HR Improvement Planning
Avoid The Number 1 Pitfall Why Company Goals Fail
With the economy starting to improve, Canadian businesses are hoping for a turnaround from last year's performance, and targets to increase profits are in everyone's plans. Most of us have already learned the number one rule in goal setting which is to make the goals realistic. Managers also need to avoid the number one pitfall why company goals fail even if they are achievable.
Number 1 Cause of Failure
Many companies do not take into consideration the dynamics of their organization's resources and capabilities required to achieve these goals. The discrepancy between Corporate Strategy and HR Planning is the number one cause of failure.
HR Planning is a Necessity...
to ensure that your company has the right personnel to meet corporate objectives. The key goal of HR Planning (according to Bacal & Associates) is: "To get the right number of people with the right skills, experience and competencies in the right jobs at the right time at the right cost."
Here Are the Basic Steps to Get Your HR Plan Started:
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1. Workforce Analysis:
A key component of HR planning is understanding your workforce and planning for projected shortages and surpluses in specific occupations and skill sets. Understand the knowledge, skills and abilities of your current staff. A skills inventory for each employee would be useful for this task.
2. Internal Scan:
Identify factors internal to the organization that may affect HR capacity to meet organizational goals. Understand which strategic goals of your company will affect human resources. Consider the Number of new jobs, how many staff, and what skills will be needed.
3. External Scan:
Determine the most important environmental factors expected to affect workforce capacity, given known operational and HR priorities and emerging issues. Combine this with Internal factors to forecast HR demand and supply.
4. Gap Analysis:
Based on an analysis of the environmental scan and operational business goals, what are the organization's current situation versus where the company hopes to be in the future. Consider:
Do our present employees have the needed skills?
Are employees in roles that utilize their strengths?
Are there enough managers/supervisors?
Do HR practises need to change to move forward?
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5. Priority Setting and Work Plan:
Based on the organization's priorities, environmental scan, and HR performance related data: 1) what are the major human resources priorities; and 2) what strategies will achieve the desired outcome? Consider:
Restructuring strategies
Training and development strategies
Recruitment strategies
Outsourcing strategies
Collaboration strategies
6. Monitoring, Evaluating, Reporting:
Monitoring, evaluating, and reporting (internally and publicly) performance results advances our capacity to measure performance, set targets, and, most importantly, to integrate results information into decision making processes and determine future priorities.
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Don"t Postpone HR Planning
This may appear to be a daunting task, even for the most experienced HR Managers. At the very least, create a general or informal HR Plan to start thinking about potential challenges. For a list of related resources, please indicate your interest or situation with "AskHenry, Online HR Advice".
(Sources: HRCouncil.ca and Bacal & Associates)
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