Human Resource Planning & Strategies for a Successful 2020

January 14, 2020

Your human resource planning and strategy is the way to make sure your company culture fit your business’s mission and goals. At John Lynch & Associates, we know our employees are the foundation of our success and the best way to serve our clients is to have happy employees.

We nurture a high-impact, supportive culture where exceedingly talented people are encouraged to be experts in all that they do – and we help our clients build the same successful human resources systems and procedures for a thriving company culture.

Challenges & Solutions to Human Resource Planning

Human Resources departments are the lifeblood of any business. Without the right people, a business cannot operate effectively. Plus, if a business cannot hang onto the right people once they are found, an organization can become bogged down in high turnover rates and the cost of training and re-training new hires.

Unfortunately, many businesses struggle to find the perfect combination of talent, commitment, and culture. To overcome the obstacles of building your strong core team and a supportive human resources department, understand the challenges and how to surmount each one.

Company Culture

Your company culture is the personality of your organization and a critical key to your organization’s success. Because of the heavy burden of finding and hiring the right people to fill vacant roles within an organization, many organizations turn to third-party partners to help find those right-fit employees faster.

However, the challenge here becomes making sure that third-party understands what your business truly needs and aligning people with your company culture.

Before inviting new people to apply for a position at your organization, it is important to first understand and define your company culture. By doing so and articulating your company culture clearly in the job description, you can increase your chances of finding team members who share your company values.

Start by conducting a culture assessment within your organization. Here is a sneak peek into a few of the high-level questions we ask the personnel at our clients’ businesses to get a better understanding of the existing company culture:

1. Does your organization have an avenue for employees at all levels (physicians, support staff, etc.) to provide feedback to leadership?
2. How would your clinicians and/or staff rate their overall happiness at the organization?
3. Does your organization regularly conduct employee or staff satisfaction surveys or activities?
4. Does your organization have clear consistent criteria for employee success at all levels?
5. Does your organization have an employee incentive program?

Once you have a better understanding of what your employees experience in working at your organization, you can then:

• Make changes to improve your company culture if it is out of alignment with your organizational vision.
• Put strategies in place to maintain and reinforce your ideal company culture.
• Communicate your company culture successfully to prospective applicants during the hiring process.

Protecting the culture of your organization is critical. Not only will a healthy company culture allow you to retain talented employees, but also the customers and clients you serve will be more loyal when they experience an uplifting culture when engaging with your business.

Leadership Development

According to a November 2012 poll by the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) and a similar one in 2010 by PricewaterhouseCoopers, leadership development is a key challenge for HR. In fact, 52% of respondents indicated this factor was a concern, which was a significant increase over 29% in 2010.

As our workforce is aging, it is important to build succession plans into place within your company culture and team building from a human resources perspective.

Once you have found the right people for the positions within your company, helping to develop them as leaders to fill higher-level roles will strengthen the longevity of your teams and internal operations.

Focusing on employee training, growth, and development can keep successful, harmonious teams together while also nurturing more senior or experienced team members’ desire for up-leveling their own careers.

Leadership development can take on many shapes and forms. For example, for some organizations, this means allowing potential future leaders to shadow existing leadership members as on-the-job training. For other organizations, leadership development may mean covering the costs of conferences, education seminars, or specific skills-development activities.

As companies are growing and expanding, developing those leaders from within is becoming a major initiative and a smart strategy for future human resource planning.

Retention

According to the SHRM poll, human resource professionals anticipate that retaining the best employees will be the greatest HR challenge in 2022.

When scaling a business, most business leaders think of attracting new customers or clients. However, if you do not have the right team in place and if each individual is not confident in his or her responsibilities, your customer acquisition strategies will be for nothing.

Retaining great employees is an ongoing challenge for all businesses. Not only are employees often looking for better opportunities for themselves and their families, but also employers are becoming more and more innovative with the employee benefits, work perks, and incentive programs offered to employees.

When conducting your human resource planning, be sure to include retention strategies. As you scale your business, consider what your potential employees would find beneficial.

Because younger generations are entering the workforce, now more than ever before companies are having to expand their practices for attracting and retaining new talent, such as posting on social media, understanding what work-life balance looks like for millennials and GenZers, and acknowledging that today’s younger workers want to have an impact, not just a position with a time card.

Ultimately, effective human resource planning and strategies tie together each aspect of company culture, leadership development, and retention. Employees want to work for organizations with a healthy company culture and with leaders who are passionate, skilled, and can pass on valuable industry knowledge.

By unifying these three challenges and the strategies for overcoming them, your human resource planning for 2020 can effectively nurture your business’s growth.

At John Lynch & Associates, we understand how hard it is to find and hang on to the best people for each role that needs to be filled in your business. Bringing maximum value to HR departments is our priority.

Our seasoned human resource experts take a strategic approach to evaluating HR functions and align them with your organization’s business strategies. If you need help forming your dream team and cultivating a company culture that supports your business’s mission and values, we can help. Contact us today.