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Developing Strategic HR: What Does it Take?

Gerry Fisher
NC Office of State Personnel

Developing Strategic HR

So much has been written about making HR strategic that sometimes the message is lost in the tantalizing jargon that writers use to describe this new world. Keeping this in mind, this white paper seeks to demystify the heady world of strategic HR with some commonsense talk about how to get there from here whether you consider yourself a modern HR organization or still a personnel function. The path has many signposts, but there are a few that are essential to your transformation efforts. These guides are:

  • Create a vision of where you are going and your destination
  • Understand the role or roles you have to fulfill to get there
  • Develop and use bottom-line processes that ramp up quickly to results
  • Drive the change with strong, sustained leadership
  • Practice process and people renewal

Create a Vision of Where You Are Going and Your Destination

Every worthy human effort begins with a compelling vision. For HR, this vision is not so much about what HR is, but rather what HR can do. In this scenario, HR is not the noble standard bearer of people issues. It is the great enabler of the business side of the house. Considered this way, HR has no inherent context except the extent to which it helps the agencies conduct their business efficiently and effectively through people practices that help get the work done. In other words, if HR cannot deliver the people support to the business of the organization, it has no right to exist. This mandate requires HR to lead with people knowledge and link with the agency's business side to accomplish the organization's goals. These are sobering thoughts for many HR professionals who have built careers on the revered concepts of HR: morale, program activity and the like. None of these ideas tells us about business results. Consequently, the old ideas must be discarded and new priorities instituted that tell the story of whether and to what extent HR is making a contribution to the organization goal accomplishment.

Stephen Covey admonishes us to begin with the end in mind. Therefore, the vision must paint a picture of another place and time, where new understandings based on data replace old assumptions, and questions are always asked about how we are doing as compared to measures of success or effectiveness.

Understand the Roles You Have to Fulfill to Get There

Strategic HR represents not only a mindset change; it is a behavioral change. The new expectation requires HR professionals to collaborate with the business side of the organization. This new cooperation requires both sides to be able to converse freely about what the organization needs from HR. In this discourse, HR needs to understand the language of operations, the concepts of business.

This last statement is what terrifies many long-term HR professionals. The thought of learning business concepts unsettles many HR practitioners. However, if HR is to achieve its long-sought credibility, it must communicate so that they are heard by managers. HR must have the business savvy to know business concepts, what they mean, and how they affect the business.

The next behavioral change is a focus on building relationships and responding to operational needs with people solutions. HR must convince managers that they can rely on HR's assessment of a situation, and that HR's advice comes from a credible place.

Develop and Use Bottom-Line Processes That Ramp Up Quickly to Results

Frequently, business challenges arise quickly and require rapid solutions. In the 21 st century, governments are functioning in global economies with shifting characteristics. What worked last month or even last Monday may not work today. In these shifting sands, HR must stand with managers by providing flexible, highly adaptable solutions. To do this, HR must search constantly for current techniques and methods that can be applied in these circumstances.

What is missing from this new picture is the statement, "We will get back to you." Managers have no time to waste in tackling a problem, and HR will simply be cut out of the loop if it is seen to be dragging its feet. Therefore, HR must design rapid decision making processes that prioritize the issues, develop products and deploy the solutions with the managers within one business day or less in many situations.

The new challenge is developing innovation techniques that quickly focus on the essence of business needs. These processes should quickly bottom-line the questions, "what are trying to accomplish here," and "what are the shortest, most effective paths to solving this problem?" These processes should replace the tedious steps with quick thinking shortcut steps that create quick decisions. Although this work will feel out of control to some people, HR should remember that the greatest risk is that of not answering in a timely manner, not that the answer isn't 100% complete.

Drive the Change with Strong, Sustained Leadership

Everything we have learned in the last 20 years about change processes emphasizes the pivotal role of vigorous leadership in continuing the organization's movement toward improvement. This same energetic leadership must drive the HR transformation to strategic functioning levels.

Leadership must champion the change, communicate the change and demonstrate the change through leadership behaviors ("walking the talk") as well as holding others accountable for their role in the change. In this case, leadership must hold HR accountable for supporting managers in achieving their goals. Sustained leadership makes this accountability the top priority at every meeting.

Practice Process and People Renewal

This area is rather new so we will discuss each part separately. The first part is process renewal, a form of continuous improvement. HR processes and results should be discussed frequently to identify areas that are working properly. Whenever effectiveness is lagging, HR must make changes to processes, technology, people or other resources to improve outcomes. The improvement areas should be the ones we are measuring: quality, quantity, cost, timeliness and customer satisfaction.

The other area is people renewal, which is similar to some past HR practices yet with more focus. People renewal resembles past rewards and recognition practices that seek to motivate people to continue their good work. However, people renewal can be different in that it also involves constant review of HR staff and their capabilities. As business needs change, HR practitioners need to be upskilled to continue to be competent with their customers. Therefore, in this case, the people are constantly evaluated to determine skills and competency needs. Remember that strategic HR moves your staff toward consultancy; your staff must be consultants to management. Not all of your staff can make the transition. Some estimates put the number of those able to successfully transition at 35-40% of your current eligible staff.

Conclusion

The bottom line is that HR must transform itself by rethinking its cherished notions to arrive at new understandings and priorities based on the larger organizations' needs. HR must examine each assumption in the light of whether it helps to drive organizational results. This winnowing process will leave HR much stronger and much more valuable to the organization.

Date: March 2008