5 Steps to Building an HR Strategy | Gartner

Aligning HR strategy with business goals is crucial for organizational success. However, according to this Gartner report, only 32% of HR leaders surveyed have fully integrated their HR strategic planning process with the business planning process. To improve alignment between HR strategy and business strategy, the report suggests five key steps. 1) Understand your organization’s strategy and goals, 2) Identify capabilities and skills for the future, 3) Evaluate current capabilities and skills, 4) Develop HR goals and criteria for success, and 5) Communicate your HR strategy. The report provides recommended actions for each step and includes supporting illustrations and templates. One example to highlight when identifying capabilities and skills for the future (step 2) is to ask questions such as a) From a talent perspective, what must be true for the organization to achieve its objectives? b) What talent issues would both leaders and employees agree must be addressed for the organization to succeed? c) Considering different talent risks (e.g., competitors), what is the degree of impact and likelihood of risk for each talent risk? As HR Leaders go through the steps, pages 8-9 include an editable template to document aspects of the HR strategic plan. As a bonus, here is my 2016 article, Linking Talent Strategy with Business Strategy (LinkedIn version). Here is also a PDF version here.