion is important, as more employees are coming from increasingly diverse backgrounds. Fighting for the best talent, managing millenials, and working on leadership (learning) and development are all aspects that human resources directors are zeroing in on. Strategic human resources development helps implement these goals, by reinforcing long-term business goals and results by putting a strategic framework in place that covers every aspect of the task at hand. Instead of looking short-term, strategic human resources focuses long-term, and dictates how other HR strategies play out and work with the more general strategy for a thriving business.

What are Some of the Challenges Facing HR Departments Currently?
It used to be that people would stay at a job their entire lives, retiring on generous pensions for their loyalty to the company. However, there’s greater mobility than ever today — almost three million employees left their jobs of their own volition at the end of June 2015. That’s a 25% uptick from just two years ago. People are on the move and constantly looking for better opportunities, whether that comes in the form of a better salary, position, or benefits. The competition to keep top talent can be fierce and for smaller- or medium-sized businesses who may have more limited resources, it can be tough.

Many HR departments also are stretched thin and there can be increased pressure for HR recruiters to get people in to fill a job, which can lead to poor hires. In a survey that Robert Half recently released, almost 40% of the 1,400 executives surveyed felt that the main reason for a failed hire was due to their skills not matching what the company needed.

Incorporating diverse employees is also coming to the forefront of company objectives. It’s in their best interests to do so — McKinsey’s research found that gender-diverse companies are likely to outperform their peers by about 15%. The rates for ethnically-diverse companies are even higher — they’re 35% more likely to outperform their peers.

What are Some of the Benefits that Strategic Human Resources Offers Businesses?
Utilizing strategic human resources offers a company a better chance at aligning their overall strategy with that of HR’s, which can make the company more flexible and responsive to anticipating needs from staff and customers alike and to stay competitive.

With this type of HR strategy in place, there are directives to make sure that employees are productive and organized, with a clear sense of direction to make the workday more efficient. Leadership may be able to anticipate unpleasant surprises that can be costly and impede the overall goals, and deal with them in a timely fashion. Strategic human resources also will help implement training or development initiatives and give top level management the tools they need to make their initiatives happen in an organized and sensible way.

How Can Companies Go About Implementing This Type of Plan?

HR and management should first take a step back and assess their company from a critical viewpoint. They should sum up where they are now and where they want to be in the future. After establishing their starting point and end goal, they should talk strategy on how to get there, including objectives or target goals they need to hit along the way. There should be evaluations built in along the way to assess progress and to make any changes to the plan needed, based on the circumstances.

They should also look outwards, and see what their competitors are doing. How are other companies recruiting? What is their pay and benefits package like? Consulting a talent acquisition management service can also help give your hiring a boost. Knowing that information can help align your own recruiting and hiring processes. Restructuring, keeping training current, and keeping tabs on what staff needs is also important.

Get your company on track with a well defined strategic human resources plan.