Human Resources Strategy

[Theo Pontbriand]

Strategichuman resource management involves a future-oriented process of developing and implementing HR programs that address and solve business problems and directly contribute to major long-term business objectives.

HR management was once largely an administrative function focused on day-to-day responsibilities such as employee recruiting and selection and managing employee benefits. Changing labor market conditions and new business thinking call for HR business strategies that include recruiting and retaining the right people, as well as providing ethical and cultural leadership.

Strategic planning presents great challenges and opportunities for HR professionals. Nearly all HR leaders in the largest global companies are involved in strategic decision-making and participate on the organization's strategy team, and a majority of HR professionals report that strategic planning is part of their function. In contrast, HR professionals in many medium and small organizations are not often involved in organizational or functional strategic planning. Consequently, to achieve long-term strategic HR objectives and to be a key player in the organization's strategic planning process, some HR departments may need to convince senior management of the value and contribution HR can provide.

The closer the alignment between HR and an organization's overall business strategy, the better the company's ability to anticipate and respond to customer needs and to maintain competitive advantage. Rigorous research, planning and development involving workforce culture, behaviors and competencies promote the successful execution of business strategy.

For HR departments, intradepartmental strategic planning can be a good way to start the functional alignment process. However, regardless of whether strategic planning begins in the HR department or in another department, or is managed on an organization wide scale, the actions of the HR department will be integral to the success of the strategic plan. Thus, HR professionals must take care to align the HR function with every aspect of the strategic plan, even if the strategic plan does not explicitly address HR issues. Recent SHRM research reveals that HR professionals foresee significant workplace challenges, including rising health care costs, the retirement of large numbers of Baby Boomers and the increased demand for work/life balance. Retention programs, work/life programs, succession planning, and health, safety and security programs are among the HR efforts that are viewed as key workplace challenges through which HR can strategically contribute to organizations. See Aligning Workforce Strategies with Business Objectives.

The HR alignment process is often driven by workforce composition issues. Although every organization's particular strategic plan is unique, the demographics and other characteristics of the available workforce have a major effect on the way businesses are staffed. In turn, the way organizations are staffed has a significant impact on the execution of the organization's strategy.

Understanding of the current situation can be enhanced by conducting a SWOT analysis. This analysis includes an internal assessment of the organization's capabilities and limitations as well as an external environmental scan to review its customers, markets and competitors, and to forecast to external opportunities and threats.

Major areas to consider during an external scan include economic, demographic, political, social and technological trends. An analysis of customers, markets and competitors is used to determine how the market is changing, to predict who the future customers will be and to analyze competitors in the marketplace. See Strategic Planning: What are the basics of environmental scanning? and Report: HR Lags in Using Data to Make Decisions.

The question "Where do we want to be?" can be answered and clearly articulated by creating statements of vision, mission and values. A vision statement provides a description of what an organization wants to become or hopes to accomplish in the future. An effective vision statement paints a mental picture of the organization's preferred future that is inspirational, aspirational, compelling and concise. See Human Resources Mission Statement Examples.

A values statement describes what the organization believes in and how it will behave. This statement can serve as the organization's moral compass and should be used to guide decision-making and assess actions taken. See Mission: What Is the Difference Between a Company's Mission, Vision and Values Statements?

Setting strategic objectives is an important part of the strategic planning process. Therefore, these objectives must be aligned with the organization's mission, vision and overall strategy. Strategic objectives will vary from organization to organization.

As an example, ABC Company may identify in its strategic planning analysis a need to improve the talent acquisition process. The strategic objective to address this issue is to design selection criteria to ensure best-fit hiring while reducing the time-to-fill positions.

At this step of the strategic planning process, the focus is on specifying short-term answers to the question "How do we get there?" Specific, concrete short-term objectives that can be completed within six months to a year should be established to answer this question.

Although many organizations engage in strategic planning, very few of them believe they are highly successful at strategy execution. According to a survey by the American Management Association and the Human Resources Institute, only 3 percent of executives polled said their organizations were very successful at executing corporate strategy, whereas 62 percent stated their organizations were moderately successful. However, the companies that reported relatively high success in strategy execution were more likely to realize favorable revenue growth, market share, profitability and customer satisfaction.

The final step should be establishing a mechanism to monitor and evaluate progress toward the achievement of strategic objectives. Most organizations conduct annual or quarterly strategic reviews for this purpose. These reviews do the following:

In May 2014, the Sixty-seventh World Health Assemblyadopted resolution WHA67.24 on Follow-up of theRecife Political Declaration on Human Resources forHealth: renewed commitments towards universal healthcoverage. In paragraph 4(2) of that resolution, MemberStates requested the Director-General of the WorldHealth Organization (WHO) to develop and submit a newglobal strategy for human resources for health (HRH) forconsideration by the Sixty-ninth World Health Assembly.

Development of the Global Strategy was informed by aprocess launched in late 2013 by Member States andconstituencies represented on the Board of the GlobalHealth Workforce Alliance, a hosted partnership withinWHO. Over 200 experts from all WHO regions contributed to consolidating the evidence around a comprehensive health labour market framework for universalhealth coverage (UHC). A synthesis paper was publishedin February 2015 (1) and informed the initial version ofthe Global Strategy

The "HR Excellence in Research" award gives public recognition to research institutions that have made progress in aligning their human resource policies with the principles set out in the "Charter & Code". Institutions that have been awarded the right to use the icon can use it to highlight their commitment to implement fair and transparent recruitment and appraisal procedures for researchers.

Confidential information on previous assessments and the way the institutions intends to articulate both dynamics when switching to the European process are most welcome [inserted in the Action Plan, section called 'Additional comments/remarks about the implementation process'].

Find out what are institutions which have most recently been awarded, navigate a map to locate the recognised organisations and see the latest figures about the implementation of the HR Strategy for Researchers in Europe.

The institution has to assign a contact person to be granted the role of HRS4R Organisation Administrator (HRS4R Admin). Only this designated person will have access to the HRS4R e-tool to upload data and to be the interface with the European Commission, on behalf of the institution, regarding the HRS4R process.

Once you have your individual member credentials, log in into the MY EURAXESS section. If the domain of the email address you use to register matches an existing organisation profile, you will be automatically invited to join.

The details of the newly created organisation will be checked by the Help Desk to avoid duplicate registrations of the same institution. Once the organisation profile is approved, you will be informed by email and you can proceed with the next steps.

Should you need to update the HRS4R contact person in the e-tool due to changes in your organisation, please contact the technical helpdesk: sup...@euraxess.org with the name, role, email address and telephone number of the person that will take over.

The HRS4R designated admin for the organisation account on EURAXESS will access the MY EURAXESS dashboard, the HRS4R section, and by clicking on the yellow button "Create a case & apply for the HR Award" will be able to fill in the required tasks of this stage.

After the receipt of the confirmation letter by the European Commission, the institution has 12 months to fill in the Gap Analysis, the OTM-R and the Action Plan templates in English in the HRS4R e-tool. Check the templates and read the HRS4R Technical Guidelines for Institutions.pdf for more details. Should you encounter difficulties, please contact the functional mailbox: RTD-C...@ec.europa.eu. Note these templates are for guidance purposes only and should not be filled in or submitted. Please refer to the online templates for your application.

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