How to transform business strategy into the workforce and skills that your business needs? Answers to this question are provided in a study by McKinsey & Company called How do I translate business strategy into our workforce and the skills we need?.
The traditional role of HR was to supply staff for short-term business needs and strategic objectives set out by senior management. This reactive approach, however, makes it difficult to predict changes in terms of skills and regional needs.
Today it is clear that HR should not play a reactive role. It souhld be more dynamic and more strategic in designing corporate objectives and planning initiatives to support them. The way towards the more strategic role of HR goes through five stages:
1. Modeling existing personnel base
You will gain the complete overview of the structure of your workforce by mapping all your people on the basis of location, age, level in the corporate hierarchy, contractual status, tenure and skill group.
2. Modeling workforce development
Based on the current situation, model the expected development in the next two to three years. It should allow for both the natural and behavioral development of employees.
3. Evaluating strategic scenarios
Model how changes in your business affects the workforce. This means close cooperation with individual parts of the organization in order to determine their strategic plans. For each scenario, record what skills are needed. Then, focus on what will be needed to gain the skills in the individual cases.
4. Defining target personnel structure and identifying gaps
After selecting priority strategic scenario, focus on the personnel structure in more detail. Model gaps and surpluses in the workforce. If the deeper analysis shows that your scenario is not as attractive as originally appeared, it may require samoe adjustment or testing alternative solutions.
5. Optimizing measures to eliminate gaps
The final phase lies in developing a plan of HR steps to manageme mobility or the remaining discrepancies in the deployment of the workforce.
-kk-