by Identifying and implementing workforce strategies in a challenging global economy is a high-priority issue for top executives. To be successful, human resource professionals and business leaders together must grapple with the many variables that affect the organization’s ability to attain its strategic objectives. They must develop quantitative and qualitative approaches to efficiently and effectively attract, engage and retain human capital. Specifically, to be effective, business leaders must focus on the five key areas:
- Workforce planning.
- Organizational capability assessment.
- Organizational development and structure.
- Diversity and Inclusion.
- Change management
Workforce planning involves analyzing the workforce implications of a business plan and developing solutions to address them. Steps include:
- Analyzing the organization’s strategic goals.
- Determining competencies required to attain those goals (needs analysis).
- Conducting a talent assessment of the employee population.
- Performing a labor market analysis (availability).
- Identifying the gap between the current capabilities and the needs, which forms the basis of a talent-build (employee development), borrow (use of a contingent workforce and project-based work) or buy (staffing) matrix.
The resulting talent acquisition strategy will depend in part on the organization’s life-cycle stage. Organizations in the introduction phase, for example, will emphasize acquiring exceptional as opposed to acceptable talent or building or moving talent.
Attraction
Efficient and effective methods of attracting and acquiring talent are critical to success. In a strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (SWOT) analysis, “strengths” refers to the organizational qualities that would be difficult for a competitor to replicate. Because methods for producing products tend to be similar, an organization can distinguish itself from its competitors by developing and communicating its unique people advantage.
Filling the talent gap involves implementing robust methods of attracting, sourcing, screening, interviewing, hiring, onboarding and retaining human capital, as well as developing staffing management metrics to measure efforts within each of these areas.
Attracting talent includes creating or refining an employment brand, as well as communicating the message through people, process and technology solutions. Categorizing channels according to the 7 Sourcing Segments®, identified by the consulting firm Kaufman, VonStuben and Associates, helps streamline these efforts:
- Mass media.
- College relations.
- Affinity groups.
- Referral programs.
- Direct talent scouting.
- Special events (e.g., open houses, career fairs).
Working within each segment before identifying specific needs allows organizations to consistently communicate an employment brand and further decrease acquisition time by inviting talent to apply and prequalify in advance of actual needs.
Motivation
To perpetuate and build on a competitive people advantage, organizations must understand what attracts and motivates employees. Motivational factors frequently cited in research include:
- Training, development and career.
- Immediate management.
- Performance management.
- Equal opportunities and fair treatment.
- Pay and benefits.
- Health and safety.
- Family friendliness.
- Job satisfaction.
Leaders of high-performing organizations must strive to understand the mix and multitude of motivational and engagement factors and to introduce efforts to influence them. Diversity and individual values also play an important role in engagement.
Retention
Effective retention strategies revolve around how the organization’s managers and employees interact, how the organization develops and presents talent, and how these behaviors come to life within the work environment and brand. Organizations must develop and implement human capital strategies that encourage, support and hold people managers responsible for retention. These strategies include ensuring that talent-buy and talent-build efforts feed a culture in which people are appreciated and included. This begins with an organization’s values statement and is carried out via its performance management system. Accordingly, managers should hire individuals who mirror organizational values as well as demonstrate those values through their behaviors. If diversity and inclusion are values, for example, behaviors related to them are included in performance plans and measured, rewarded or corrected.
Quantitative and qualitative analysis of an organization’s capabilities will contribute to achieving defined business goals through skills analysis, job design, role clarification and performance measures. These measures also benefit the employee populations, the shareholders, and the communities in which the organization operates.
Human resource professionals, for example, must continually employ efforts to analyze redundancies within organizations and be willing to make tough, courageous decisions and recommendations. This is not necessarily a negative for employees: These activities can contribute to more clearly defined responsibilities, expanded roles, enriched careers and more appropriate compensation.
Not only must organizations look at human capital from a business (versus from a historical personnel) perspective, but they must also consider the implications of decisions. For example, if analysis dictates a workforce reduction, organizations must incorporate strategies to mitigate lower productivity as a result of “survivor guilt,” maintain stock prices (if publicly traded), continue attracting and retaining customers, and maintain corporate and social responsibilities. Not taking these steps may result in a failure to realize the full benefits of a reduction. Organizations that reduce the workforce to save money but subsequently suffer losses in productivity do not realize the anticipated savings.
Diversity and Inclusion
Diversity and inclusion strategies should focus on how to unleash the power of inclusion within organizations by helping employees understand how decisions can be made together, how teams operate more effectively, how to better appreciate employees’ respective “otherness” and how the collective “otherness” can have a positive impact on the marketplace served. When addressed correctly, diversity and inclusion can have dramatically positive outcomes for the business. Conversely, when misunderstood and misapplied, they can leave a workforce with a “flavor of the day” attitude or, even worse, bitter and resentful.
Historically, organizations have focused diversity efforts primarily on visual diversity and frequently communicated diversity attributes, including gender, age, physical ability, national origin, sexual orientation, race and religion. However, organizations have evolved beyond that to a point where they must also consider how an individual’s acculturation (the habits formed as a result of experience or communal or family upbringing) affects how work is accomplished. Organizations must ponder how they can become more competitive by understanding and exploiting differences for the benefit of fellow employees, stockholders, the community and customers. They must also consider how to prove the value of diversity and inclusion strategies through quantifiable and business-related metrics. Depending on where an organization is on the diversity continuum, it could take years to go from concept to completion. Inclusion is a journey, not a destination.
Change Management
Organizations often fail in implementing strategies. It is not uncommon to have a consultant and cross-functional team come together to address an issue and assemble volumes of data, and then to have the results sit in dusty binders on executives’ bookshelves. When decisions are made about a different way to conduct business, implementation of those ideas is critical, and change management is the vehicle by which to do so.
“Change management is the process of continually renewing an organization’s direction, structure and capabilities to serve the ever-changing needs of external and internal customers.
