As the contemporary workplace grows more complex, traditional models of working are increasingly paving way for flexible models of organization and employment. Today’s organizations are faced with an incredible number of pressures, including rapid technological advancement, increasing globalization, changing labor demographics and employee preferences, intense competition, and mergers and acquisitions. These pressures have necessitated a paradigm shift in the practice and function of human resource management. HR managers must create a centralized HR department and ensure alignment between HR polices and practices with the business strategy to facilitate the achievement of the organization’s purpose, vision, and strategic goals and objectives. Achieving this goal will help not only minimize inconsistencies that currently exist in HR policies and practices across in al areas of the company but also develop and implement practice, process, and structural changes that will ensure consistent application of best practices in the human resources function enterprise-wide.
Introduction
As the contemporary workplace grows more complex, traditional models of working are increasingly paving way for flexible models of organization and employment. Landy and Conte (2016) note that today’s organizations are faced with an incredible number of pressures, including rapid technological advancement, increasing globalization, changing labor demographics and employee preferences, intense competition, and mergers and acquisitions. As a result, HR is today required to contribute to the organization’s ability to navigate through these transitions (Buller " McEvoy, 2012). In order to play this strategic role, Bagga and Srivastava (2014) suggest that the HR is expected to increase its actual and perceived value by becoming a strategic partner with line managers and top executives to not only help align business strategy with HR policies and practices but also participate meaningfully to the decision-making and strategy formulation processes (Ulrich, Younger, Brockbank, " Ulrich, 2012; Bagga " Srivastava, 2014). This paper details a human resource strategic plan for an IT firm.
HR Purpose Statement
The Human Resource Department is committed to maximizing the value of human capital by aligning human resources (HR) with the company’s strategic business goals and objectives with the aim of improving business performance and creating a corporate culture that nurtures fair treatment of our staff, innovation, flexibility, open communication, personal accountability, and trust and mutual respect. We seek to contribute to the attainment of corporate and employee goals by identifying key HR areas where strategies can be implemented in the short- and long run to improve the overall employee motivation along with productivity.
HR Vision Statement
Our vision is to become a preferred employer of skilled, committed and well-motivated talent through the provision of innovative and results-oriented human resources services, policies, and systems.
HR Goals and Objectives
1. Create a centralized human resources function located at our corporate offices that identifies and supports individual staff needs and their use of locally assigned human resources contact.
2. Minimize inconsistencies that currently exist in our HR policies and practices across all areas and develop and implement practice, process, and structural changes that will ensure consistent application of best practices in the human resources function enterprise-wide.
3. Eliminate unnecessary duplication of processes and services in the HR function.
4. Ensure that employees receive relevant training and experience they need to develop their expertise and provide diverse opportunities for career advancement in the HR field.
5. Improve communication and information sharing among all functional areas to ensure consistent application of the HR function.
6. Create a diverse workplace that is safe and free from discrimination and harassment by ensuring strict compliance with employment laws and government regulations.
7. Integrate recruitment selection practices with long-term business objectives to identify the right pool of talent for establishing and recruiting best-qualified candidates and translate the strategic demands of the firm into an appropriate recruitment and selection specification.
8. Identify HR knowledge, skills and abilities (KSAs) in line with the business and organizational needs and develop a competitive hiring, development, performance evaluation, and compensation plan to attract the required competencies and link staff performance to the strategic goals (Ulrich et al., 2012).
Strategic Human Resource Planning
Human resources planning refers to the analysis and identification of the need for and availability of talent and aims to help the company to meet its strategic business objectives (Bagga " Srivastava, 2014). HR planning seeks to reduce the significant lead time HR managers spend between recognizing a job requirement and acquiring a qualified candidate to fill the identified gap. To do this, we (the HR department) will:
1. Constantly keep track of the labor market and understand how we can attract and retain talented workers.
2. Shift its focus from traditional HR functions (e.g. hiring, performance appraisal, training, and payroll administration) to towards forecasting the company’s HR needs and succession planning to manage different contingencies. Such a focus will allow the HR to not only contribute significantly to the success of business operations but also reduce turnover by keeping the staff apprised of new or potential career opportunities within the firm (Bagga " Srivastava, 2014).
3. Meticulously integrate effective HR planning with the organization’s business planning process.
4. Maintain close working relationships with line managers in all areas of the organizations.
5. Recruit skilled employees, develop their KSAs further, and adequately prepare them to advance their career and be promoted into more challenging roles.
