It isn’t called “Human Resources” for nothing. Perhaps the most critical resource to your business, your employees, and contractors are the heartbeat of your operations. As a business owner, you understand this not only from an owner’s perspective but as someone who was likely an employee at several workplaces before becoming an entrepreneur.
Even the best employees need clear structure, expectations, and motivation.
You have a clear business plan and vision for growth, but you also need a strong HR plan. As the workplace trends away from the typical 9-5 structure that dominated business life for decades, it’s important to understand what drives employees and how to best integrate plans for remote workers and cross-generational and diverse employee bases.
A well-thought-out HR strategy:
- Helps prevent employee turnover.
- Includes a succession plan in the event that management or organizational structure shifts.
- Allow for more strategic hiring decisions
- Integrates a clear strategy for boosting employee satisfaction
The benefits of a solid HR strategy include higher retention rates, increased overall productivity, a more positive business image, a better bottom line, and more. Only considering tactical HR processes such as payroll processing, attendance monitoring, and compliance measures can miss the mark when considering a healthy workplace.
So how can you transform your HR from a static force to a dynamic entity that increases value across the company?
Holistic HR: Tactical HR + Strategic HR
Tactical HR is your foundational piece and must be the first consideration. This is because Tactical HR builds the infrastructure that makes possible hiring, training, compensating, and managing your people.
Some typical components of Tactical HR include compliance pieces that encompass employment and benefit rules and guidelines. Some examples are:
- Writing job descriptions
- Recruiting, interviewing, and hiring
- Processing forms for new hires
- Payroll platform and processing
- Employee handbooks
Strategic HR is your dynamic piece. It is constructed around value-adds and is mission/vision-driven. Some examples are:
- Cultivating a pipeline of quality candidates
- Creating and implementing training programs for new hires
- Developing motivational programs and protocols to boost engagement and productivity
- Building retention strategies
- Implementing a transparent framework for evaluating and rewarding performance
- Planning clear paths for employee promotions and leadership pathways
5 HR strategy examples
Strategic HR can help ensure that your business avoids common HR blunders. Interviews, onboarding, offboarding, performance reviews, and other HR pieces should aim to create better experiences for candidates and employees. Your organizational culture will reflect the thoughtful planning and implementation of a successfully planned and implemented HR foundation.
Here are five tips that are mission-critical to your HR development:
1. Workplace Assessment
Knowing your current employees’ strengths and weaknesses, education levels, certifications, backgrounds, and other competencies is a good place to start. Not only does this help leaders build better relationships with their employees, but it also assists with strategic decisions and void assessments, which in turn informs future hiring.
Relationship-building is a critical component of HR management. Information can be gleaned both from formal interactions as well as informal encounters such as regular conversations with your workers. Many people have hidden skills that may not necessarily be part of their direct job description but may come in handy. Often, you’ll find these skills listed in the personnel files, too. For example, your recruiter may have experience with corporate training, which could be useful when developing future professional development programs. If employees know that you are recognizing their multiple strengths, this is a great way to build morale.
2. Create employee development plans
This is an excellent long-term HR strategy that assists in building a solid bottom line. Employees appreciate a clear direction on how to increase their skills and advance their careers.
Make sure you consider your business goals when setting goals and metrics for employees and ensure that you align their development plans with your company’s objectives.
- Talk to your employees to assess their skill sets and career aspirations.
- Assess skill gaps and decide what training each employee needs to help the company reach its goals.
- Create an action plan. Be clear on how your employee will demonstrate mastery. A tried and true method that will also translate well to setting up KPIs is the S.M.A.R.T. goals method. This can also be integrated seamlessly into the evaluation and feedback process.
- Give your employees opportunities to practice the skills you are asking them to learn and set aside dedicated time to give feedback. Ideally, in an environment of trust, employees will feel comfortable taking these risks and learning from unsuccessful attempts without fear of reprisal.
Keep in mind that a growth-focused organization should be developing all employees, including top performers. Every individual should be encouraged to better themselves and be acknowledged for doing so.
Improving the employee experience is crucial to fostering a winning workforce!
3. Succession plans
Change is inevitable. Whether it’s a shift in the executive team or a reorganization of departments, You need to be prepared for shifts in executive teams, reorganization of departments, and other unknowns. Should someone leave, succession plans aid in minimizing disruptions by identifying critical roles in your business and the qualified future leaders possessing the skills to assume these positions,
4. Perform a gap analysis
A gap analysis helps you identify what resources and infrastructure your company has and what you’ll need in the future. Some of your HR practices may have worked several years ago but don’t meet your current or future needs. Gap analysis helps improve your current procedures and implement new practices that will better support your business’s growth.
Some things to consider when doing a gap analysis:
- Job descriptions – Do they accurately describe the current skills and requirements your company needs?
- Employee handbook – Has this been updated recently? Are your policies still aligned with current employment laws? This is especially important if you’ve expanded into new cities or states where you may be subject to different regulations. Are your employees required to read the handbook and sign off on doing so? Have the tenured employees read updated versions? A good way to tackle this is to have an all-hands meeting and go over the handbook together to answer any questions your employees may have. Another reason to keep this resource up to date is that in the event you have to reprimand or terminate an employee, your handbook reflects the terms under which you are doing so. If your handbook is incongruent with your practices, you leave your company open to future litigation.
- Training programs – Are your employees being properly prepared for their roles? Proper training reduces anxiety, provides clear expectations of the role, and boosts productivity.
- Health benefits – Be sure to stay current with the Affordable Care Act (ACA) requirements.
- Sick days – Consult the current sick day laws to be sure you’re in compliance.
- Business performance – If revenue is increasing, consider how to best reward employees for their contributions. If performance metrics are in place, this will be a clear-cut way to determine rewards.
5. Decide how to increase resources for the future
As revenue climbs, the need for additional talent arises. To locate the best talent, you must know exactly what criteria you are seeking.
Review the information you have gathered about your current workforce. Do you have enough people without risking overextending current staff? Do these people have the right skills to support you as your business grows?
This information can help you decide what jobs need to be filled and who would be the best fit. From there, you can better determine if you can promote from within or if you’ll need to recruit new hires.
Do you already have a good fit within your company? Do you need the skills to be mastered already, or could they be achieved through training? Sometimes an existing employee who is an excellent culture fit is worth investing in additional training.
Knowing these things can help you to avoid recruiting roadblocks before they arise. Resolving these issues is key to attracting great talent and maintaining high retention rates. Otherwise, you may set yourself up for a high rate of turnover. Don’t have time to do all of these things but the desire is there? That’s where Blueprint Financial can help you. Blueprint provides a full array of HR services and Advisory to help support your most valuable assets- your employees! Contact us today for a free consultation.
