By Suzanne Boyd, CHRP Candidate

Have you been asked either of the following questions recently?

• · In the current recession as we look at staff reductions as a cost-cutting measure, are we sure we aren’t cutting away key talent and skills that will be needed in the future?
  
  
• · Are we structured most effectively to execute our strategy, keeping us lean now and positioning us to be able to successfully capitalize on a growing economy when things turn around?

If you have, chances are you are being looked at by your organization as a key HR leader working hard to make your HR practices and decision-making align effectively to the changing strategic reality of your organization. However, in seeking answers to these questions, organizations often turn to many “best practice tools” but find themselves challenged to connect their HR programs effectively to the organization’s strategic plan.

This can result in frustration as HR finds itself struggling to deliver value, and frustration with senior business executives who understand the value of the people in their organizations, but are struggling to see strategic relevance in some of the programs HR is leading.

There are two key reasons organizations have challenges in this area:

1. too little time is spent by HR leaders really understanding the business strategy of their organization, and we are too quick to jump into designing HR programs (i.e. we put the cart before the horse; and
2. the myriad of programs and tools designed and implemented in response to these questions are often not well integrated or coordinated, and lack an explicit link to the strategy of the organization, thus rendering resulting HR programs ineffective.

Here is a framework that integrates business strategy and HR strategy, thus enabling more effective HR program design and implementation, and ultimately, results:

Business Strategy: The business strategy anchors all strategic staffing work.

Strategic staffing is led by HR, but is not an “HR” process; it is a strategic design process. In the same way the CFO must truly understand the business strategy to lead the financial strategy, HR leadership must have a rich understanding of the business strategy to lead strategic staffing.

It is critical to gain a crystal clear understanding of what your organization is trying to achieve and how it intends to achieve it. This in many cases involves HR leaders working hard to understand areas of their business that don`t often come naturally, such as financial strategy and the details of operating programs.

Some organizations have very formalized strategic plans, others do not. But all organizations are trying to achieve a set of goals, and have a set of actions they will undertake in their effort to be successful. In essence, this is the strategy of the organization, and must be understood clearly to align HR programs effectively.

Once you gain solid understanding of your organization’s strategy, questions for HR leadership include:

• Do we have the talent and capacity to execute on the strategic plan, if not, how will be build in internally or source it externally?
• How will we utilize our talent and capacity in the most effective way?
  
• If we need to cut staff as a result of short-term financial realities, are we strategically managing these reductions so as not to overly weaken our organization for the long-run?

Organizational Planning: Focuses on identifying the key roles within the organization with the largest strategic impact, and the dynamics and characteristics of these roles.

Just as marketing segments customers, HR must segment roles. This is not an evaluation of individuals; it is a strategy informed role-based assessment. Ultimately you want to focus your strategic staffing efforts on the 25-35 per cent of roles most critical to the organization’s strategic success. Your organization’s role segments will be different than others, but illustrations of important segments may include the following:

• Strategic Roles: are roles critical to your organization’s ability to execute parts of its strategy. Improved role performance drives significant gains in organizational performance. Typically less than 20% of the workforce.
• Core Roles: are roles core to the delivery of the products and services of the organization. Gaps or reductions in performance here affect the company negatively, but significant improvements in execution are not seen as competitive advantages.

Given your business strategy, which role segments are the most vital to driving your organization’s performance? These segments are the focus of your strategic staffing efforts.

Workforce Capacity Planning: Focuses on understanding the gap between current capacity and strategic need, as well as the environment in which any capacity gaps will be filled for strategic role segments.

The capacity of an organizational unit or role is not just a count of the number of people, it is affected by a number of variables, such as:

• the number of people (headcount);
  
• the model by which they are organized to work;
• the effectiveness of the processes;
• the tools and technology employed to do their work; and
• how well they execute their function.

Considering all of these components, what are the implications for workforce capacity for your key role segments? Do you anticipate significant growth in strategically important parts of the organization? Is technology going to be implemented?

Performance planning: Focuses on both the role and individual level, assessing and managing the performance level of key role segments, and the movement of key employees within those segments.

Key questions here include:

• Focusing on the Key Role Segments, what are the characteristics of top performers? Consider background and experience; training, development and experience; behavioural and attitudinal factors. Do you have to ability to identify them quickly?
• Considering your business strategy, how may the characteristics required of future top performers be different than those today?

This assessment is critical to building strategic staffing programs to recruit the right type of talent, advance the right people, incent and reward performance and achievement, all of which are tools to close any capacity gaps identified, and advance organizational performance.

In summary, the development of effective HR programs that drive organizations forward must be anchored in the organization’s business strategy, and this requires strategic understanding. If you are not clear on what your organization wants to achieve, do everything that you can to gain understanding. Without this, your efforts will be hard pressed to produce results.

Suzanne Boyd, CHRP presented Finding the Structure To Fit Your Strategy at The Flexible Organization: Organizational Design & Change at symposiums in both Burnaby and Victoria in October 2009.  Suzanne is a Partner at Noverra Consulting & Capital Partners where she leads the HR practice. To receive a primer document outlining more detail of Noverra’s Strategic Staffing Framework, contact Suzanne Boyd at sboyd@noverrapartners.com. For more information on this and other professional development opportunities, please refer to BC HRMA’s online calendar.