307Creating an Integrated HR StrategyThis chapte.docx

307
Creating an Integrated
HR Strategy
This chapter is about defining the changes you want to create
through strategic HR and how to use strategic HR processes
to create them. The previous four chapters described critical
fea-
tures to consider when designing each of the 4R strategic HR
processes. This chapter discusses how to incorporate these four
processes into an integrated HR strategy. The reason this
chapter
appears toward the end of the book is that it is easier to develop
a strategy if you are familiar with the tactical methods, tools,
and
techniques that will be used to execute it. In application, the
topics
in this chapter might be addressed before addressing many of
the
topics discussed earlier in the book. Before building out
specific
processes for recruiting, goal management, performance
manage-
ment, and development it is useful to have an picture of what
you
want to achieve with strategic HR overall. This includes
prioritiz-
ing whether certain processes should be developed and deployed
before others. In sum, it is valuable to know what you want
to accomplish with your overall HR strategy before you begin

designing specific strategic HR processes.
E I G H T
c h a p t e r
Hunt, Steven T.. Common Sense Talent Management : Using
Strategic Human Resources to Improve Company Performance,
Center for Creative
Leadership, 2014. ProQuest Ebook Central,
http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ashford-
ebooks/detail.action?docID=827115.
Created from ashford-ebooks on 2020-04-21 12:10:41.
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Commonsense Talent Management308
The following issues are central to determining how to use
strategic HR

methods:
• Identifying the change you want to create. Strategic HR
methods deliver busi-
ness value by changing how the organization manages its
people. Change
requires effort and resources. Changing too much too fast can
create stress,
resistance, and confusion. HR strategies should identify the
changes that are
needed to support the company’s business execution needs.
They should also
map out how to implement these changes over time in a way
that balances the
need for business improvement against the risk of overwhelming
the com-
pany with excessive change.
• Defining what the change will look like. After identifying
the general nature
of the changes you are seeking to create, the next step is to
define exactly
what these changes will mean for employees, managers, senior
business lead-
ers, and HR professionals. This is done by describing the visible
events that
will result from the change—the sorts of conversations,
information, and
decisions that will be created as a result of implementing new
strategic HR
processes.
• Defining how you will create the change. Decide at a high
level how strategic
HR processes can be used to create the necessary changes. This
includes iden-

tifying the metrics to evaluate if the changes are successful.
• Operationalizing the change. This is where you dive into
the details of design-
ing, deploying, and using the 4R strategic HR processes of right
people, right
things, right way, and right development to create the change. It
also includes
determining the technology you will use to enable these
processes.
This chapter is divided into four sections reflecting these
themes. Section 8.1
provides tools for assessing your organization’s current level of
strategic HR pro-
cess maturity and using the assessment to define what sort of
change you want to
create. Section 8.2 provides examples of visible events that can
be used to define
and guide strategic HR efforts. Section 8.3 reviews steps to
define how you will
create these visible events. It also addresses metrics that can be
used to guide
and focus integrated strategic HR initiatives. Section 8.4
revisits how to use the
4R strategic HR processes to create change in your company
and highlights
concepts related to HR technology and data that will help
increase the overall
impact of integrated strategic HR processes.
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Creating an Integrated HR Strategy 309
8.1 IDENTIFYING THE CHANGE YOU WANT TO CREATE
Creating effective HR strategies requires both defining what
you need to change
and clarifying what you do not intend to change. Chapter 3
discussed the impor-
tance of viewing talent management maturity as a pyramid
whose sides reflect
the 4R strategic HR processes of right people, right things, right
way, and right
development. When developing an HR strategy, use this model
to define what
level of change you need to create to meet your business

objectives. This includes
recognizing that your company does not necessarily need to be
at the highest
levels of process maturity to address its business execution
needs.
Table 8.1 provides descriptions of the different maturity levels
for each of the 4R
strategic HR processes. This table can help clarify what changes
you wish to create
through your strategic HR initiatives. To do this, work through
the following steps:
1. Define the business needs. What are the most critical
commitments the
company must fulfill to meet the expectations of its
shareholders? When
answering this question, think about what time frame makes the
most
sense for your company. In larger companies, you may want to
look at
commitments spanning five years or more. For smaller
companies, the
focus may be on the next one to three years.
2. Identify workforce impacts. How do you need to change the
workforce to
meet these commitments? Will you need to add talent to the
workforce
that you do not currently have? What will people need to do in
the future
that they are not doing now?
3. Prioritize business execution drivers. Which of the six
business execution
drivers introduced in chapter 3 are the most important based on

