Start with a big-picture overview. Then drill down to tactical actions.
Dear Starting from Scratch:
Consider yourself fortunate. Your management team understands the
importance of human resources in driving business strategy. Producing a great
strategic staffing plan for human resources further supports your department’s
credibility.
Human resources uses the same process to create its strategic plan as do
other key departments--from marketing or finance to technology and operations.
The human resources plan outlines the company’s people strategy, ensuring that
you have the right people with the right competencies in the right jobs at the
right time.
Start your plan with a big-picture overview. Then drill down into the
tactical-action steps needed to achieve company objectives. Customize and
personalize your plan, but remember to include the following main sections:
- Environmental scan
- Vision, mission and values
- SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats) analysis
You conduct an environmental scan by highlighting relevant data and trends
affecting the department. Demonstrate challenges to your company from four key
factors: government influence, economic conditions, competition for talent and
workforce demographics.
It’s also important to address your department’s vision, mission and
values--key elements that provide directional guidance for the human resources
department. A clearly stated mission and vision help support human resources’
credibility. A set of well-defined values affirms what is important in an
organization’s culture and helps shape employee behavior.
To gain strategic insights, conduct a SWOT analysis. Seek answers to four
basic questions, focusing on people implications:
- What are your organization’s strengths?
- What are your organization’s weaknesses?
- What opportunities could you seize to move the organization forward?
- What threats do you see that could hold the organization back?
Include in your SWOT analysis coverage of staff capabilities, benefit
programs, employee services, facilities and technology, as well as the
reputation of human resources within the organization. A SWOT analysis may
identify critical needs to be addressed, or it may pinpoint unknown capabilities
to leverage. Customize your plan to focus on any of the following human
resources processes that will be critical to the company’s future success:
- Organization structure
- Competencies
- Staffing
- Retention
- Succession
- Diversity
- Development
- Rewards
- Recognition
- Quality of work/life
Once you’ve completed the SWOT analysis, establish long-term goals as well as
short-term objectives, with milestones that can be accomplished within six
months to a year. Each short-term objective will need an action plan and a
budget.
Set up regular reviews of the human resources plan so you can stay at the
front end of emerging trends and address unforeseen issues as they occur.
Communicate results of the plan in measurable terms--such as budget and time--to
keep your management team in the loop and engaged in people strategy, and to
show a return on the company’s investment.
SOURCE: Patsy Svare,
managing director, The Chatfield Group,
Glenview, Illinois, May 20, 2004.
LEARN MORE:
Strategic Human
Resources Actions.
The information contained in this article is intended to provide useful
information on the topic covered, but should not be construed as legal advice or
a legal opinion. Also remember that state laws may differ from the federal law.
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