Strategic human resource management (HRM) is very important for any company at any stage of development. Influential American businessperson Renee West once said, “You can have the best strategy and the best buildings in the world, but if you don’t have the hearts and minds of people who work with you, none of it comes to life!” Strategic HRM planning can contribute not only in organizing effective execution of the work of a company, but also in dealing with challenges and problems of the modern era. My colleagues and friends often debate whether we have oversupply or undersupply of talents, and whether we should be hiring in traditional or new ways.
Here are the six steps for developing successful HRM.
1. Decide about the end goal today
Every company defines its goals and objectives and keeps them usually for the long term. However, HRM professionals need to acknowledge that periodically companies change their priorities, and these priorities might be different within the framework of the same goals and objectives. In this context, companies also change their focus and activities in the implementation of their HRM strategies. With the change of priorities, companies can recalibrate their work with the personnel, which they need to train and prepare for addressing specific tactical and strategic tasks. The problem of developing effective HRM is further complicated when we define specific priorities in the short- and long-term perspective in the context of skill and competency requirements. In the era of information and communication (ICT) revolution, identifying and hiring qualified cadres is not simply a time-consuming exercise, it is complex work, especially when we are talking about hiring in the highly demanded specialties.
In our era of the high level of uncertainty, it is important to develop and regularly update a comprehensive HRM strategy, which should reflect goals and objectives of the company, and to proactively conduct job analysis and forecasting (or foresight exercises by scanning megatrends and emerging local and global changes) for a short-term horizon as well as to make projections for long-term perspective. These priorities should be crystal clear and concrete. For example: “To increase the intake of MBA students for University X within one year by 25%, we need to hire five marketing specialists.” The bottom line is, there is always a need to boil down the analysis and projections to specific numbers according to priorities and objectives of the company.
2. Location, location, location (LLL)
If you ask any HR manager, probably most of them would lament that COVID-19 changed many rules, traditions and approaches in human resource management by turning the organization of the workplace upside down. Indeed, HR management likely will never be the same again. The changes that have happened since 2019, in the world of talent selection and hiring of personnel, indeed were significantly impacted in many ways. These changes probably will be around for many years, if not decades. One of the greatest impacts is change in the format of recruitment and selection due to the changes in the perception of the workplace. The Harvard Business Review even dedicated a special issue to the topic of the workplace, discussing “the future without offices!” Yet, many CEOs dispute this vision and want their workers back in the office.
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In order to help find effective answers in these debates and to identify a suitable approach in dealing with the challenges of organizing the workplace, I came up with the formula LLL (location, location, and location).
Location 1 is one geographic location where you plan to recruit your personnel and where you have your headquarters. Alternatively, it is the area nearest to where your people can work remotely.
Location 2 is a place (geographic area) where you plan to deploy new specialists. It might be a single geographic area where you have your headquarters. On the other hand, it might be many locations, if you have several branches in different locations or even different countries.
Location 3 is the organization of the workplace—HOW you plan to deploy your newly recruited personnel. Today many experts talk about a new approach to organizing the workplace; it should be reflected in your organizational design. Different organizations have different visions what is the best for the companies: allowing people to work in the office (offline), remotely from home (online), or in a hybrid format. In a new HR strategy, we need to reflect the new reality and perception of working space in the post-COVID environment and emergence of the phenomena of ‘digital nomads’ (those who would like to choose their own geographic location for work).
The answers for the LLL challenges are not as simple as that they look. While Forbes magazine has suggested that the era of large HQ centers in central metropolitan areas has come already to an end, others disagree and, like IBM’s CEO, declare it is possible to “work better together!” More and more companies, employers, and employees are advocating for a diversity of choices, from introducing geographic flexibility and decentralized office work to hybrid and traditional “under my eye rules.” Only when you have clear goals and objectives for the future, can you develop your very own strategy to meet the needs and concerns of today and tomorrow in implementing your HRM strategy.