these
commitments and changes? What business execution drivers are
most
critical to achieving the company’s strategic objectives? Are the
changes
focused on increasing alignment, productivity, efficiency,
sustainability,
scalability, or governance?
4. Determine how you will need to change your strategic HR
processes to sup-
port these drivers. Review the different maturity levels in table
8.1 and
identify which ones are most critical to supporting the business
driv-
ers, workforce changes, and strategic commitments identified in
steps 1
through 3. Use this analysis to clarify the general nature of the
changes you
need to make to your strategic HR processes.
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310
Table 8.1
Talent Process Maturity Grid for Determining the Actions
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Table 8.1
Most Critical to Supporting Your Company’s Business
Execution Needs
Right People Right Way Right Things Right Development
Level 5
(highest
level of
maturity)
Maintaining Talent
Pipelines:
Integrating external staff-
ing and internal develop-
ment processes to create a
steady flow of talent into
and across the company

Influencing Strategy:
Analyzing data on
employee performance
to gain insights into
overall strengths and
weaknesses of the
workforce
Operational Use of
Goals:
Providing leaders with
clear insight into the
types of goals employ-
ees at all levels are
pursuing and progress
made toward achiev-
ing them.
Building Talent Pipelines:
Integrating the processes
used to create jobs, hire and
promote people, and develop
employees based on a single
strategy focused on building
workforce capabilities to meet
future talent requirements
Level 4 Forecasting Talent Needs:
Forecasting future talent
needs to ensure we have
the talent to support our
business growth and per-
formance over the long
term
Calibrating

Performance:
Making sure managers
across the company
evaluate employee
performance using a
common, consistent
set of standards and
expectations
Coordinating Effort:
Creating collabora-
tion and cooperation
between people who
share similar or inter-
dependent goals
Encouraging Career Growth:
Supporting and investing in
high-potential employees
to encourage them to build
long-term careers within the
organization
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311
Ta
b
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8
.1
Most Critical to Supporting Your Company’s Business
Execution Needs
Right People Right Way Right Things
Right
Development
Level 3 Building Talent Pools:
Increasing the number of

qualified candidates avail-
able to meet our current
job requirements
Basing Decisions on
Performance:
Creating alignment
between people’s
performance and the
company’s pay and
promotion decisions
Creating Meaningful
Goals:
Giving employees
business goals and
job assignments
that are meaning-
ful and relevant to
their personal career
objectives
Business-Driven Development:
Giving people jobs and work
assignments that challenge
them to develop new skills and
capabilities
Level 2 Selecting High Performers:
Accurately evaluating can-
didates to ensure we are
hiring the best employee
and avoiding hiring
mistakes
Establishing Well-

Defined Expectations:
Identifying and clearly
communicating well-
defined performance
expectations for differ-
ent job roles
Aligning Goals:
Making sure employ-
ees understand
the link between
the goals they are
working on and the
overall strategic
objectives of the
company
Targeted Development:
Identifying gaps between peo-
ple’s current capabilities and
the capabilities they need to
take on future job assignments
Level 1
(lowest
level of
maturity)
Filling Positions:
Efficiently processing
new employees and
onboarding them into the
organization
Consistently Evaluating
Performance:

Ensuring the perfor-
mance of employees is
reviewed on a regular
basis using a standard-
ized and agreed-on
process
Setting Tangible
Goals:
Ensuring employees
have clear goals and
know exactly what
they are expected to
achieve
Individual Development:
Providing training and devel-
opment resources that help
people perform their current
jobs
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It is important to have representation from all areas of strategic
HR when
addressing these questions. This includes leaders who manage
staffing, perfor-
mance management, compensation, training, and leadership
succession and
development. Higher levels of HR process maturity require
greater levels of
HR process integration. Even if the processes overseen by these
leaders are not
highly integrated now, they will ultimately have to come
together to achieve
higher levels of HR process maturity.
Also recognize that what you need to change is driven in part by
what you are
currently doing. For example, imagine a company is launching a
new product line
and wants to increase alignment around this strategy by
increasing the maturity
of processes used to focus employees on the right things. If the
company cur-

