A strategic HR plan is a roadmap that aligns human resources with overall business objectives. It is a key component of the overall business strategy and ensures that HR is focused on achieving the organisation’s goals by attracting, developing, and retaining the right talent and it therefore helps to:
- identify current and future talent needs
- develop strategies to attract and retain top talent
- ensure employees have the necessary skills and development opportunities to contribute to the success of the business
- ensures compliance with legislation and sector specific regulations.
An effective strategic HR plan can help businesses to mitigate risks associated with external influences such as changes in employment law, workforce shortages and surpluses, improve employee engagement and productivity.
Key elements of any strategic people plan
- Budget implications: changes to SSP rules, family leave entitlements are changing, all of which will have cost implications
- Training needs: with the significant changes in employment law it will be imperative that not just line managers are trained, as well as employees, but your own HR team and senior leadership. All will have varying levels of training needs.
- Recruitment: changes in the law around probation periods, zero hour contracts may have implications for your business and how you recruit.
- Retention: if you already offer entitlements over and above the statutory minimum, consider how the Government enhancing basic statutory rights could impact on attraction, retention and pay and reward strategies. What once may have been a great reward package offered to attract and retain your employees, may not be perceived to be, if the gap between statutory and enhanced benefits is narrower.
Why a People Plan is Important
Developing a people plan is vital because it enables the business to create a targeted strategy for how it will address its biggest challenges through effective people management. Having a workforce operating at their full potential not only aids employee retention, but it also maximises their contribution to the business leading to business success.
Understanding your company’s business objectives will help you to determine what the company’s people objectives need to be. Having the correct people objectives that are aligned to your business objectives will mean that you can deliver business success through your people.
When planning how best to manage your human resource, a good approach is to review it in the context of the employee lifecycle. Taking each aspect, consider what works well, and what doesn’t, what opportunities present themselves and what threats face you.
The employment lifecycle
The employee lifecycle is a model that illustrates the various stages an employee goes through as they engage with the business beginning from the point at which they are attracted and recruited into the business through to when they leave. It’s an effective model to use when you want to assess how the business manages its people and is a key tool for evaluating performance, engagement, and retention.
As a tool it can help the business to understand how to engage with its people through every aspect of their journey. This will enable you to attract and retain the best candidates, enhance performance and productivity of your people, and enable you to retain the best talent. All in all, it will improve the overall performance of your business.
Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI)
Equality, diversity, and inclusion is about recognising that we all have many great things in common but at the same time, we also have many great differences that set us apart from each other. When at work, everybody should have the right to equal access to employment, equal pay and access to training and development.
There is both a moral case and business case for equality, diversity and inclusion within the workplace. Ensuring that all employees are treated fairly and equally and with dignity and respect is the right thing to do. From a business perspective however, an inclusive workplace will also positively impact the bottom line:
- It enables you to recruit a more diverse workforce which brings a broader range of experiences, knowledge, and viewpoints. All of which helps to generate greater creativity resulting in a high-performing organisation
- It provides a welcoming place of work for all helping to support employee retention which ultimately reduces time and cost in recruitment.
- It lowers the risk of facing discrimination claims which, if the employee is successful, the awards are unlimited.
Developing a strategic HR plan
We set out our advice for developing a HR strategic plan below:
- Conduct a workplace audit to gather data relating to your business and HR practices
- Undertake a SWOT (or PESTLE) analysis in order to understand the employment climate which the business operates in
- Identify solutions that will respond to the threats and weaknesses but also build on the opportunities and strengths
- Develop company wide objectives that are SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and timebound)
- Identify how the SMART objectives are to be delivered, the resources required, budget implications and the responsible person in the business who is to be accountable for the delivery.
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