HR certainly has a strategic place in this Push to Pull  shift, and it comes in the form of developing strategic HR initiatives to make their organization nimbler and its people more responsive to the quick pivots demanded by a market that is developing faster than ever before. With only 1 in 5 employees engaged in their work, HR has a lot of room to helping their organization tighten their pivot timeline.

Unengaged employees are an anchor to an organization. Developed employees are a motor!

For many HR professionals, this means departing from the repetition of traditional HR management and developing new processes and accountability structures to foster the development of strategic HR initiatives that have a holistic impact on the organization. For some, this may be a difficult transition. We’re asking HR professionals to become integrators and project managers, responsible for building business plans and calculating ROI.

In this blog, we’ll be focusing on defining strategic HR, solidifying its place in preparing the workforce for the fast-pivot market, and developing new patterns of thinking regarding strategic HR planning.

Three Levels of HR Involvement

Co-authors Edward Lawler III and John W. Boudreau in their HR Research study, Effective Human Resource Management, classify HR professionals into 3 different categories. The categories depicted below are direct excerpts from their study, and I will use their language throughout this blog to distinguish the different flavors of HR professionals.

In short, making the move from being an HR manager to an HR Strategic Partner entails a significant journey in professional development. This can almost seem intimidating to some. Indeed, not all HR professionals are cut out for the journey to emerge a Strategic HR Partner. That being said, in a market that is increasingly evolving and heightening the pressure for organizations to be adaptive, we can only shift as quickly as our people allow us to.

The demand for strategic HR professionals will only increase.

What is Strategic HR vs. Tactical HR

Before we get started, let’s clarify what we mean by strategic versus tactical initiatives. Lifted directly from the Society for Human Resource Management’s (SHRM) blog in response to this strategic vs tactical confusion, SHRM writes:

“A strategic plan is a course of action to achieve long-range goals, generally up to five years. Strategic plans reflect the company’s direction and its purpose as stated in its mission statement…Strategic plans influence the development of tactical plans.

A tactical plan is a course of action to achieve short-term goals, generally within a year or less. Tactical plans represent the short-term efforts to achieve the strategic, longer-term goals.”

The last part of that definition is arguably the most important and least performed. Tactical goals must align toward the culmination of a strategic goal, as in the chart above.

Strategic HR Planning: A template for all to follow

Our organizations have “underlying patterns of interdependency,” as author Peter Senge puts it in his book The Fifth Discipline. This is more than just operational structure, we’re talking about human persons with emotions and egos operating within that organizational structure, capable of making it thrive or self-destruct! (5th Discipline image courtesy of dovetailinc.org).

Organizations don’t learn, they don’t pivot, and they don’t progress—the people within an organization embody learning, pivotability, and the drive for progress. Investment at the level of the person is always the most difficult, but as Patch Adams said, “You treat a disease, you win you lose, you treat the person, I guarantee, you win every time!” This investment at the level of the person is the home of Strategic HR, and the returns will be rocket fuel for any organization!

The following 10 Step sequence is a format for developing strategic HR initiatives. You can download our blank template (get instantly, no form necessary) in order to develop your own initiatives following this structure. The following 10-Step Strategic HR Planning format is adapted from the United States Marine Corps 5- Paragraph Operations Order, the USMC’s standard planning and communications mechanism used from the highest levels of strategic planning to the lowest levels of tactical execution. We won’t be assaulting any bunkers today, but as in combat, an organization needs to be aligned and moving in the same direction in order to succeed.

Our goal: Build repeatable processes for developing Strategic HR Initiatives that have a positive and measurable impact on the organizational mission.

Again we recommend printing our downloadable template to follow along. Done? Okay let’s go!

Step 1: Gaining an Orientation to the Organization’s Mission

HR Professionals, prepare to step out of your silo! Before selecting which initiative you want to tackle, start with a general orientation to where the company is going. Identify:

• What are the company’s long term strategic goals?
• What is the most pressing concerns of the organization at the moment?

From there, you can select which goals you are best suited to influence, and prioritize your list of HR projects. Some may be tactical projects, nested within one of the organization’s strategic goals. Others may be strategic initiatives that contain their own set of tactical goals.

