Businesses are required to develop responsive structures and strategies that will enable them to adapt to the dynamic work and business environment. The development and implementation of the right business strategies will enable them to prioritize what matters most, which will in turn lead to the growth of the company amidst economic and unprecedented changes in external environmental.
In recent times, we have witnessed an increase in remote work as companies now leverage digitization to achieve their desired efficiency level and many workers now prefer remote and hybrid work environments. As the business environment keeps evolving, the traditional style of management and organizational structure has been relatively ineffective, which warrants companies to transition to a more inclusive, decentralized system that will eliminate any form of bureaucracy in the management process and empower employees to contribute to the overall business objectives and strategies of the organisation, and carried along in the decision-making process.
An organization’s future depends on how well they plan to respond and adapt to the changing business environment, especially the system and resources put in place to resolve future risk and leverage potential opportunities. Companies need to focus on ways to stay relevant and efficient to achieve an ideal level of progress, effectively manage employees, and develop them to adapt to emerging changes. Most importantly, companies need to engage the Human Resources manager in the decision-making and strategic planning process to enable companies harmonise the HR practices with the goals of the company.
This article aims to assess the ways HR managers can effectively align HR practices and policies with the strategic objectives of an organization, considering the critical role of the HR functions in the development and enactment of strategies, people, and resource mobilisation that can enable companies to achieve their desired goal effectively.
Relevance of Aligning HR Practices With Organizational Strategies
The management of Employees of an organization goes a long way in determining an organization’s future success. People management is beyond the convectional recruitment, onboarding, task delegation, compensation, and development. How it is planned and structured to meet specific business objectives determines the likelihood of achieving the goals of an organization. The following are the reasons it benefits of aligning HR practices with organisational strategies:
- It enables the HR commission to set the right priorities, which allows the HR manager to focus on critical areas that require attention in HR, mainly by assessing the internal and external situation, where the assessment of the external labour market situation allows the HRM to ascertain the trends of labour supply and demand.
- It helps improve the HR commission to be well-positioned to meet the needs of an organisation as the department will be able to identify and leverage the essential opportunities of strategic HR to effectively engage the workforce, implement the required model, and assign innovation that will amplify the force’s performance.
- Saves time, hiring, and operational costs: the implementation of strategic HR and harmonisation of HR practices and policies results will help HR and the leaders of organisation save time as it will help reduce bureaucracies of the past and improve cost efficiency as the organisation will allocate financial resources based on the strategic need of the company to meet critical goals of the business.
- Innovation Efficiency: HR managers can effectively work with team leaders to develop solutions that can improve their productivity and eliminate by guiding them on their decision-making, making employee engagement by helping to track the workforce’s performance to keep them informed about the weakest links. The HR commission can work with the team responsible for innovation, digitisation, and automation to guide them on areas where digitalisation and automation are needed and ways to enable them implement the right technology that will enhance workforce efficiency.
- HR managers can effectively help organisational leaders identify the ideal human capital requirements suitable for the organisation’s strategies. According to HR Drive, HR managers can leverage analytical tools to effectively identify weaknesses and strength, opportunities, and threats
Ways HR Contributes to Organizational Strategies:
In recent times, organizational leaders have become committed to working with HR managers to implement corporate strategies that align with HR practices; they work with HR managers to ensure strategic management of people, which in turn improves productivity, employee performance, and retention rate and helps businesses meet the needs of consumers.
HR contributes to Organisational Strategies in the following ways:
Conducting Needs Assessment:
The HR manager can help determine and develop the right workforce and HR management system to implement.
Particularly by developing a model that helps ascertain if the company has the right number of workforce in place to execute a business strategic goal. For example, it allows companies to clarify how much they need to budget to recruit the right talents in a critical business unit that will aid in attaining the business objectives.
Employer Branding:
HR managers can best determine how well a company can recruit the culturally fit employee by communicating the right message at the right time to get buy-in from the ideal candidate, which in turn helps to reduce bad hiring and developing the ideal employer value propositions helps companies to retain and instill the needed level of commitment in employees.
According to Lybrand et al. ( 2023), “Employer branding is the reputation a company can build out there to enable them to attract people such that it appeals to their emotional, instinctive, and intellectual perceptions, and how well a company can create a competitive advantage that would make them attractive to the potential workforce.”
Businesses Expansion:
The Human Resources manager would be able to develop a human resources plan to effectively recruit the right talents in regional and new international expansion, enabling the organization to get the right workforce at the right time.
Resources and Workforce Management:
The HR manager can help see the successful usage of the organization’s resources by working with other business units to know the number of job opportunities to be created, the required budget for recruitment, and technology that can be used to ensure efficient recruitment and manage existing workforce.
Reshaping Organization’s Structure:
Revamping HR processes and establishing the proper team management and structure is essential because it helps companies achieve their desired business objectives. According to Mckinsey’s research team (2021), “Companies are likely to perform better than their counterparts when that reallocate teams based on organisation’s business strategies. HR managers can help ensure a successful organizational structure transition to become more autonomous. And provide the proper support in managing teams to achieve their potential.
Manage and Adapt to Changes:
HR can help companies adapt to changing market situations by researching the industry, analyzing historical data to predict the potential needs of the organisation in terms of workforce retention, and leveraging data to transform the workforce by upskilling HR to be well-equipped to gain the right skill that will enable them to perform well on the job.
HR managers can also create initiatives and programs that will enable them to gain a competitive advantage in the industry which in turn will enhance the scalability of the organisation in the long run.
Legal Compliance:
Organisational management needs to ensure that the business strategies they plan to implement do not violate labour laws and legislation, so it is imperative for companies to effectively plan to work with the HR manager to create an ideal employment requirement that would not have any legal implications in the future. Hence, for companies to have a fair and equitable system that rewards good employees, it is essential that they must take cognizance of the Labor laws, company policies, training procedures, and disciplinary when developing the strategic plan (Chron Small Business)