3. Analyze your available resources
The classic formula from many textbooks on human resource management is that before hiring you need to assess inventory of existing human resources, competencies and skills at home in your own company. There are many instruments for monitoring and evaluation (M&E), from the classic analysis of databases to conducting offline or online interviews. In addition, we can also use such effective forms of monitoring and evaluation such as interviews, surveys, focus groups and group discussions. Collected information and evaluation of existing human resources should contribute to answering a million-dollar question—whether existing personnel can contribute to addressing existing challenges and solving existing problems not only today but also tomorrow. Here we have to take into consideration many factors, from expectations of retirement and family and health leaves, all the way to possible promotion within the company and career changes, as well as movement between branches, and between branches and the headquarters. We need to answer many questions. What kind of challenges should we expect? How we can deal with those challenges—sometimes “unknown-unknown,” or “unknown-known” with existing cadres.
If and when you decide to go ahead with the existing personnel, the quality and flexibility of training agendas becomes fundamental: you should also talk about training needs to make sure that your troops have adequate skills, knowledge, and select tools and instruments for learning and development among existing personnel. One very popular tool in HR is a 360-degree (multidirectional) feedback process, which allows you to collect feedback from your colleagues, managers, peers, and subordinates, combined with self-evaluation. At the end, the modern world of training and retraining offers many useful training tools—from group training and workshops (both online or offline), to developing new skills and competencies in the key areas, a voucher system for taking online courses from reputable online training providers for self-development, and upscaling in digital and other skills.
4. Career Planning… a strategic approach
When you define your goals, objectives, and priorities for the development of your company or organization, there is a need not only to monitor existing resources, but also to work on career planning and identifying talents. For effective mobilization of existing and new resources, as great strategist Marcus Buckingham once said, “Talent is the multiplier. The more energy and attention you invest in it, the greater the yield!” Indeed, talented individuals in your team can help to work miracles, especially if your company is in a highly competitive world of innovations and creativity. There are many formats and techniques for identifying and developing talents. Of course, there is not a single formula to be used in all cases. However, some ideas could be used on many occasions.
In this context, there is a need to define the urgency of your company’s goals and objectives, and to think about practical steps for achieving your HR goals. One of the most effective approaches is the analysis of career planning and identifying talents in the company and identifying concrete steps for HR to find the best candidates inside or outside of your company. These steps should be identified for specific intervals of time (i.e., for short-term, mid-term, and long-term plans). HR should be proactive, one step ahead of the implementation of company plans, since the selection, hiring, training and adaptation of talents to the specific environment and organizational culture of a company takes some period of time.
5. Consider ICT solutions
Over the past two decades HRM has undergone significant changes, especially due to wider and more intensive use of information and communication technologies (ICT). ITC enhances better communication, knowledge management, and employee participation. It also involves work with big data, online platforms to collect information about best talents and potential star specialists, and partnering with large online and offline recruiting companies. More recently, working with artificial intelligence to select cadres has become a part of the everyday life and work of human resource managers.
The new technologies could be used in many ways, from job analysis to forecasting future needs. Lately there is a lot of talk about using ICT to deal with the emotional aspects of HR, from formulating a better understanding of psychological and social climate in the company, all the way to using ICT in training of agility. Moreover, over the past few years, the use of ICT has moved even further with the introduction of artificial intelligence (such as ChatGPT, which offers many AI functions to deal with a huge variety of topics). Today ICT and AI are useful in organizing HRM areas such as remote and hybrid work, identifying training needs, and preparing training programs on topics such as cyber security and many others.
6. How to motivate and retain your talents
In the modern environment, the implementation of effective HRM strategy requires not only search and hiring relevant specialists, but also identifying the balance between material and non-material rewards and stimulus. It also includes a growing list of new functions and activities, such as job branding. More and more graduates and young people consult the ratings of the best companies to work with, in the search of new jobs and final decisions of accepting or rejecting job offers. Now, it is not just branding of companies and their size and outreach that have relevance. Young people, especially Generation Z, looks also at branding of work conditions. How does the company treat its workers and create a positive working environment? How do companies promote and support talents? How do companies deal with so-called toxic issues such as bullying?
In an age of ever-increasing competition, companies and organizations should also work on becoming more competitive in the labor market for high-quality specialists who are able not only to work on a project, but to become a motivated and motivating part of a team. There’s also a growing role for organizational culture, which can contribute to the company brand and the formation of positive working conditions. Many young people do not tolerate anymore a toxic working environment and toxic psychological conditions, which can undermine the productivity and effectiveness of a company.
