Easy Ways to Make HR Strategic

A long-running debate within Human Resources has been “how can we make HR strategic?”. Often this is linked with another navel-gazing debate within the function, “how can HR get represented at Board level?”.

Many HR practitioners claim they have succeeded on the strategy issue. They claim they have an HR strategy, and it has been approved by the Board, so they are now “strategic HR”.  Casting my jaded cynical eye of some of the approaches used, it seems there are several easy ways to get strategic.

Motherhood and Apple Pie.

Undoubtedly the most popular approach is to put out a document describing your HR philosophy and policies, and call it your People Strategy or Human Resource Strategy. A quick internet search will give you examples; universities seem particularly keen on this approach. This is a good way to reassure current and potential employees that you are nice guys, recruiting the best people for your organisation, allowing them to achieve their potential by providing career development and training, promoting equality and fairness.  

This approach does no harm, and is very useful promotion for the work of the HR Department. Unfortunately, even if it has been approved at Board level and has a nice introduction from the CEO, it isn’t strategic.

Provide enablers.

 At one level, this route to strategic HR status does appear to link HR initiatives to the business strategy. You get senior management to agree that they can’t achieve their business strategy without this vital latest thing from HR. For example, they cannot achieve their business strategy if employees are not performing, so our new performance management system must be strategic. After all, it’s now Part Of The Strategy.

You might be satisfied with that, but I am not. The enabler you have provided is a bolt-on extra to any business strategy of any organisation. It is as useful as your Facilities Department’s contribution to the IT strategy; computers need electricity, so we will ensure the supply of electricity. The IT strategy would be rendered useless without electricity, but consider an IT Director wrestling with the intellectual challenge of what systems to choose to support the business plan. He or she is not greatly helped by hearing that the electricity bill is paid, and there’s a back-up generator in the car park.   

Everything is strategic now. 

Particularly if you have a motherhood- and- apple- pie HR strategy and you have attached it to whatever business strategy they have gone with, there’s still one more easy thing to do; call everything strategic. Label things strategic and people will be impressed, just like in the Marks and Spencer adverts.  “This isn’t just a Management Development Course; it’s a Strategic Management Development Course.” ( for non-UK readers who haven’t seen these adverts http://www.tellyads.com/show_movie.php?filename=TA3444 )

Most strategies can be summarised in a few points. Some can even be summed up in a phrase, such as “pile them high and sell them cheap”, “shoot and scoot”, etc. A mass of HR people referring to their 110-point, 27-page strategy document is not strategic: it is an exercise in mis-naming the tactical, operational and possibly trivial. 

So, what is Strategic HR?

The only real HR strategy is the plan to manage the employment aspects of the business strategy, and some of those are not for public, or wide internal, consumption.  What changes to the workforce are integral to this organisation’s specific business strategy? For example, if the business is going to change its core technology, will it be better to retrain the existing workforce, or replace them with recruits who already have the new skills?   Or perhaps the business strategy calls for significant cost reductions, and one of the “people” options is significant off-shoring to cheaper labour markets.   

Many HR leaders would shy away from options that will be seen as a threat to the current workforce. HR people try to position themselves as the moderates who soften the blow, by providing retraining, or a caring redundancy / re-employment / outplacement service. The negative impact on the current workforce was caused by the decision made by “the Board” or “Senior management” or “line management” – but not us.

For HR to be strategic, (and to get a seat on the Board, if that’s important to you) HR people have to join in with the rough stuff, if necessary. That does not mean just understanding other business functions such as finance and marketing. Senior management don’t want you to be an amateur accountant or marketer, they need you to generate the options on the people side of the business. The effective options might include the tough ones.  Do most HR practitioners really want to play with the big boys?   

(If your sensibilities can cope with more of this stuff, read the companion article "Another way to make Human Resources strategic".)