Most Common Theme of HR Strategy

Human capital is increasingly being seen as an issue of strategic significance in the industry today. It is this aspect of competition that provides most decisive elements of business advantage for a company by way of market responsiveness, process and technology innovation or enhancing customer experience.



A company can maximize the benefits from its human assets, when it is able to align and achieve congruence between individual and organizational goals. The challenge for HR experts in the organization lies in bringing about high degree of alignment so that the contribution of people in each and every activity along the value chain becomes a key differentiator in the industry.

High levels of performance and competence of people definitely provide a company edge over its competitors, but the second part of challenge for a HR professional lies in making this advantage sustainable over a period of time. This in effect means that people contribute effectively to fulfill the organizational goals – both now and in future.



Putting the two challenges together takes us to the core of most generic HR strategy pursued across the industries. The HR professionals responsible for crafting HR strategy should focus on gaining highest levels of commitment from the people towards organizational goals and at the same time building loyalty among the people for the organization. This then is most common and yet the most challenging theme of HR strategy today.

What are your thoughts on this topic?

Top HR challenges

For 2009 here are the top ranked list of the top HR challenges (in North American business)

1. Acquiring key talent/lack of available talent


2. Building leadership capability


3. Driving cultural and behavioral change in the organization


4. Retaining key talent


5. Increasing line manager capability to handle people-management responsibilities


6. Succession planning


7. Constraints on headcount (”making do with less”)


8. Increasing workforce productivity


9. Lack of consensus about the organization’s strategy/direction


10. Encouraging organizational innovation


11. Resourcing and managing HR issues in “new geographies” for the company


12. Managing human capital during and after an acquisition or merger


13. Implementing people changes resulting from changes due to operational performance


14. Workforce planning


15. Measuring the contribution of human capital to business performance


16. Reducing overall human capital costs


17. Coping with an aging workforce

Does your organization's issues compare with these, let me know at wgstevens2@gmail.com .

Base: Survey of 154 senior HR professionals in the U.S. and Canada

Source: “The State of HR Transformation,” North America, Mercer Human Resource Consulting, 2006

Discovered via Workforce Management (10 September 2007)