Why & How to Invest in Strategic HR Right Now
Insights and skills on the importance of strategic HR and technology that supports strategic HR.
Jeff Smith, VP of People Strategy & Insights at 15Five, shares insights to ensure that your strategic HR investments align with your organization’s goals. He advises HR leaders to prepare and present a plan to advocate for their top 3-5 people’s initiatives to the rest of the company leadership.
Even though many budgets are tightening, organizations must continue to invest in their people because, after all, people create value. Since HR teams field constant requests to do more without additional funds or people, regularly evaluating and curating where your team spends their energy, time, and budget is critical. This allows you to ensure your strategic HR investments align with your organization’s goals.
Allocating Time, Money, and Energy
Create a list of every program, process, and technology you and your team use and pay for—everything from payroll automation and insurance benefits to performance reviews and manager development. Don’t forget about programs you co-own with other department leaders, such as sales team enablement or a subscription to a specialized learning platform for your engineering organization. Ask each person on your team to contribute to this list. Be on the lookout for overlooked items woven into your HR operations and investments abandoned midway due to priorities changing.
Then, list every initiative you have to create something new or improve an existing program or process. Lastly, list the services you and your team provide, even if they don’t have a defined program or name. For example, many leaders “outsource” conflict resolution between their direct reports to their HR Business Partners. Employee relations, exit interviews for avoidable, regrettable turnover, and attempting to retain employees when they receive competitive offers – all of these activities comprise a significant amount of time and energy for your team.
This exercise gives you a complete sense of how your HR function is spending your budget and operating. If you are like most HR leaders I serve, you will notice the following:
- Your team is hustling, as your list of programs, processes, and technologies are 3 to 10 times longer than the number of team members you have.
- Your list includes areas that need significant upgrades to meet your organization’s needs. For example, many organizations focus on performance heading into a tough year, so goal-setting, continuous feedback, and rewarding the right people are top priorities.
- The money you are spending needs to generate more ROI. For example, better internal marketing is required if enough people aren’t using an expensive benefit. There may be investments that need to be sunset gracefully. There may also be forgotten programs and subscriptions on your list.
Strategic HR Best Practices
As you are attempting to identify gaps and opportunities for strategic investment, as well as prioritize and curate your existing list, consider the following:
Tie everything back to your organization’s goals
Once you move past essentials such as payroll, benefits, and compliance, align your investments with your organization’s goals. Goal-setting is challenging for most organizations, but you don’t have to wait for specific targets to know that increasing revenue or profitability is a top priority. Collaboration, partnership, and alignment increase buy-in and reduce the unfair but common “I’m too busy for HR work” objection at all organizational levels. (Note: For leaders and managers, developing and coaching your people falls under the purview of leaders and managers, not HR.) Connect everything to your organization’s goals, including your values and cultural aspirations.
Focus on key employee experiences that have a high ROI
Processes like equitable performance reviews and their downstream decisions like bonus allocation and promotions can disproportionately impact your employees. Gathering feedback through ‘voice of employee’ tech, such as engagement surveys and pulse surveys, helps you know what your team members want and need so you can invest in the right areas and show your people that you value them and their perspectives. Ensure that those key processes are effective and efficient.
See More: 5 Experts on HR Technologies Transforming the Employee Experience
Require more from your leaders and managers
Most organizations do not hold leaders and managers accountable, partly because they haven’t defined leadership and people management clearly on expected results and behaviors. Your leaders and managers are a valuable but expensive investment. Ensure that you are getting the most out of them. However, do not reinvent the wheel–start with requiring them to create prioritized goals, provide frequent recognition and feedback, and meet 1-on-1 with their people at least twice per month to review goals, provide feedback, and learn how to support that person best. Build from there.
Compose more than you create
Once you determine your organization’s essential capabilities, resist the natural urge to create everything from scratch and make everything unique. Build unique programs and approaches only for your top capabilities—think Disney’s creation of an in-house animation school—and differentiators in your employee value proposition. Even for unique programs, use existing resources, books, and frameworks as a time-saving foundation.
Start smaller, strategically
For example, given that many employees want career paths—not a single path—many organizations are reevaluating their roles and levels. This process is complicated and requires a lot of internal collaboration with leaders and managers. Break the program into departments, starting with your organization’s essential capabilities. This approach allows you to show progress to your executive counterparts and your organization.
It’s okay to subtract
Even though we often think of “adding” or “more,” when we think about improvements, subtraction, and simplification can be better. For example, an organization I worked with simplified its framework around high-performing people to compensation, challenge, and career paths. Essentially, the question we asked was: is the employee properly compensated, challenged without being overwhelmed, and aware of possible future roles for them in the organization? The manager was tasked with motivating the individual and caring for their needs with support from an HR BP. HR systematically evaluated how well they were serving high-performing people and reported the level of support to the CEO. Additionally, it was included as part of their simplified, twice-per-year review process, saving time, energy, money, and headache.
Now that you have organized and prioritized your list, what is your plan to overcome the most critical challenges your organization is facing? Consider the programs that need to be created, improved, or reenergized and which ones will have the most significant impact in the areas where your organization needs to improve performance. This list of 3-5 strategic investments is where your team should spend its precious resources and time. These are the initiatives where you should create partnerships and co-ownership with other executives in your organization, including your CEO. Importantly, this may mean canceling or pausing other initiatives.
Build a Sustainable Plan
Remember to connect the initiatives and your organization’s challenges as you build your plan. For example, if engineering is a crucial capability for your organization and you need to grow the team, show how your approach to talent acquisition and retention will ensure that you have the skills, experience, and leadership to have a market-leading engineering department. Show the extraordinary costs of losing employees. Explain the many opportunities you’ll have if you uplevel your leaders and managers. Refrain from assuming that other executives will see the value of your HR investments.
HR finally has a much-deserved seat at the executive table. Now you have the plan and approach you need to speak up and advocate for your team’s and people’s needs, especially during a challenging time when leadership scrutinizes every significant investment.
Why do you think investing in strategic HR will help organizations survive in times of uncertainty? Share with us on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
Image Source: Shutterstock
MORE ON HR STRATEGY
