28 February 2006

Choices when Strategizing

We need to make choices about the following when creating an HR strategy for business success:

1) Objective: Should the system be prominent in the overall organizational strategy, as opposed to only playing a supportive role? So how much time, energy, and focus does it deserve?

2) Alignment: What degree of flexibility does the organization have, and how does it support career growth for employees?

3) Competitiveness: How does your current practice compare to those with competitors? Do you want to be a market leader in this area?

4) Contributions: Does the organization view organizational performance through individual performance or team-based contributions?

5) Management: What is the degree of ownership, transparency, technology, and employee input to how the HR strategy is currently managed?

These choices will determine how your HR strategy contributes to the bottom-line of your organization's business. The decisions made in each of the above need to be in line with your organization's source of what has given it its past success, and what factors in the business environment like changing customer needs, market changes, technology breakthroughs, etc will be responsible for its success in the future. HR Managers will be the most powerful businesspeople this century, as they will strategically partner with their CEOs.

27 February 2006

Strategy Direction

A top manager and I had a great meeting this morning discussing business strategy. Not many realize how direction is so vital in driving employee behavior and performance. Many people in positions of management simply want systems to be created without looking at what factors actually give their organization a competitive edge in the first place. "We need a system that'll get us more organized".. more organized to do what and to achieve what? So we mapped out a business strategy that would take the organization to where it needs to go for ultimate success. We considered market factors, performance indicators, the current job structure, the business environment, and organizational culture. From that picture, we decided upon what was worth paying employees for. You can imagine the rest of the roll-out.