How does HR combine personnel work with enterprise strategy?

To become a strategic partner of an enterprise, human resource management needs to face six changes and role changes.

Role gap

1, the work center of gravity deviates from the role requirements.

At present, the role of human resources department is more manifested as administrative affairs handler, whose basic function is support and service, and the core of concern is task. I am busy with attendance, daily salary and welfare distribution, file and contract management, regular employee training, recruitment and transfer, retirement and other daily work. Without considering the company's development strategy, industry environment, core competitiveness, business and technical status and the strategic intention of the boss, even the company's human resources planning and annual plan formulation are too busy. Judging from six examples, he is a tactician at best in his daily work.

2. The working mode deviates from the role requirements.

Usually, the human resources department will carry out the task without thinking after receiving the task from the boss and line manager. For example, the sales manager told the human resources department that the morale of the sales staff is not high recently, and the sales performance of the first mate has declined, hoping to give the sales staff a raise and stimulate everyone's fighting spirit. Under normal circumstances, the human resources manager will start to perform the salary increase procedure, fill in the form and notify the finance department to act according to the rules. Among them, the human resources department did not perform the function of "attending doctor", but only acted as a "big pharmacy", that is, "selling drugs" according to the prescription of the line manager. This passive approach is far from the business alliance between credible practitioners and line managers.

3. Knowledge and ability are far from the role requirements.

In order to complete the above six roles and become a strategic partner of the company, human resource managers need to know not only the professional knowledge, methods and tools in the field of human resources, but also the relevant knowledge such as strategy, business and technology, industry trends and organizational changes. Among a large number of HR practitioners in China, some lack professional knowledge and do not understand business and strategy at the same time; Some of them have professional knowledge, but lack understanding of enterprises and industries; Other people who have transferred from excellent business departments to HR departments have a good understanding and familiarity with business, industry and enterprise management, but lack professional knowledge; Only a few HR managers with business background are aware of the professionalism of HR work or high-level contacts with enterprise operation experience, making them real strategic partners of the company.

How to bridge the gap

1, change ideas and return to roles

At present, the primary obstacle that restricts HR department from becoming a strategic partner of enterprises is the concept problem. First of all, many business owners have not regarded the HR department as a strategic partner, and the human resources director is often not a member of the general manager's office meeting or the board of directors. In this case, HR people not only rarely have the opportunity to evaluate the feasibility of enterprise strategy from the perspective of human resources, but also have a direct impact on the scientific nature of human resources planning due to the lack of accurate understanding of enterprise strategic intentions and objectives. Secondly, the HR department only locates its own function in the HR role, lacking a clear understanding of the company's business process, life cycle, operation mode and the characteristics of the whole industry, trying to solve the human resource problems of enterprises with a common human resource model, lacking a systematic view and a big picture. From the above analysis, it can be seen that the HR department first needs the boss and HR people to change their ideas, that is, to understand the important role of the enterprise human resources department from the height of strategy, culture and organizational construction. Only in this way can we really shorten the process of role transformation.

2, adjust the center of gravity, ready to change.

In the impression of many people, HR department spends most of its time on the coordination and handling of daily affairs, and has no time to study, predict, analyze and formulate solutions to the fundamental problems of enterprises, as if strategy, business and technology have nothing to do with them. It is precisely because of this that the HR department has deviated from the track of strategic partners. In order to truly realize the role change, the human resources department should understand the principle of key management, authorize daily affairs, and focus most of its energy on understanding the operating conditions of enterprises, studying the reasons that affect performance, and making human resources plans. Judging from the current trend, more and more administrative affairs will be run by specialized companies, such as employee recruitment, various trainings, salary research, quality evaluation and so on. The emergence of these channels also provides a favorable opportunity for the role change of HR department. As the HR department of the company, the key is to effectively control these resources from the height of the company's development strategy, select favorable resource providers and improve efficiency.