6. Constantly develop our human capital to maintain a talent pipeline.
Strategic Selection and Recruitment
Employee recruitment and selection involve identifying candidates for potential employment and employing diverse tools and techniques to select individuals who meet the job-specific criteria. The task of recruiting and selecting new employees is a critical component of strategic human resource planning because it opens the door for not only hiring new talent but selecting candidates that best fit the organization’s corporate culture and job requirement (Bagga " Srivastava, 2014). The HR will adopt the following recruitment strategies to facilitate the alignment between the HR unit and the business organization:
1. Strategically integrate staff recruitment and selection with long-term business objectives to translate the company’s strategic demands into an appropriate recruitment and selection specification.
2. Conduct comprehensive task and organizational analysis to determine the organization’s HR needs and to help design appropriate job designs. The analysis will identify candidates who fit in the organization as well as specific roles, tasks, and requirements of the job position and align them with required KSAs potential candidates should have.
3. Write comprehensive job descriptions for each of the job positions that need to be filled.
4. Research industry qualifications for each job type based on the specific requirements of their functions and the core values and purpose of the specific area, department, and company as a whole.
5. Consider a large variety of sources of staff recruitment such as promotions, recommendations from our network of associates and business contacts, referrals, former employees, internal and press advertisements, placement agencies, and college undergraduates seeking for internships, among others.
6. Select new staff who match bot job criteria and organizational characteristics to achieve both job-specific fit and person-organization fit.
7. Focus the recruitment on key job positions that are strategic and critical for the business operation and needed to accelerate the growth of the business.
8. Research and develop appropriate interview questions that will allow our recruiters to elicit accurate responses about their background, work experience, KSAs, recommendations, and true understanding of the purpose, vision, and core values of the company.
9. Complement document screening with in-depth interviews to ascertain the candidates’ KSAs, accuracy and trustworthy of the claims they make in their resumes and application forms.
10. Administer relevant employment tests to successful candidates, including performance tests, physical assessment, cognitive ability tests, work samples, and background checks, among others.
11. Match applicants’ test scores with industry metrics for the relevant job positions.
12. Ensure strict compliance with legal and ethical issues and other laws and regulations relevant to employee recruitment and selection.
Strategic Training and Development
Bagga and Srivastava (2014) identify that many high performing organizations are increasingly perceiving effective staff training and development practices to be a source of competitive advantage. Armstrong and Taylor (2014) opine that companies must empower their human capital by providing them with relevant training and development opportunities to harness grow and their value and optimal potential. The HR department will implement the following strategies to strategically position staff training and development programs to directly promote the achievement of the organization’s strategic business goals and objectives.
1. Conduct orientation seminars for new employees to discuss the organization’s business vision and mission, core values, employment and termination practices, policies and procedures, and the company’s position as an employer-at-will.
2. Perform a comprehensive training needs analysis (TNA) to identify the job requirements and performance expectations of current positions, KSAs that will enhance employees’ ability to perform their current job better, and effective strategies that can help them to achieve their developmental goals (Garavan, Carbery, " Rock, 2012).
3. Thoughtfully gauge the company’s market position and determine the talent, skills, and knowledge to be successful.
4. Identify, design, and deliver training programs to impart employees with KSAs to make them more capable of delivering in accordance with the overall business strategy and organizational goals and objectives.
5. Incorporate a large variety of training methods and techniques (e.g. quizzes, tests, case studies, or hands-on exercises, job shadowing, on-the-job training, coaching and mentoring, computer-enabled simulation, job rotation, and seminars and workshops) to meet the diverse needs of the staff (Armstrong " Taylor, 2014).
6. Integrate adult learning principles. In light of Malcolm Knowles’ andragogy, adults need to be involved in the planning and evaluation of their training, are most interested in content that has immediate relevance and effect on their job or personal life, they prefer problem-centered learning, and experience establishes the basis for their learning activities (Knowles, Holton, " Swanson, 2012).
7. Create training content and assessments that relate directly to the learning objectives and HR function such as equal employment opportunity, workplace diversity, leadership training for HR and line managers, business ethics and compliance, among others.
8. Conduct confirmative evaluation of the learning outcomes to assess the effectiveness of the training program in terms of equipping participants with relevant KSAs required to perform their work better and its contribution to the realization of business strategy.
9. Leverage technology including a learning management system (LMS) facilitate the design, development, delivery, evaluation, and reporting on training. By using an LMS at work, the HR department will allow all employees in all areas of the organization to log in and see the list of training they have been assigned.
