Why HR Strategy Matters from Day One
Steve Carpenter
??Fractional People Director | HR Mentor | Leadership Coach | Culture Design | Building thriving places to work
"A.I. will probably most likely lead to the end of the world, but in the meantime, there'll be great companies." - Sam Altman, former OpenAI CEO
Why HR Strategy Matters from Day One
As your startup begins its expansion, it is critical to involve HR strategically from an early stage. Too often, HR is brought in later as an administrative function, missing key opportunities to enable growth. Integrating HR strategy with your business strategy from the outset can set your scale-up on a path to long-term success. Here are three reasons why:?
1. Strategic hiring and retention practices are crucial when scaling
strategic workforce planning is essential to have the right talent pipeline to facilitate growth
As you expand operations, strategic workforce planning is essential to have the right talent pipeline to facilitate growth. HR plays a vital role in talent attraction, compensation, development, and retention programs to both attract and keep the people you need.
Getting these practices right early on will minimise turnover drag and hiring mistakes that can limit your ability to scale efficiently.?
2. Culture must evolve alongside growth
A startup culture that worked early on may not be suitable as your business matures
A startup culture that worked early on may not be suitable as your business matures. HR has a unique view into culture issues and can proactively structure cultural elements like your mission, values, policies, and incentives to match your growth ambitions. This type of strategic culture shaping can ensure your scaling strategy has the people power behind it to achieve your goals.
Allowing culture to shift organically often results in misalignment, confusion, and tension that can threaten progress.?
3. Change management is required to scale successfully
As you rapidly add new employees, products, systems, and processes, strategic change management will smooth the transition so your people are prepared and engaged. HR plays a lead role in change management programs by assessing impacts, communicating timelines, training employees on new skills required, and providing platforms for employee input and support.
Missing this strategic opportunity can result in organisational silos, bottlenecks, and loss of productivity that can quickly derail your well-made scaling plans.?
The time to leverage that potential is from your earliest stages
In summary, integrating HR strategy early on sets you up for scaling success by addressing three critical areas: talent management, culture evolution, and change management.
While it’s tempting to view HR as just an administrative or cost centre, especially in a rapidly growing business, that mindset can cause major issues down the road.
领英推荐
HR has immense potential to be a strategic driver and competitive advantage for your scale-up ambitions. The time to leverage that potential is from your earliest stages, not as an afterthought once scaling challenges emerge.
Model of the Week - Working Genius
This is such a great model for getting stuff done (small and big) by teams and individuals. Follow this 6 stage approach without skipping steps or doing them out of order for the maximum chances of success.
PLUS - we all have 2 of these steps as areas of GENIUS and 2 as areas of FRUSTRATION. Understand this about yourself and your colleagues and it's a game-changer for working well together.
If you would like to find out more about this awesome model then drop me a note.
Top Tip
This one is from the late, great Stephen Covey - it's one of his 7 Habits.
"Think win - win or no deal"
It's the second part of this that I want to highlight. Sometimes it just isn't possible to get a win - win situation. In these cases it's often better to walk away rather than have a lopsided deal.
Other Stuff
Contemplative Cartoon