What are HR strategies?

HR strategies are roadmaps for solving large challenges through people-centric solutions. In other words, by creating an HR strategy that focuses on employees, your company can come up with solutions to issues you may be facing.

To do this you have to be able to allow HR to have input into policy creation. HR strategies within your policies will emphasize the importance of:

• recruitment
• talent management
• compensation
• succession planning
• corporate culture

By emphasizing the above, HR strategies can help maximize the potential of workers and help the company achieve their goals.

Why having an HR strategy is important

Having a solid HR strategy can:

• get employees ready to execute goals by working with individuals on career development
• work with current staff while anticipating the future staffing needs
• help prevent employee turnover by having policies that keep employees happy
• include a succession plan to limit disruptions due to changes in management or structure of the company

These are all important to think about when managing a business as they will help your company grow and continue to be successful.

5 steps to creating HR strategies

Now that you know what an HR strategy is and how it will help your company, it is time to discuss the steps to creating this strategy.

1. Assess your current workforce

Before you can create your own HR strategy, you need to assess your workers. To do this you need to assess their knowledge, skills and abilities. This will give you a good idea of each person’s strengths and weaknesses when it comes to their jobs.

The second part of this is to assess their competencies, levels of education and if they have any certificates in skills needed for their position. By looking at these three criteria, you are able to see where certain employees may excel over their coworkers.

In order to have a successful business you want your employees to work at their optimum level and by doing these assessments you will have a better idea as to how to do this. What other talents do your employees have? If there is something that they could be bringing into their work that would help the company, you would want your HR strategy to reflect this.

You can also check this by looking at past performance reviews. An old performance review should give you a good idea about an individual’s ability to learn new skills or improve how they work.

If for example, an employee always has the same need for improvement in a certain area, they might need to take a course in that skill set. Bringing this type of information into your HR strategy will help you see each person’s abilities more clearly, which will then help you in the next step.

2. Create employee development plans

Now that you know each employee’s strengths and weaknesses, you can decide on an appropriate development plan for them. This will give them clear direction on how to improve their skills and advance their careers.

When creating an employee development plan, try to match skills with the company’s goals. For example, if you have someone who is really good at presentations and one of the goals is to gain collaborative work with other companies, maybe this employee can learn how to pitch ideas to possible collaborators.

When you align staff’s skills with the company’s goals, you will be more successful at reaching those goals. To help you do this, try to meet with each employee to get an idea of how they want to improve their careers.

This will give you a clear idea of what type of professional development programs would be advantageous for each employee. You want your employees to enjoy their work, so making sure they are part of the process is the best way to come up with a winning HR strategy that also increases employee retention.

By creating an employee career development program you are keeping your employees happy while also taking care of the company’s future. The next step in the process will continue your work in the future of the company.

Related: Individual Development Plan Examples: Templates to Use

3. Create a succession plan

A succession plan is a strategic plan for when executives leave the company, normally through moving to a new career or retirement. By creating this type of plan you are able to minimize disruptions during the transition.

When an executive leaves a company it can often cause productivity levels to go down. This can be because of new leadership needing time to get to know their workers and possible confusion about who is in charge of what.

For example, if one of the top managers leaves, it could cause a bunch of promotions to happen, meaning everyone will be reporting to someone new. Employees can get confused about who they’re reporting to and what their expectations might be. It also means a period of transition in terms of workload as people in their new position will need time to adjust to their new jobs.

If there isn’t a succession plan in place, workers often feel very anxious when change happens, which is something companies want to avoid. Having anxious employees could cause people to leave the company and suddenly you are dealing with an employee retention issue.

To avoid these issues, you want to come up with a thorough HR strategy that takes into account succession planning. The plan would clearly state exactly what would happen when someone leaves a company so that everything from who is in charge of the person’s tasks during the transition to how to find a new employee (if needed) is clearly defined.

Related: 6 Steps for Succession Planning

4. Perform gap analysis

Gap analysis can be defined as the process in which you look at whether the requirements of your company are being met or not. It also will outline what steps should be taken in order to meet these objectives.

Performing a gap analysis can help you identify resources the company has and what it will need in the future. Much of what you assess in a gap analysis has to do with human resources, which is why it should be part of your HR strategy.

To do a gap analysis you want to look at the following.

• Job descriptions–do they match current expectations?
• Employee handbook–does it need to be updated?
• Training programs–are new employees being trained properly?
• Business performance–is the revenue going up?
• Employee benefits–are employees happy with their packages and what’s covered?

By answering these questions you will be able to spot where there might be some gaps in resources and come up with a strategic HR plan to fix it.

5. Decide how to increase resources for the future

In order to figure out if you have enough resources for the future you need to ask the following questions:

• Do you have enough staff? Will you continue to have enough staff if your business is in a growth period?
• Do the employees’ skills match your needs?
• Are there changes you could start making for now?

This last step in the HR strategy creation is important as it will make sure all other steps were done to completion. Planning for the future is an important thing to do as a company and by using the HR strategy you can make sure that your company continues to be successful no matter the circumstances.

Having a good HR strategy can be very beneficial to any company and should be implemented in order to avoid issues or to help current issues be resolved. Following the steps we’ve outlined, you will be on your way to creating a successful HR strategy for your business.