What is strategic HR and how do you best deploy it in your organization?

What is strategic HR?

SHRM, or strategic HR, is a proactive approach to human resources that aligns HR practices with an organization’s strategic business goals. This identifies and responds to an organization’s current and future needs. By doing so, organizations can create a work environment that motivates and engages employees and fosters a culture of innovation. SHRM is an essential part of creating a sustainable advantage in the marketplace. This is because you align your HR policies with the specific goals of the organization, and vice versa, HR thereby contributes to achieving those goals.

Strategic HR creates advantage

How does a strategic HR plan contribute to creating a sustainable advantage on the market? To respond well to internal and external developments, the following components are important:

1. You attract and retain talent

By aligning your HR strategy with business objectives, you can create a work environment that motivates and engages employees. This, in turn, can lead to lower employee turnover and higher employee satisfaction. This is because employees are more engaged in the organization’s goals.

2. You capitalize on flexibility

As business conditions change, organizations must be able to adapt quickly to new challenges and opportunities. By aligning your HR strategy with business goals, you can ensure that employees are trained and ready to adapt to new situations.

3. You develop a culture of innovation

Create an environment that encourages creativity and risk-taking that is well aligned with your organizational goals. In this way, you can foster a culture of innovation that constantly looks at development (both of employees and the organization) and new opportunities.

Strategic HR plan: step by step

So there are many benefits to aligning HR goals with strategic organizational goals. But how do you go about doing this effectively?

Step 1: look at the environment

Keep a close eye on the environment in which the organization operates and the developments within it. What internal and external trends do you see? How do you think they will develop in the future? This can already give you a lot of information on which way the organization should move.

Step 2: dive into the organizational strategy

What are the organization’s plans for the coming years? For this you can gather a lot of information from colleagues. Think about the mission and vision, the main goals, the market and the competition in it. Last but not least, what are the core values? Once you have a good understanding of these factors, you can make a translation to strategic HR.

Step 3: identify the HR goals

How can you as HR contribute to achieving the organization’s goals? Those are your main goals for using HR strategically. For example, see how you can ensure that the culture in the organization matches the mission and vision. Or how to make the core values live among employees. But attracting and retaining employees often plays a big role in this as well.

Step 4: where do you make the most impact?

Do you want to work effectively with strategic HR? Then it is important to carefully plan your actions. You can do this by regularly measuring. 2DAYSMOOD uses the Employee Happiness Model, in which 15 factors have been identified that have a scientifically proven influence on the engagement and happiness of employees.

If you do a baseline measurement with these factors (where are you now?), you can see how important the factors are and how satisfied employees are with them now. For example, do they find the mission and vision very important, but are not yet satisfied with it? Then you can make the most impact by addressing this. This way you only use actions that you know will contribute to the goals of the organization.

Step 5: keep improving continuously

The only way to ensure that your HR strategy remains in line with the goals of the organization is to continuously monitor the effects of the HR strategy. That way, you can regularly review and update it so that it stays in line with the entire organizational strategy. To do this, get feedback from different layers of the organization. And keep a close eye on the environment. This way you can achieve a continuous improvement culture!

Strategic HR: essential for innovation

To create an agile organization that is future-proof, strategic HR is indispensable. As we said earlier: people are the determining factor in the success of your organization. Therefore, it is important to ensure that the goals of your HR strategy and the organizational strategy are aligned. Then you will create a strong organization with happy, goal-oriented employees!

Want to measure how your HR strategy is doing? The 2DAYSMOOD tool will help you do just that! Want to know more? Request a free consultation.