The Essential HR Handbook, 10th Anniversary Edition

Sharon Armstrong, Barbara Mitchell

• Verlag: Career Press
• Jahr: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781632658685
• Thema: Business
• Thema: Human Resource Management

Since 2008, busy managers by the tens of thousands have turned to this best-selling book as a handy guide to the ins and outs of human resources. And no wonder! Because whether you’re a small business owner, a manager in a business without an HR department, or even a seasoned HR professional,   The Essential HR Handbook  will help you handle any personnel problem—from onboarding to outplacement—quickly and easily. This fully updated 10th anniversary edition is packed with information, tools, checklists, sample forms, and timely tips to guide you through the maze of personnel issues in today’s complex business environment.

In it you’ll find out how to:  

• Attract talented staff through social media recruiting
• Identify legal pitfalls to avoid lawsuits and regulatory interference
• Train a diverse and inclusive multigenerational workforce
• Provide the compensation and benefits package that will make your organization an “employer of choice”
• Streamline your orientation and onboarding practices so new employees hit the ground running

Whenever personnel problems arise, having  The Essential HR Handbook  on your bookshelf is like having a team of expert HR consultants at your beck and call!

1

STRATEGIC HR

Strategy connects the purpose and values of your organization
with those of its customers and other external shareholders.

—Tony Manning, Making Sense of Strategy

If you don't know where you're going, how will you know when you get there? That's why every organization needs a strategy for planning its future, and HR is a big part of that planning process.

Organizational strategy

Managers are responsible for allocating resources to achieve their organization's stated goals, and this is where organizational strategy comes into play. Successful management of resources depends on effective planning. Managers need to set the organization's strategic direction and develop a plan to implement the strategy.

That plan defines the organization's path into the future, and implementing it involves making decisions about the allocation of resources to reach the goals.

Organizational resources include intellectual capital, products, and financial capital, but the most important resource is human capital—the people who make it all happen. And because most organizations spend the largest percentage of their dollars on their labor force, firms that align their people strategies with their organizational strategies are the most successful.

The strategic planning process begins by determining what the organization wants to achieve throughout a reasonable period of time. In the past, standard business practice was to plan for long periods, such as five, ten, or twenty years—but in today's volatile business climate, most organizations plan for shorter periods such as one, three, or at most, five years.

For your organization to remain competitive, it is essential to revisit your strategic plan frequently, and explore the business climate in your organization's field to understand changes that may affect your organization and its strategy. Strategy development involves evaluating the organization's current business situation and determining where it wants to go in the future. Managing strategy is never “cast in concrete”—it is a continuous, recurring process.

Developing a strategic plan

The most enlightened organizations include human resources (HR) in the development of the strategic plan, so that the human resources plan can link directly to the strategic plan (discussed later in this chapter).

The typical approach to strategic planning is a three-step process:

1. Establish why the organization exists, its mission.
2. Define what you want the organization's near future to be.
3. Establish what needs to be done—and what needs to be done differently—to reach the stated objectives.

Crafting a mission statement

Organizational strategy consists of concisely, clearly, and carefully communicating to everyone in the organization where the organization is headed, which is the first step in creating a mission statement. This document describes what the organization is today, and what it values, in succinct and measurable terms. Mission statements are shared with employees, clients, and customers.

Elements of a Mission Statement

Mission statements should be succinct and easy for employees, customers, and the general public to understand. Some of the elements to consider as you craft a mission statement include your organization's:

• Desired image in the marketplace.
• Target market for products or services.
• Products or services (described).
• Local, national, or global reach—where your clients are located.

When you're developing a strategic plan, start by asking a series of questions that will produce the information you need to take the next step in defining the organization's future direction. Here are some sample questions:

• What are your plans for growth?
• What is your ethics statement?
• What challenges are you facing today?
• What are your competitors doing that you aren't doing?
• What sets you apart from the competition?
• What changes have occurred in your industry or service area?
• How has globalization affected your organization?
• Have your competitors entered the global market?
• Are there opportunities outside your current market to consider?
• Is your technology up to date?
• What effect has technology had on your customers, members, or employees?
• Have your customers' or members' expectations changed?
• What are you doing to retain any competitive advantage you have?
• What are your distinctive competitive strengths, and how does the plan build on them?
• How will changes in your strategy affect your employees?
• Do you have the people resources you need to reach your desired goals?
• What effect will the changing demographics have on your strategy?
• What legal or regulatory changes do you anticipate that may affect your strategy?
• How and why is this plan different from the previous one? Were all your previous elements completed? If not, why? What could you have done to complete that element?
• How different is your strategy from those of your competitors, and why? Is that good or bad? What do you know about your competitors' strategies?
• How accurate have your past budgets and projections been? What could have made them more accurate and how will you modify your budgeting process, if needed?
• Who will measure the outcomes of the strategy, and with what tools? How often will you monitor progress?

After answering these questions, you can determine how the organization will capitalize on its strengths, eliminate or minimize its weaknesses, exploit opportunities, and defend against threats. This is called a SWOT analysis (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats) and should be something you do annually.

Putting your strategic plan in motion

If the organization sets out a good strategic direction and sets goals and measurements to ensure the goals are met, it can envision its future.

But after the vision is set forth, nothing will happen without an implementation strategy. This is where responsibilities are determined and accountabilities defined. A timeline should be created, and milestone reviews should be scheduled, so that the strategic plan is constantly in front of the leadership and discussed at staff meetings. The timeline should be reviewed and updated in order to keep it as current as possible.

Communicating the plan

Once the strategic plan is developed and easily understood, it is extremely important to share it with the employees. This can be in writing, sent as an email from the leader of the organization, or communicated in person at an “all staff” meeting. How the message gets out isn't nearly as important as the fact that it is communicated. Employees need to know where their organization is headed, and how the work they do fits into the plan; this is especially important for your Millennial employees. They will leave if it's not readily apparent to them how their work impacts your mission.

Linking HR planning to the strategic plan

Organizations that link the overall strategic plan to their plans for finding and keeping employees tend to be the most successful in today's competitive marketplace. After an organization's strategic plan is in place, it is important to identify the roles the human resources department will play in achieving the organization's goals.

Once the strategic areas that will affect employees are identified, the planners need to determine whether the organization lacks any resources that will cause problems in the implementation phase.

It is at this point in the process that HR issues—a critical element in the strategic plan—really come into play. Organizations that involve HR in the strategic planning process soon learn that issues about people have an effect on nearly every organizational activity.

For example, if the plan calls for building a new manufacturing facility in South America, it is probably HR that will need to research labor markets and union activity in different countries, look at compensation plans, investigate the process for obtaining work permits and visas for US nationals, research applicable benefit plans, and gather data on whether the organization's current health plan covers workers outside of the country.

If growth is projected in the strategic plan, HR should consider creating a workforce plan. This involves looking at the current workforce in depth and asking questions such as:

• What are the strengths and areas of concern with the current workforce?
• Who is eligible to retire?
• Are there current employees with performance issues?
• Does the projected growth mean additional workers will be needed?
• What skills and abilities—technical, administrative, managerial, and leadership—are needed to accomplish the work?
• Are there gaps in the current skills of the workforce? What will be required to achieve the new strategic direction?

Once these questions are answered, HR can address how gaps can be filled. For example, if the strategy involves increasing the number of technical employees in a particular depart...