Why Adopt a HR Strategy?
Often, when we provide consultancy to employers HR is seen as an outlier, focused on people and training and not much to do with the main aims of the company. Worse, sometimes managers view HR team members as ‘getting in the way’ of business plans when they want to dismiss a staff member and are keen to do so without following a process. So HR and business aims are set on a collision course.
It doesn’t have to be this way, it can be a lot smoother ride if HR and Business Plans are all part of the same master plan the business is following. HR input as a core function of business strategy sits at the core of many profitable and successful businesses where people, long term plans and recruitment and management are in line with the business’ strategy. Communication channels and behaviours the become easier to manage across all levels as the right people are in the right jobs doing the work at the right level. So, why is this so difficult?
We think it is growth, very often a business will grow exponentially in the early years and HR’s function is often reduced to placing people in positions, busy working on today at the expense of tomorrow. When those brought on fast, fail over time in performance very often the process of the disciplinary shows up major gaps in the employee’s abilities and knowledge when mapped across the needs of the business. A good HR strategy can harness the attitudes the business needs and work on plugging the gaps in knowledge and skills without losing valuable resources in the process.
It’s often imagined that the very large businesses suffer most from this, but in our experience it’s also experienced very acutely by those smaller businesses who have grown from 2 or 3 to 10 to 20 employees in the space of 5 years or less. The cultural changes and accessibility of the management team to the employees can radically alter the dynamics and cause switch off amongst previously hard working employees.
Law Hound works with small and medium sized businesses and their boards to assess the HR strategy and business values are in line and help business owners to create plans to rectify performance and recruitment issues by employing a clear , practical strategy to align people with business outcomes. For more information call 0161 726 5037 or email HR@lawhound.co.uk