All businesses go through four phases of a life cycle namely startup, growth, maturity, and rebirth or decline. Of all these phases, the growth phase is the most interesting and challenging. Since people are at the core of business growth, your HR strategy becomes critical during this stage.

Strategic human resource management is the link between the organization’s human resources and its strategies, goals, and objectives. An HR strategy aims to:

• Enhance flexibility, competitive advantage and innovation
• Improve organizational culture
• Boost business performance

For your strategy to be effective, human resources have to play an important role as a strategic partner when the company’s policies are created and implemented. You can demonstrate strategic HR through different activities like training, hiring, and rewarding.

Strategic HR focuses on different ways that human resources can make a great impact on the growth of the organization. HR personnel needs to develop and adopt a strategy that meets the company’s long-term plans.

HR issues pose a great challenge for many organizations. Different kinds of components can confuse executive managers and cause them to make poor decisions that slow down the organization’s performance. To ensure that your business grows and reinvents itself in the future, here are seven simple strategies that you can use to create an HR strategy.

Creating an HR Strategy

According to best essay writing service, Strategic human resource management is the key to retaining and developing quality staff. All employees want to stay with a company that makes them feel valued by placing a premium on retention and engagement.

1.     Understand the organization’s objectives

The success of your HR strategy depends entirely on how well it’s linked to the objectives of your organization. Therefore, you have to understand the organization’s objectives and aims thoroughly. You’ll need to articulate the short and long-term plans for the growth of your HR personnel. Communicating the organization’s objectives clearly will make it easier for the HR department to formulate an effective strategy.

2.     Evaluate your HR’s capability

Evaluating the current capabilities of your human resources will make it easier for you to understand your employees and how they contribute to fulfilling your objectives. You should undertake a skills inventory for all employees. Skills inventories will help you discover what your employees are good at.

It also helps in identifying employees who need to be trained in a particular area of the organization. The best time to assess the skills of your employees is during the performance review.

3.     Analyze HR capacity in connection with your goals

Assessing the capacity will enable you to recognize challenges and implement an action plan to make the most of the opportunities and deal with threats effectively. Strategic HR personnel analyzes the number of employees and the skills they possess to equip them to serve the future needs of the organization.

4.     Estimate the future HR requirements of your company

After analyzing your current HR capacity and skills in relation to the objectives, you need to estimate the future needs of your human resources. The forecast should be based on:

• Demand – A prediction has to be made in relation to the number of employees with skills that will be required for the future needs of your organization to be met.
• Supply – You need to look at the employees and skills that are available for your organization to achieve its strategic goals.

Forecasting the future HR requirements also helps you determine:

• New jobs and roles that will secure the organization’s future
• The skills required by current employees to assume the responsibilities of new jobs
• Whether the expertise of your employees is being utilized sufficiently
• Whether the current practices of HR personnel can accommodate the organization’s growth.
• Determine the tools required for employees to perform their duties

According to best essay writing services, HR personnel needs to communicate with different departments to find out how the tools that employees use affect their ability to do their work. For instance, a software and hardware audit undertaken jointly with the IT department will help in identifying gaps that will facilitate an organized workforce.

5.     Implement the HR strategy

After analyzing and forecasting HR requirements, you need to start the process of expanding and developing your workforce to equip your organization for future growth. You can easily implement the HR strategy by doing the following:

• Focus on recruitment: HR professionals search for candidates who possess the skills that have been identified during the planning process.
• Organize the selection process – Selection criteria such as interviews take place at this time. Interview questions and other relevant tests should be used to assess whether the candidate can carry out the roles.
• Hiring applicants: Your organization will hire the best candidate after all appropriate checks have been conducted.
• Onboarding: Employee onboarding is one of the critical factors that determine if an employee stays with an organization. Comprehensive onboarding and training process must be put in place to improve employee retention. Once your employees are on board, you need to keep them engaged to retain them.

6.     Evaluation and correction

HR personnel should have a timeline to conduct a strategic HR review. This review will track the progress that has been made so far and identify critical areas of improvement. The review should be measured to determine if the changes are helping the organization achieve its goals. Corrective action needs to be taken if the strategy is failing to meet its goals.

7.     Learn from other companies

The challenges that most organizations face vary greatly from a startup. No one strategy works for all organizations. This means that you can learn a lot from other organizations that are where you are – in the growth stage. Look at the organizations in your niche that are doing well. And figure out what you can do to improve your organization.

Wrapping It Up

The employee journey starts at the growing phase in most organizations. Therefore, it’s important to start preparing for this phase as early as using the HR strategy.  Strategic human resource management plays a critical role in every organization.

You don’t have to hire a specific number of employees to start considering to implement the principles of strategic human resource management. If you are planning to expand your business, now is the time to start thinking about linking the HR strategy to the organization’s objectives.

Some organizations outsource this area of business because they lack an HR department. Strategic HR providers offer complete HR functions including the development of the human resource strategy. Strategic HR providers take away operational and strategic management burdens to facilitate business growth.

There are also software and apps that you can use to facilitate the growth of your organization. The best thing about these apps is you can access them for free. Consult the experts, use the best strategic HR apps and software. And most importantly, learn from your competitors.