What Is a Human Resources Strategy?
A Human Resources Strategy is an overall plan focused on managing human capital to align with the business's core activities, with the ultimate goal of achieving the business mission. This usually revolves around the members who make up the organization as the most important division of an organization, and the best practices to implement.
What's Included In This Human Resources Strategy Template?
This template is pre-filled with examples, which you can use as inspiration for your own HR plan.
Within seconds of setting up your template, you’ll get immediate access to:
- 4x Human Resources Focus Areas
- 12x Human Resources Objectives
- 16x Human Resources Projects
- 19x Human Resources KPIs
Once you have set your template, you can also create up to two dashboards for real-time performance monitoring.
And yes - you get free access with no credit card required. ✅
Who Is This HR Strategy Template For?
The underlying definition of Human Resources (HR) is employee-oriented and focuses on the employment process all the way through to fair pay and ultimately managing your employees. Our simple HR strategy template can be applied to any industry and almost every organization within that industry. Line managers, human resource managers and other HR professionals, CEOs, department managers, team leaders, and unions are all examples of professionals who could use such a template.
You can use our HR strategic plan template to improve your company’s workforce management, achieve common business goals, and maximize your human capital.
How Is This Human Resources Strategy Template Relevant To Your Organization?
Human Resources is a holistic department that is part of every organization. A good HR strategic plan can help with not only the hiring process, but also in establishing the culture of the workforce and the types of people with whom your organization wants to be associated. This is why Human Resources is relevant to any and every organization, including yours.
At Cascade, we understand that every organization has a different way of leading, training, and recruiting its employees. This is why we believe that using this Human Resources strategy template will be useful for you to better understand your employees and identify what factors may be affecting your success rate in hiring and retaining your staff. It will help you increase employee satisfaction, decrease turnover rates, and provide a better overall company culture.
How To Use the HR Strategy Template?
1. Define clear examples of your focus areas
Focus areas are strategic ways of addressing an organization's targets. Begin thinking about what comes to mind for your organization when you think of Human Resources and note down some keywords, i.e. people, culture, fair work, retention, and loyalty.
Now, reflecting on these words, they are both values and focus areas that your company is trying to identify and associate its organization with. Next, ask yourself, "Am I struggling to address any of these areas?" Those areas are usually the ones that you should focus on.
An example of HR focus areas includes talent acquisition, culture, and employee efficiency.
2. Think about the objectives that could fall under that focus area
When coming up with a strategic objective, it is important to ensure they are SMART goals, i.e. Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-Bound. The main idea behind creating an objective is to have some form of direction and drive to strive toward. Within your HR strategy, these objectives will have to directly relate to the focus area of choice. Otherwise, there’s a huge chance that your strategic plan will fail.
Objective example: Develop a World-Class Employee Onboarding Program
The above objective would fall under the focus area of talent acquisition and is one target that needs to be met to address that focus area.
3. Set yourself measurable targets (KPIs) to tackle the objective
A KPI is a key performance indicator that is measurable and evaluates the success rate of an organization in relation to the task at hand. With reference to the Human Resources strategy template, organizations can use Key Performance Indicators as a way to track whether their key business objectives are on track, behind, ahead, or have been achieved. Need help on how to write KPIs? To assist you with this, Cascade has written 84 Key Performance Indicators that can be used within your HR strategy template.
Two example KPIs you can include in your HR plan to achieve the above objective are:
- Increase the percentage of 'Cherish & Retain' Employees
- Increase Internal to External Hiring Ratio
It is important to remember that under each objective, there will usually be more than one KPI to achieve that objective. This is because KPIs act as the building blocks in creating and reaching the Strategic Objective. Depending on the size of your organization, a time frame will also be required in order to measure the success rate and progress of the given target.
Check out a few other Human Resources KPIs written by Cascade that can also be incorporated into your HR strategy.
4. Implement related projects to achieve the KPIs
Creating effective projects will describe what you will do to accomplish your objectives. It is at this point in your strategic planning process that you will start to scope out exactly what actions you will take in order to achieve certain objectives. In relation to the Human Resources Strategy, these projects have to be directly related to achieving the KPIs.
An example project for your Human Resources Strategy could be: Utilize the 9-Box Talent Grid for employee retention or 360-degree feedback communication exchange between employer and employee.
Both projects fall under talent acquisition and are directly related to how your organization can create the best environment for your employees while ensuring that the employees you recruit are people who want to work for your organization because of its reputation and brand image.
5. Utilize Cascade tools to track and visualize performance
Under Cascade, the creation of dashboards and snapshots is available. These visual tools, which mostly focus on dashboards, can help track the progress of KPIs and projects graphically. By adding a 'widget', you have the ability to graph out your measurable target and, more specifically, choose which target you want to focus on. Not all KPIs have to be tracked if they aren't of huge priority or relevance at the moment. This tool is a great way to keep your team accountable and on top of the tasks at hand.
Using dashboards in your Human Resources strategy will help your management team keep track of employee performance and gain a better understanding of what seems to attract employees to your organization and what changes could be made. For example, using a graphical table to track projects like 360-degree feedback and seeing how much of the project is implemented can allow employers to gain feedback as to whether or not the project is successful and boosts employee morale, efficiency, and productivity. This will prove to be a great way to make quick changes to your business's core activities relating to human resources strategy without having huge implications on your expenses.
HR Strategy Template FAQs
How do I start creating an HR strategy?
The main goal of an HR strategy is to maximize your human capital so you can achieve your overall business goals. That said, a good HR strategic plan starts with your “why”—the reason your business exists and what you want to achieve. From there, figure out where your HR strategy needs to fill in the gaps to help your business reach its goals. Use our template as a good starting point for creating your HR plan.
What are the important elements of an HR strategic plan?
Much like a strategic business plan, an HR strategic plan is composed of the following key elements:
- Goals and Objectives: Specific, measurable, and time-bound targets that the HR function aims to achieve to support the overall business goals.
- KPIs: This will help you keep track of whether or not you are achieving your goals.
- Budget: A detailed plan for allocating financial and other resources to support the HR function's strategies and action plans.
How often should we revisit or update the HR strategy?
Definitely not once a year. Executives, managers, and the HR department must ensure that HR goals are always aligned with business goals, which can change throughout the year. While reviewing your KPIs, revisit the entire strategic plan to see if it still makes sense in the current business environment.