Elevating HR to Strategic Partner in your Business

Overview: Even a small organization with as few as 10 staff can develop a strategic plan to guide decisions about the future. Based on the company's strategic plan, your organization can develop a strategic HR plan that will allow you to make HR management decisions now to support the future direction of the organization. Strategic HR planning is also important from a budgetary point of view so that you can factor the costs of recruitment, training, etc. into your organization's operating budget.

The focus of this webinar will be on a conceptual framework for developing a People Strategy.

People strategies are designed to manage develop and deploy people resources to support the other components of the Company's business strategy, all of which will create competitive advantage. This framework is guided by a set of assumptions.

A complete business strategy has three components: operating strategy, people strategy and financial strategy Business strategies at all levels are the basis for developing the people strategy.

The business strategy identifies the need for specific organizational capabilities and the reinforcing and building of these capabilities as the focus of the people strategy.

Organizational capabilities are the collective abilities of the organization required to accomplish strategic objectives. Capabilities are influenced by four elements: people, processes, structure, and assets. Capabilities are the link between the strategies and the method of organizing and shaping the organization to achieve the strategies.

The business units share specific common business strategies and capability requirements against which the people strategy framework can be developed.

People policies, programs, and practices are the tools managers use to improve performance and execute their strategies. They must be aligned with the business strategies and supported by management as value added activities.

Why should you attend: How many HR leaders could answer, with precision and content, the following questions about their company:

• Where is the business going?
• What are the business drivers?
• What are the measures of success?
• How is the business performing on these success measures?
• What are some of the key challenges faced in achieving that success?

Human resource management can be approached in two fundamentally different ways. Human resources employees can fill purely administrative roles, simply facilitating the paperwork involved for tasks such as hiring new employees and handling workers' compensation insurance. Or HR employees can become strategic contributors to company success. Transforming the HR function into a strategic contributor can take your workforce strategies to the next level, increasing the value of your human capital to accrue distinct competitive advantages.

HR must think about how to strategically position itself. In many HR functions, the focus has been on the traditional 3 P's: Pay, Pensions, Policies. Oftentimes it's on cost-cutting. HR not only facilitates the elimination of head count from business units but also continually takes costs out of its own function. HR is particularly adept at finding ways to do more with fewer people. However, the real challenge for HR is to break the cycle of traditional focus and cost-cutting by determining how to add recognized value to the organization.

To do so, HR must first transform itself operationally. When executive leadership recognizes the importance of human capital there's encouragement to vote for inclusion of human resources in the C-suite. The leadership team - or highest level of management - such as the chief executive officer, chief information officer, chief human resources officer and chief financial officer, makes up so-called the C-level suite. Including human resources means full participation of the company's essential departments in organization-wide decisions. Participation from departments throughout the organization ensures that leadership makes business decisions based on the impact those decisions will have on the organization and its workforce.

Areas Covered in the Session:

• Review corporate and business unit strategies and assess common elements
• Form cross functional teams to assess specific issues
• Develop a common framework for assessing capabilities
• Assess gaps between current performance and required capabilities
• Review existing barriers to organizational change
• Assess environmental factors affecting change
• Develop a People Goal
• Define characteristics of an employment relationship
• Conduct preliminary review of current alignment of people policies, programs and practices
• Determine the nature of the changes needed in the role, structure, and staffing of the HR Department
• Review case study

Who Will Benefit:

• CEOs
• Business Unit Leaders
• HR/OD Professionals
• Mid - to Senior Level Leaders
• Anyone interested in learning more about Talent Management and Succession Planning

Instructor: Dick Buckles is CEO of Bianetics, LLC, a San Antonio, TX based firm that consults to such companies as Chevron, Chevroil-Kazakhstan, Fluor, Johnson & Johnson, Hewlett-Packard, the University of California, and others. Prior to owning his own firm, Dick was a senior manager with world class companies such as Edison International, WellPoint, Amoco, ARCO, and Hughes Aircraft Company. He is the author of numerous articles on organizational effectiveness and change and has taught MBA and graduate courses in Quality Management, Organizational Behavior, Human Resources Management, and Psychology at California State University, UCLA, The University of La Verne, and the National Graduate School of Quality Management.