It’s almost the New Year and time to stop and take stock. For businesses that means look at your strategic plan, including your human resources management. Sadly, many businesses haven’t created a strategic plan to look at. They’re so busy meeting deadlines, finding customers and doing what they do that they haven’t made time to look up and ask, “Where are we headed and how do we get there?”
You’ve heard it before, but if you’re not following a road
Who do you need to hire, fire or train this year?
map, you could wind up anywhere. Now’s the time to figure out : What is Point B? When we help customers with the process, we typically start with a S.W.O.T. analysis:
Strengths: We talk to executives, employees, even customers to identify what the organization’s strengths are.
Weaknesses: Ditto to understand the organization’s weaknesses.
Opportunities: Are there markets you could be in? Chances to improve your processes or better train your employees?
Threats: What are the threats on the horizon? This could be a rising competitor or a new technology that lowers the value of your services. Or it could be something internal like bad relationships among employees or a compliance issue you’ve been avoiding.
Once we’ve brainstormed all of that, we help the company set priorities for the coming year—or several years. Then, each employee identifies personal performance goals that tie into the company’s goals. It looks a little like a cascade of objectives, so everybody understands what their next steps are throughout the strategic period.
Of course, it’s not static. It’s a good idea to quarterly check in on how you’re doing at reaching your goals.
Some companies do this strategic planning for sales or production figures but forget to do it for human resources management. And, after all, people are the ones who make it happen. HR strategic planning could include asking yourself, ‘Who is leading the organization?’ Hint—it’s not always the one with title and big office. It could also include revisiting:
- How do we identify and recruit people?
- Do we have the right people in the right jobs?
- Do our employees need more training and what kind?
- Do our performance reviews line up with our strategic goals or are they completely divorced from the big picture?
- What parts of our company’s culture are productive and which are damaging and unproductive?
It’s only November…there’s still time to figure all this out before the ball drops.
We work with companies on a project basis or on retainer, providing a custom level of HR help designed for your business. Contact me at Caroline@valentinehr.com or call (512) 420-8267.
