Coloring Outside the Lines, Part 3 – Supporting Strategy Across the Company

The strategic view

In the last part, we talked about HR’s ability to make connections across the organization and create those “win-win” situations. The next question is how all of this connects with overall strategic goals.

At a strategic level, HR management must maintain a focus on organizational strategy. By having HR function as a business partner, managers may be guided and advised more effectively in terms of staffing needs and planning on a multi-year basis, as well as a host of concerns that affect organizational success or failure. As was recently noted, in Vision: The Journal of Business Perspective, “A recent major change in HR function is its building a shared partnership with line managers.” (Vision: The Journal of Business Perspective, June 2016, Vol. 20, no. 2135-138) As further noted, “in today’s organizations, all HR activities, including selection and recruitment, training and development, and reward and compensation systems, are designed and practiced in such an effective way that these must exhibit HR’s alignment with business strategy.” Ibid.

Put into the context of HR “coloring outside the lines,” intimate knowledge of business strategy allows alignment of HR’s focus and, by extension, line management’s focus on appropriate priorities to drive the overall goals of the organization forward—it takes HR practitioners beyond traditional HR and supports managers in driving success. Smart management will go beyond HR functions, allowing the accomplished HR practitioner to add value across functional divisions.

For the VP or CHRO, these interactions and the knowledge gained across areas will make him/her a key part of the executive team. Many a strategic conversation with my CEO began with, “What are you hearing out there?” In asking that, he wasn’t asking for anecdotes. He was asking for the feelings of front-line staff, the concerns of the staff and their managers, the degree to which the sites were aligning with planned organizational moves and the ways we could drive greater efficiency in our operations while aligning with what we saw as the organization of tomorrow. By keeping an eye on strategy and a foot in each functional division, I was able to provide him with a truly overarching strategic view that was unique in its perspective.

A human resources department that functions like an old personnel office will never be more than that. They will process paperwork and maintain back office functions—necessary in many ways but never more than ministerial. But an HR department that sees and seizes upon this opportunity to color outside the lines can be an effective player in both strategic and tactical terms, adding to its value by using its influence to support a thriving workforce and create opportunities within the organization beyond anything that can happen by sitting behind a desk!