Step 2: Select your strategic HR project and STAY FOCUSED!

I recommend in the beginning starting with something tactical. With fewer moving parts and a quicker results timeline, you’ll be able to learn important lessons that will assist you with managing greater strategic initiatives.

Once you have selected your project, build your mission statement. This is a short statement that covers the 5 W’s of your HR project, and focuses your planning. An example mission statement might be the following:

• Mission Statement: Starting on January 1, ABC Company manufacturing department will develop updated job descriptions in order to clarify roles and responsibilities for new-hires and performance evaluations.

Notice the Mission Statement covers the when (Starting January 1), the who (ABC Company manufacturing department), the what (will develop updated job descriptions), and the why (in order to clarify roles and responsibilities for hiring and performance evaluations). The “How” is something that will be developed later, but for now, this mission statement will become the cornerstone to your strategic/tactical HR planning.

On a side note, the tactical mission above might be nested in a strategic mission such as Developing Better Hiring Practices, or, Increasing Employee Engagement.

Step 3: Identify your obstacles

Every initiative will have obstacles (or it probably would have already been accomplished). Before building your plan, identify all the foreseeable obstacles that are going to impede success.

• For example, going with our job description mission, obstacles could include a lack of time to complete the project in a reasonable time frame, labor union push-back, or even a company culture that has grown accustomed to operating without formal job descriptions.

Knowing the obstacles that you will encounter along the way will help you build a realistic plan that accounts for setbacks, or more so, shapes your environment to move around obstacles or remove them. This may mean you need some key assistance, which brings us to our next step.

Step 4: Identify your supporters

With HR, one of the greatest challenges is being in a managerial position without managerial authority. Getting different departments to participate in HR initiatives is one of the biggest impediments to Strategic HR. Put on your salesman hat (AKA your leadership hat) and explain how the project is to their benefit.

We had a saying in fighting counterinsurgency, “Win the easy battles first, or there will be no one to mourn your defeat.”

• Create a list of key-influencers that can help move the project along in the organization
• Provide case studies, or other supporting evidence that helps forecast the ROI of your project

Step 5: Quantify and spell out success with a clear project end state

This step entails painting the picture of life after your Strategic HR initiative. This is huge! Too often we can initiate projects with the goal of “we’ll see what happens.” If that’s your goal, then you will accomplish it 100% of the time, but that doesn’t mean it has had any positive contribution to the overall organizational mission that you support.

An example, again going off our job description scenario, could be:

Project Completion End State:

• Each manufacturing job description is up-to-date based on current processes
• Job descriptions are signed off on by respective supervisors and managers
• Every employee has been counseled and signs off on their refined job description
• The new descriptions are recorded in the HR department master shared-drive job description folder.

By clearly spelling out SUCCESS, you have a definitive and quantifiable culmination to your project, and results that you can inspect. This will also help focus your planning toward achieving these quantifiable results.

Step 6: Build your plan

Without getting overly bogged down in details, identify the general plan for completing your HR project. This entails putting steps in place that lead to your ultimate end state.

When planning, it is important to consider which steps are contingent on other tasks being completed before they can begin.

For example, before you can update the new job descriptions, you need to compile all of the old job descriptions. Or, before managers can sign-off on new job descriptions, supervisors must review and sign-off on the new descriptions.

Keeping contingent steps in mind will allow you to break your plan down into different parts. Once a part of the plan is completed, conditions are set to move onto the next step.

For Example: Once all supervisors have signed off on new job descriptions, conditions are set to move into the next part: collecting managerial level signatures.

By building parts into your plans, it allows you to focus your efforts at a given moment and break your plan down into smaller sprints, or milestones.

Step 7: Identify tasks that you must accomplish and assign them accordingly

Once you have your plan broken down, you’ll need to identify the tasks that need to be accomplished to complete the plan, and assign the personnel responsible for completing the task. For HR personnel this will often entail matrix management, or managing people outside of your assigned authority.