3. Identify customers and meet requirements.

If the boss and HR have overcome the conceptual obstacles, what should HR do to meet the requirements of role change? The author believes that it is necessary for HR people to think about this problem from the marketing point of view, that is, accurately locate their customers, grasp their real needs, and choose products suitable for them to meet them. Generally speaking, there are three types of customers in the human resources department: one is the boss of the company, who expects the support and cooperation of ideas, leadership and strategy, and the most important thing is scientific human resources planning. For example, the president of Continental Airlines put forward four strategic suggestions: to seize the market quickly (the share of the industry market ranks among the top quarter companies), to accumulate future development funds (reduce liabilities), to gain a reliable position (occupy the leading products of an industry) and to work together with Qi Xin (establish a company with employees who are happy to go to work every day). Subsequently, the vice president of human resources of the company formulated the human resources strategy to ensure the realization of the above strategy. For example, in terms of salary, on the one hand, the basic salary will be reduced to a lower level than that of competitors (to win the advantage of labor cost), on the other hand, the floating salary will be greatly increased, thus providing employees with the opportunity to get higher than the industry average salary, but only if the company's performance must be improved. This floating salary consists of the following two parts: ① punctuality funds. If the on-time arrival rate of the company's flights ranks among the top three in the industry, then all employees can get a bonus check of $65 in that month; ② Profit sharing plan. If the company returns to profitability, it will implement a profit sharing plan. Facts have proved that these incentives have played a key role in the company's efforts to squeeze into the ranks of first-class airlines in terms of punctuality and profitability;

The second type of customer is the line manager of the company. They want high-performance employees and teams, and they need staff and consultants. HR needs to know its own business characteristics, business structure, environment and background, and provide targeted services; Understand the essence of line manager's needs and design corresponding management tools. For example, in order to improve the recruitment efficiency of line managers, we can establish the quality and ability model of employees and turn it into an easy-to-operate standard. Listen to their grievances and solve them with scientific methods and cultural persuasion; Participate in specific business departments, analyze the current situation of human resource management, and guide the development of human resource matching. In short, through human resources concepts, tools, methods and systems, improve the performance level of line managers and become their real partners.

The third kind of customers are employees of the company. They expect to get a harmonious working atmosphere, competitive and relatively fair salary, fair promotion opportunities, good career development opportunities and professional system services in their development. Only on the basis of correctly identifying customers and needs can human resources departments choose appropriate human resources technologies or tools to meet their needs.

4. Strengthen the ability to bridge the gap.

According to the previous analysis, it can be seen that in order to play the role of its strategic partner, human resources departments should not only master specific human resources management operation techniques, such as recruitment, training and development, salary and benefits, performance management, etc. Moreover, the key lies in how to organically combine these specific technologies and methods with the formulation and realization of organizational strategy, or organize and implement these tasks from the perspective of organizational strategy. Only through learning and practice can HR departments make up for their shortcomings in the above two aspects as soon as possible, accurately understand or interpret the customer's needs, know where the customer's problems are, and then use their professional knowledge to provide solutions or provide professional advice.

5, change the way of working, realize the transformation.

For a long time, the human resources department has been playing a passive role, for example, the top management proposed the reform of human resources management to the human resources department, and the line manager proposed the training needs of employees to the human resources department. To be a strategic partner from boss to employee, we need to change passivity into initiative. In practical work, we should not only play the role of "pharmacy", but more importantly, we should play the role of "doctor", "prescribe prescriptions" for customers and conduct "expert consultation" with customers. In the previous example of the sales manager, after receiving the feedback from the sales manager, we should first analyze the root cause of low morale with the sales manager. For example, it may be that the competitiveness of the company's products or brands has declined recently, which has led to an increase in employee pressure that cannot be solved, leading to a decline in performance; It may be that the company's products can't meet the requirements of customers, and the sales staff can't get improvement from the technical department after filing, so they are resentful; Perhaps the new sales manager's ability to manage subordinates is not good, which makes employees feel uncomfortable in the departmental atmosphere; It is also possible that the company's newly implemented performance-based salary policy focuses on encouraging team performance and making employees with excellent personal performance feel unfair. Through comprehensive investigation and diagnosis, we can not only find out the reasons that belong to the category of human resources, but also make suggestions to senior managers from the aspects of enterprise competitiveness, sales model, product improvement, after-sales service, employee motivation and so on. And overcome the problems through management coordination, which reflects the important role of strategic partners in this process.

If HR department really wants to become a strategic partner of an enterprise, it must seek innovation from six role orientations, so as to guide its thinking mode, business orientation, ability improvement and gradually realize transformation. Unity of knowledge and action, knowledge is the guide of action, I believe HR people can grow step by step in action under the guidance of this theory. With the improvement of HR practitioners' quality, it will inevitably bring about the improvement of enterprise organizational ability and overall performance.