Strategic Performance Management
HR departments that still rely on traditional performance management systems tend to fail to deliver the desired business objectives due to a breakdown in communication between the top management. The breakdown in communication inhibits clear understanding down the line, consequently resulting into misalignment between business strategy and department, team and individual level objectives, as well as how the corporate strategy can be translated to specific targets at these levels. Therefore, if business goals and strategy and HR policies and practices are not carefully aligned, Armstrong and Taylor (2014) believe that results certainly suffer. Bagga and Srivastava (2014) suggest that strategic performance management can help address this mismatch. In today’s fast-paced business world, organizations need to have an effective performance management to align their talent, support their development, and enhance their performance (Daley, 2012). To ensure that the organization, its areas, departments, teams, and functional processes are aligned towards achieving organizational goals, the centralized HR department will:
1. Work closely with the top management and line managers in all organization’s areas to determine how they actually want to manage performance.
2. Determine specific HR delivery metrics and key performance measurements an individual or team must meet and when.
3. Identify HR delivery metrics such as turnover rate, engagement, and performance of employees within departments and business units and on a monthly and seasonal basis to inform recruiting and staffing decisions and budgets.
4. Track key performance measurements (e.g. cost per hire, time to hire, engagement rating, retention rate, cost of staff training, staff performance and potential, billable hours employee, turnover rate, and cost of absenteeism) that need to be produced by employees and teams to track and measure individual and team performance and point out specific areas that call for improvement and forecasts the future HR needs of the company.
5. Assess the extent to which desired HR delivery metrics and KPIs have been achieved and provide a formal setting in which all staff members receive feedback on their past performance, developmental progress, and future plans.
6. Identify key competencies required to facilitate the realization of the company’s business strategy and objectives and implement effective talent management practices to not only maintain the key competencies but also establish a performance evaluation plan that facilitates the alignment between staff performance and the strategic goals.
7. Evaluate both new and existing staff on a biannual basis to determine their progress and improvement to inform them whether they are performing in accordance with the firm’s business strategy, mission, and core values.
8. Administer monthly offhand interviews to explore how employee see the firm, operations in their respective business units, the clients they serve, the product and/or services offered and the role they play and the challenges they face in the attempt to scale up their performance.
9. Appraise supervisory or managerial positions after every 6 months and solicit their opinions on how the organization can further improve business performance, employee motivation and productivity, as well as identify the existing and potential problems hindering optimal performance.
Strategic Compensation and Reward Management
Effective compensation and reward management is another important aspect of strategic HR plans as it directly impacts the organization's ability to attract and retain stellar employees (Buller " McEvoy, 2012). In light the ever-increasing competition coupled with changing labor market, organizations need to provide market competitive pay and attractive incentives to attract and retain qualified employees, as well as increase staff morale, job satisfaction, and commitment to the organization (Larkin, Pierce, " Gino, 2012; Daley, 2012). To provide fair compensation, the HR will seek to:
1. Conduct job analysis and evaluation to analyze job descriptions to determine the responsibilities, requirements, functions, duties, location, environment, conditions, and other aspects pertinent to the jobs so as to determine the appropriate compensation levels for individual jobs or job elements.
2. Create a compensation policy that provides the right rewards for individual worker’s job performance, knowledge, skills, abilities, competencies, and level of experience to attract and retain them (Bagga " Srivastava, 2014).
3. Reward our staff for their market worth and the extent to which they contribute to the achievement of the desired organizational results.
4. Adopt a data-driven approach to staff compensation so that salaries and wages and benefits are allocated to positions and individuals or teams that produce the greatest return.
5. Develop a variable pay rewards system in which employees are paid based on how an individual or team performance contributes to the realization of the company’s strategic business objectives.
6. Implement a compensation strategy that incorporates a variety of compensations and benefits such as base pay. Commissions, overtime pay, bonuses, profit sharing, merit pay, allowances (e.g. travel, meal, and housing), stock options, health insurance, medical cover, paid vacation, leaves (maternal and paternal), and attractive retirement schemes, among others (Armstrong, " Taylor, 2014).
Conclusion
In today’s fast-paced world, HR managers need to establish close working relationships with line managers and the executive management to facilitate the achievement of the organization’s strategic business objectives. This HR strategic plan presents a comprehensive path the HR department can pursue “to change its image as a “cost center” to that of a “strategic business partner” in the decision-making process” (Bagga " Srivastava, 2014). By implementing this action plan to the latter, the HR will appropriately link HRM with strategic business objectives to help the business to gain a competitive advantage through its skilled, committed and well-motivated workforce. It is imperative to reiterate that the firm can realize this goal only if every HR function is strategically aligned with its business strategy.
References
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