Just like your mission statement, your tasking statements should communicate the 5 W’s of the task to the assignee. Think of these tasks being an individual’s personal mission statement for the project.

For example, a task for our job description project may be: Manufacturing Department supervisors, on December 31 provide HR with updated job descriptions for the positions in your department in order to provide HR with current job descriptions for managerial review.

Can you pick out the When, Who, What, and Why in this statement? Looks a lot like a mission statement, doesn’t it? Notice it does not include a HOW. That is for your individual supervisors to figure out. You may provide them with a job description template so that you have a standardized format that all supervisors will use, but it is for them to use their own initiative to develop their plan for completing their task on time.

For matrix management, it can be helpful to use a RACI (Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, Informed) chart for assigning responsibilities. It’s a helpful project management tool. Click here for an example.

Step 8: Put a timeline in place

This is the part where you overlay your plan onto an actual calendar that is full of conflicts and other ongoing responsibilities. A couple things to keep in mind:

• Do not build your timeline in a vacuum. Talk to those people who will be carrying out your tasks and have them give you a realistic time frame that they can meet.
• Consider when your organization may enter operational ebbs and flows, and avoid timing a new strategic HR initiative with operational surges to avoid getting back-burnered.
• Have concrete deliverables assigned to timelines. Give deadlines, but not start-lines, unless there are contingent steps that need to happen prior to starting a task in the plan.

An example timeline for our Job Description project could be

• October 1: HR provides Job Description templates to supervisors
• November 1: Supervisors submit updated job descriptions for managerial review with signature
• November 10: Managers complete review and sign off on new descriptions
• November 12: HR provides approved job descriptions to supervisors for counseling and files new descriptions on the shared drive
• December 15: Supervisors complete counseling and submit signed counseling sheets to HR for filing

The timeline is flexible enough to allow supervisors and managers to be selective with how and when they execute their tasks, but has hard deadlines in place for concrete deliverables.

Step 9: Identify an investments you need to make or logistical support you need

In this step, Strategic HR professionals are working to identify what stuff they need in order to accomplish their mission. This could be financial support, system support, bandwidth, consultant support, or printing services.

For our job description example, you may be bringing in an outside HR consultant to assist with building your new job descriptions, or accessing ready-made job descriptions from the SHRM website.

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Step 10: Identify your means of tracking success and your supervisory strategy

You’ve put the whole plan in place, you’ve communicated it, now you have to make sure the train stays on the tracks. People don’t like to be hassled, but they will be more open to supervision if you communicate beforehand how you will be checking in to make sure they are giving the project the attention it needs given the dozen other tasks they are juggling.

When building out your supervisory plan, you will want to:

• Identify the leaders that will be responsible for inspecting success
• Confirm how people will communicate to you that a task is complete
• Communicate how you plan to supervise. For example: I will be checking in with each of you at regular intervals 2 weeks prior to the deadline. During those times, I will be asking how close you are to completing your task, and when you plan to have it done. Communicate obstacle to completing the plan on-time earlier rather than later.

This is the most difficult step, because it requires holding people accountable. A good practice is getting people to agree verbally that they will meet a certain deadline, and hold them accountable to their own words. 

Related Blog: How to Build a Business Case for an Integrated HRM System

The Case for Strategic HR

The movement from operating as an HR Manager toward a Strategic HR Partner starts first with a new belief system in how we see our role. This transformation cannot happen in a vacuum, this is going to take a cultural transformation. That means building experiences, that inspire beliefs, that drive actions, that achieve results (See Change the Culture Change the Game for more on the Results Pyramid).

If HR as a strategic partner is not yet something that your company has experienced, then you have to start by introducing your organization to experiences of strategic HR. This could be through case studies, blogs, or even small projects that you conduct with a quantifiable ROI. It is a long road ahead for some, and many may be satisfied with sticking it out with the status quo.

But I would guess that when you got started in HR, it wasn’t to settle for the status quo.

Take a look at our templates and example projects, put a small project in place, and see where it goes. Who knows, they greatest doubter in HR’s strategic capacities could be you and your HR team. Start small, celebrate small victories, enjoy the learning, and believe!

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