Organisational strategy generally amounts to an organisation making a statement about its business direction, where it aims to go and how it is going to get there. It then defines a framework within which important issues can be addressed.
A strategy might contain the following elements: a plan or a conscious set of actions; a set of goals, such as better customer service or the development of a new product; policies on how actions should be carried out and values that help determine which goals take priority. But where does people management and development fit in?
If your company makes sweets and its strategy is to become a producer of quality chocolate, do you develop an HR strategy that aims to develop people in quality chocolate production techniques? Or do you take the view that you cannot become a high-class producer of chocolate unless you know that you have the talent available to achieve such a goal?
HR strategy is of course about managing people and someone has to take responsibility for deciding and directing policies and practices to do just that. Such policies will be of little value, however, unless they help to move the organisation towards business objectives. So if your business objective is to produce quality chocolate, it is not a good idea to have a bonus scheme linked to quantity or to provide training in cake-making.
Knowledge of your workforce — how skilled it is and how receptive it will be to learning new skills — will inform you how, or even if, you will be able to achieve your business objective.
It is perfectly feasible for a producer of dog food to have a business strategy to become a producer of high-quality chocolate. But it may take time to achieve unless the firm has staff who already know about chocolate as well as dog food.
HR strategy must inform and complement business strategy. It also has to be flexible enough to cope with contact and thus needs to be developed by people who understand the 'people business', as well as the business imperatives of the marketplace.
Source
The Facilities Business
