The Role of Human Resource in the Evaluation of Strategies

Only the people with the right skills, experience and drive can execute the strategies your company puts in place. In evaluating organizational strategies, the human resources function can show you how the strengths of your company’s managers and employees align with your company’s overall goals. Additionally, as human resources evolves in areas such as employee recruitment, training and leadership development, your organization might uncover new options for growth.

Understanding management and employee talent is a key human resources role important to implementing organizational strategy. Human resources departments train and guide their employees to align with the values and core competencies at the heart of an organization. Business strategy is strengthened when human resources managers apply what they know to help shape it, according to Edward E. Lawler III, a distinguished professor of business at the University of Southern California’s Marshall School of Business. The data gathered on the strengths and skills of the workforce within an organization lets leaders more fully understand the capabilities of their organization as they consider strategic direction.

When the business strategy needs to shift, human resources management gets everyone on board. Part of the human resources function is to keep an organization agile and resilient as it is forced to face an increasing rate of change in the business environment, according to a June 2012 article in the “Journal of Knowledge Management, Economics and Information Technology.” While competition and consumer demands can force your business to change plans, guiding a smooth transition within your organization is the human resources role in making that change a success.

As of publication, many human resources managers are mastering the latest big data and social media recruitment technologies to help their companies compete more strategically at talent acquisition. A majority of the 167 U.S. CEOs responding to a survey released in 2013 by the consulting firm PwC said that lack of necessary skills in their workforces was a major problem. Additionally, 88 percent of those CEOs said that including managers in strategic decision-making helped attract the right talent to their organizations.

The human resources function serves as a problem solver with regard to business strategy implementation. When disrupting events such as an unexpected accident, negative media attention or a rising tide in employee turnover occurs, the news can spread fast to damage the organization’s reputation. The human resources role is to continuously develop a culture of learning, responsibility and improvement within the workplace that can weather such storms and keep the workforce focused on strategies and progress.