rently has no goal-setting process, then simply achieving level
1, “setting tangible
goals,” may represent a major step forward. In contrast, if the
company has a well-
established goal-setting process, then the focus might be on
achieving higher lev-
els of process maturity such as “coordinating effort” or
“operational use of goals.”
It is also important to recognize that achieving higher levels of
process matu-
rity may not be possible until you establish processes to support
lower levels.
For example, if a company wants to achieve “maintaining talent
pipelines,” the
highest level of “right people,” then it has to first create
processes to support fill-
ing positions, selecting high performers, and building talent
pools. Overlooking
lower levels of maturity can create significant problems. For
example, I worked
with a technology company that needed to increase productivity
to more quickly
respond to market changes. To achieve this goal, it implemented
a rigorous cali-
bration process to identify top performers and address low
performers (level 4
of maturity for the process “Right Way”). But they never clearly
defined the cri-
teria used to evaluate performance (level 2 of maturity). As a
result, the calibra-
tion sessions often turned into bitter arguments between
managers over whose
employees were best, without any consensus around what “best”
actually meant.

Defining what level of process maturity you are seeking to
achieve allows you
to define the sorts of strategic HR processes you need to put in
place and how they
need to be designed. It also gives you a sense of what level of
effort will be required
to achieve the necessary changes. It is usually not too difficult
to move an orga-
nization up one level of process maturity in less than two years.
But moving up
multiple levels of maturity can take three years or more (see the
discussion: “Why
Most Strategic HR Initiatives Take Three Years to Reach Full
Effectiveness”).
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W H Y M O S T S T R A T E G I C H R I N I T I A T I V E S
T A K E
T H R E E Y E A R S T O R E A C H F U L L
E F F E C T I V E N E S S
A common question associated with deployment of HR
initiatives is
how long it will take to get the processes up and running. The
answer
depends on the process, but in most cases, a good answer is, “It
will
take less than a year to get under way, but it will take three
years to
become fully effective.”
There are two reasons “three years” is the magic number when
it
comes to achieving strategic HR process effectiveness. First,
the pur-
pose of these processes is to change how managers and
employees act

and think about things like setting goals, making staffing
decisions, or
developing potential. This requires overcoming past habits and
instill-
ing new patterns of behavior. Such changes will not occur all at
once.
They must be ingrained through educating, demonstrating, and
rein-
forcing actions over time. Second, many HR processes occur
annually.
The first year a new process is rolled out, people have to go up
a learn-
ing curve simply to use it. The second year, they start to get
comfort-
able with it. It is often not until the third year that they truly
begin to
master it. One could argue that managers and employees are not
famil-
iar enough with HR processes until this third year to provide
educated
evaluations of process effectiveness. In essence, you need to
have some
mastery of a process before you can truly say whether it works
well.

Because many strategic HR processes have a three-year time
line,
be direct with business leaders about the level of sustained
commit-
ment needed for these processes to fully deliver value. Business
lead-
ers should agree to support the process for three years before
making
significant changes to it. Making major changes to HR
processes more
often than every three years can create confusion and
uncertainty in
the company. This doesn’t mean a process has to stay exactly
the same
through all three years. But companies should refrain from
making rad-
ical changes in years 1 and 2 unless the process is clearly not
working.
In sum, you need to give the process time to work before you
can accu-
rately say whether it is working.
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8.2 DEFINING WHAT THE CHANGE WILL LOOK LIKE
It is important to define the changes that an integrated HR
strategy will cre-
ate when the strategy has been successfully deployed. In other
words, what will
people be doing in the future that they are not doing today? This
is especially
important if the goal is to create transformational change (see
the discussion:
“Distinguishing between Process Automation and Business
Transformation”).

Clearly defining what the change will look like ensures that
process design deci-
sions emphasize the right features and methods to support it.
D I S T I N G U I S H I N G B E T W E E N P R O C E S S
A U T O M A T I O N A N D B U S I N E S S
T R A N S F O R M A T I O N
Companies often talk about using strategic HR methods to
create busi-
ness transformation. But what does it mean to “transform” a
business
through HR? And how is this different from other ways HR
processes
might affect the business?
Strategic HR processes, particularly those supported by HR
technol-
ogy, provide two types of value. One source of value is through
auto-
mating and simplifying HR methods. This is about making it
easier for
managers and employees to complete activities they are already
doing—
for example, putting existing paper processes online or
standardizing
the methods used across the company to conduct performance
reviews.

