Ways to Creating an Effective HR Strategy Keep tabs on the effectiveness/success periodically the HR strategy to make changes as and when required

The three major milestones to a company's success are a business plan, a strategic plan and an HR plan, the critical step here is to ensure that all three are integrated. An HR plan is the one that helps to train your employees to execute the business and the strategic plan. In one way, it is a base action as it prepares your managers to hire and train strategically, and also prepares your business to handle downfalls and employee attrition. Let's look at ways to creating an effective and sound proof HR Strategy.

Workforce – Do a thorough assessment of your current workforce – identifying their knowledge, skills and abilities and develop your strategy accordingly. Also, consider their talent beyond their current profiles. For e.g. Your data entry employee might have excellent communication skills; in future they can be groomed to be a part of the sales. This can be done by conducting regular performance reviews to understand if your employee can handle additional responsibilities. If there are a set of employees that consistently rank high in all the segments, it is an indication that they are to eligible to undertake challenging roles.

Employee Development – Your employee's work needs to be in a constant alignment with your organization's goals, and for this you need a clear direction that helps you to refine their skills every now and then creating the right collaboration with your company's goals. Make sure you have an employee development plan in place for this, as there is always room for improvement for top performers too. Research says that employees decide to stay with the same organization for years only if they foresee opportunities and growth with them. This is the second step post the assessment of the workforce.

Succession Planning – With constant growth, change is inevitable. You need to be prepared in advance for every shift, especially when there is a change in top management and restructuring of departments. A succession plan helps to minimize a work disruption by identifying critical roles in your organization along with employees who have the calibre to assume these positions on a short notice, in case someone leaves. You can also choose to involve your employees in your succession plan, this shall create transparency, build trust and also prepare them in case of immediate developments.

Gap Analysis – A gap analysis helps you understand where your organization is in present as compared to where you see it in future, it helps you assess your HR practices and infrastructure to understand where your organization is falling short. A gap analysis helps you look into job profiles, employee handbook, training programs, and performances summarizing the overall present growth of the company determining the additional actions required to keep it in par with the organization's road map. Gap analysis acts as an aid to both, employee development and succession planning.

Performance Management System – There is no single formula to success when it comes to performance management. However, if implemented successfully, a good PMS system can support in all the above mentioned steps as the outcomes of a performance management process will help in understanding where the organization stands today in terms of "capabilities', where it needs to be and how can they actually achieve it. An PMS system functions as the backbone of an HR strategy and can help the organizations achieve all its planned targets if used constructively and objectively.

Retention Strategy – An organization's image is understood by the following metrics – its annual revenue & profit number and average number of years an employee serves the organization for. The retention plan's implementation starts from the hiring process itself – whether the employee is a culture-fit or not, whether the employee is clear on their job responsibilities or not; and more importantly as to how the organizations supports the employee's growth along with its own. A good retention strategy helps in saving the time and effort put in for hiring a new employee and further training him/her. But a retention plan needs to be an ongoing process and has to imbibed in all the processes of HR with the required support from management at every level.

There is no shortcut to a successful HR strategy, it needs to be planned and structured as per the organization's goals and vision. However, you can keep tabs on its effectiveness/success periodically to make changes as and when required. Just remember, a HR Strategy helps the organization at a lot of levels; so keep your base strategy intact and the rest should fall into place by itself!