Steps to Execute Your HR Strategy

You’ve spent a lot of time crafting your HR strategy. Now it’s time to execute it! Executing any business strategy can seem especially daunting right now. The challenges of the current job market and the constantly changing environment due to COVID-19 have complicated things.

To move from HR strategy to implementation, it’s not always just a matter of jumping right in. Here are the steps to complete before you can get things done. 

Steps to Execute Your HR Strategy 

1. Assess Your Resources

When you first started crafting your HR strategy, you probably already went through the process of reflecting on the past. But now it’s time to do it again, but with the focus on execution. For example, what made it easier to accomplish HR tasks last year? What made it more difficult? 

A particular tool, service, process, or person may have made it easier or difficult to accomplish HR tasks last year. Businesses can conduct an audit of these items and whether each had a positive, neutral, or negative contribution towards accomplishing their HR strategy. 

Those resources with a negative or neutral contribution will need to be improved or eliminated, while those with a positive contribution should be continued or invested in further. For example, if you found that your payroll process caused issues last year, then it might be time to reevaluate it and how it can help accomplish your HR strategy this year—or at the very least not get in the way of it. 

Before you can begin executing your HR strategy, you have to have the right resources to do so. Employing resources requires getting buy-in from organizational leaders or others in your business. If your HR doesn’t currently have a seat at the table, now is the time to show it’s a strategic asset. 

2. Get Internal Support

To get internal support, you have to be a strategic partner in the organization. This means showcasing how your function is essential to the business. Here are some ways to gain the trust, influence, and expertise you need to become a strategic partner: 

• Know your business: Your ultimate role is to help your organization succeed by leveraging various HR strategies. To do this well, take time to educate yourself on the why, what, and how of your organization. Think about a few things you could do now to learn more about your business. 
• Digest the data: The decisions you make should be driven by your business and people data. You probably know what business success looks like, but make sure you know how it’s measured. Then you can connect the dots between your HR strategy and business metrics.
• Prioritize: There are endless possibilities when making people and cultural improvements. A strategic HR partner is constantly assessing urgent versus important work. Routinely assess the value of HR initiatives and their alignment with the goals of your organization. 

If you do the three things above, chances are you’ll be able to show your organization just how essential your HR strategy is to business success. After that, it’ll be easier to get the approval necessary to move forward with the resources you need to get the job done. 

3. Activate Your Resources

After crafting an HR strategy, assessing your resources, and getting internal buy-in, you’ll be left with a hiring plan, projects, task lists, etc. So to start to accomplish HR strategy objectives, it’s time to activate your resources. 

Your most important resources will be your HR staff or HR support services. These are the resources responsible for all that may go into accomplishing your HR strategy, such as: 

• Administering compensation, training, and benefit programs
• Advising and coaching managers on recruiting and employee relations
• Supporting the documentation of staffing, training, and performance evaluations
• Acting as a liaison between employees and management regarding company policies, practices, and regulations
• Ensuring policies, procedures, and HR programs are consistently administered, aligned with organizational goals, and comply with professional standards and laws and regulations

Some small businesses may afford the price tag and hire internal HR staff. But HR expertise is expensive. If you take this approach, employee-related liability and compliance concerns are 100% yours. And you or your HR personnel may not have enough time to focus on strategy when worrying about all the administrative HR tasks. An HR partner may be a better resource or a compliment to this option. 

Executing Your HR Strategy—Obsidian HR Can Help

Having an HR team that can execute your HR strategy has a significant impact on the success of your HR strategy and business. But having a full HR team or even one internal HR staff member isn’t always possible. 

This is where Obsidian HR can help. There are many benefits to using an HR partner. For example, if you find developing an HR strategy daunting, an HR partner can help with that. But they can also help you execute your strategy by taking on tactical HR responsibilities. 

Many small businesses use a full-service HR partner, like Obsidian HR, to stand in as their HR team until they grow. Later, businesses can hire at least one person internally to guide the HR strategy and partnership. Using an HR partner saves costs, relieves the administrative burden, and makes it easier to execute your HR strategy. 

To learn more about how to get your HR up and running and execute your HR strategy, download our guide to Human Resource Management (HRM).