Automation and simplification add value through increasing
efficiency.
The second source of value comes through transforming how a
com-
pany manages its workforce. This is about improving workforce
pro-
ductivity through creating better conversations, decisions, and
actions
related to staffing, goal management, performance management,
and
development. There are three basic kinds of transformation:
• Tactical—changing the things that employees and
managers actu-
ally do. This is the most concrete aspect of transformation. It
includes
completing performance rating forms and filling out
development
plans. Tactical transformation is associated with aspects of a
process
that you can easily measure (e.g., have employees recorded
their job
goals in an HR technology system).

Le
ad
er
sh
ip
. A
ll
rig
ht
s
re
se
rv
ed
.
• Interpersonal—changing how employees and managers
interact with
each other. This includes coaching sessions by managers with
employees;
meetings of employees with managers and coworkers to
establish goals

that align with business strategies; and conversations between
new and
existing employees to build relationships and facilitate job
transitions.
• Conceptual—changing how employees and managers make
deci-
sions. This is the most significant form of transformation
because it
requires changing how people think. This includes having
managers
incorporate data on employee performance into compensation
deci-
sions, ensuring all managers use the same criteria when
evaluating
employee performance and potential, and providing senior
leaders
with data that influence their perceptions of the company’s
work-
force strengths and weaknesses.
Achieving tactical transformation tells you a lot about process
compli-
ance but does not necessarily indicate whether people are using
the pro-

cess effectively. Achieving interpersonal and conceptual
transformation is
the primary goal of most transformational strategic HR
initiatives.
Table 8.2 highlights differences between process automation
and
business transformation. Automation provides fewer benefits
but is
much easier to implement. The risk of automation is that it may
have
a negative impact on a company if the processes being
automated are
ineffective to begin with. Automating a lousy process can be
described
as “doing bad things quickly.” Transformation is more difficult
to
achieve but provides more significant performance
improvements.
Because transformation requires significant effort on the part of
man-
agers and employees, there is also less risk of implementing
processes
that do not add value as people will simply refuse to do them.
Strategic HR initiatives should clarify whether the end goal is

process
automation or business transformation. Both types of change
can provide
value, and it is possible to create HR processes that provide
both. There is
also risk of creating processes that achieve automation but do
not accom-
plish the extra, more difficult step of achieving true
transformation. In
order to manage this risk, it is important to clearly define the
kinds of
transformational change you are seeking to achieve and then
establish
processes and measures that effectively support and assess this
change.
Center for Creative
C
op
yr
ig

ht
s
re
se
rv
ed
.
It is also far easier to get people to adopt new HR processes if
they under-
stand exactly what they are expected to do differently and why.
A common myth
is that people fear change. In reality, people do not fear change.
They do dislike
uncertainty and may fear changes they do not fully understand.
The more clearly
you can paint a picture of what the organization will look like
after a new HR
process has been implemented, the easier it is to get people in
the organization
to accept it. Do not just define the outcomes you will create
through more effec-
tive strategic HR processes; describe the actual things people
will have to do in
order to create these outcomes.
Table 8.3 provides examples of visible events associated with
the use of stra-

tegic HR processes. The events in the table correspond to the
process maturity
levels described table 8.1. These visible events illustrate
changes a company can
create through implementation of strategic HR methods. The
events range from
things associated with low levels of HR process maturity such
as, “When asked,
employees will be able to list the five to eight most important
goals they are seek-
ing to accomplish this year and explain how they link to the
goals of the CEO,”
to things associated with high levels of maturity such as,
“Senior leaders will be
given quarterly reports highlighting where the company is at
risk of experienc-
ing critical staffing shortages one, three, and five years into the
future.” The com-
mon characteristic underlying the events in table 8.3 is that they
are tangible
Table 8.2
Process Automation versus Business Transformation
Process Automation Business Transformation
Makes existing methods more efficient Fundamentally changes
how you
do things
Accelerates good and bad performance Creates new experiences
while
eliminating others
Can lead to doing bad things quickly Enables doing things you
could

not do before
Does not require a mental mind shift Qualitative changes in
perfor-
mance or experience
Easily duplicated by others Difficult to copy
Easier to implement Harder to implement
Center for Creative
C
op
yr
ig
ht
©
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