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Friday, October 10, 2008

Check Your Company’s Human Resource Strategy

People are definitely an organization’s most precious asset. This diversity sits side-by-side, shoulder-to-shoulder, cubicle-to-cubicle and warehouseman to warehouseman. This generational diversity can create tension, mistrust and conflict and negate loyalty to the company in general.

Study your staff, understand them, and try to learn what they value most. Try to understand the historical events that shaped their lives. Since we are experiencing the most value-diverse workforce this country has every known, traditional thoughts in the area of Human Resources must be challenged. We must temper our expectations of long term loyalty. As one Generation Xer put it, “If you want loyalty, buy a dog.”

A human resources strategy must be included in your corporate strategic plan. Becoming an employer people would die to work for begins and ends with your Human Resource staff. As an example, consider your company’s current performance in the areas of human relations leadership skills, commitment to treating employees as your most valuable asset, training, credibility of your management team and company vision, communication skills, decision-making skills, benefits, and other employee related support systems.

Once you’ve determined the current state of your human resource function you should create a vision of what your human resource competency should be. You must be committed to becoming an Employer of Choice. The Human Resource professional must move from the “back room” to the “boardroom” if you expect to become Employer of Choice. Emphasis and focus must be placed on the importance of continuous progress and managing change through goal setting.

Once you have established your vision, the next step is to develop your human resource strategy. Your strategy must evolve around that commitment, intelligence, judgment and one more time, it must focus on your most precious asset – your employees.

Managers need to challenge old ways. You must create an environment that makes it fun to go to work. The key to employee retention is not necessarily compensation based. It has been proven time and time again that money is not high on the motivational factor list. However, money can rise to the top of the list of complaints if an employee does not enjoy coming to work every day.

If you develop a definitive Human Resource strategy geared to make your company the Employer of Choice in your markets, Human Resource will become a profit center. Recruitment & Retention alone will create a tremendous return on investment to your company.

Don’t ever underestimate the power of your employees!

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