Think back on when you hired your HR leader.

They really impressed you during the interview. They were enthusiastic, creative, and motivated. All sorts of ideas were flying around the room. They talked about all things they could do to increase employee engagement and decrease turnover. The new compensation plan they’d like to implement. The performance management plan they thought could improve performance throughout the organization.

It all sounded so exciting, making the hire was a no-brainer.

But here’s the thing:

Many organizations have interviewed — and subsequently hired — good HR leaders. But not every organization ends up with a new compensation plan, decreased turnover, or improved performance.

The problem is, many HR leaders work reactively.

This doesn’t mean that they’re sitting around just waiting for the next issue to raise its hand. 

On the contrary, even the best organizations have so many challenges to tackle, day-to-day, the average HR leader is completely swamped. They’re putting out so many fires they often are working overtime to stay caught up

And this is why those exciting plans they talked about during the interview haven’t yet come to fruition.

Because many HR professionals haven’t yet realized the one thing they need to move from being good to great:

A solid HR strategy.

Now, I know what you’re thinking; if your HR leader is already overworked, how will tasking them with creating an HR strategy help?

Because it’s the lack of strategy that actually causes the problem in the first place.

Yes, creating an HR strategy at the beginning of the year (but really, is also a great time to work on a new strategy) will take some time, effort, and planning. But if you get it right, having it in place will actually mitigate or prevent many of the current fires your HR team has to deal with.

Here’s why:

When you have a solid HR strategy, you don’t spend the entire year reinventing the wheel.

You’re actively working towards reducing issues like staff motivation and turnover, which means you have fewer problems to solve on a day-to-day basis. Equally, when problems do arise, you’ve already planned for how to tackle them.

When you have a solid HR strategy, your employees feel more taken care of.

The best HR strategies are created in consultation with your employees. When HR actively takes the time to listen to workers, learn about their challenges, and then make a conscious effort to form a strategy that addresses those challenges, your employees feel valued, more connected to the organization, and more engaged in their work. That alone significantly reduces stress on the HR department and is a great way to strengthen your overall approach to workforce communications. 

(It also makes your organization a more pleasant place to work for everyone, which is an underrated bonus!)

When you have a solid HR strategy, you know everyone is working in alignment.

As well as soliciting feedback from employees, it’s important to involve leadership in any HR strategy decision-making. The plan itself needs to work in conjunction with the needs of the workforce and the wider goals, budgets, and priorities of the organization as a whole. Developing a strategy that takes all of those things into account ensures that everyone, across the organization, is working in alignment.

If you need a final convincer, try this: your HR strategy doesn’t have to be a huge initiative. And it certainly doesn’t have to be something that will give an already overworked HR team sleepless nights!

At its heart, it’s really just about exploring and assessing your organization’s strengths and weaknesses (many of which will already be clear to you), thinking about the organization’s key objectives over the next 12 months and what you need to prioritize, and then deciding how all of that will play together in a way that works for people at every level of the organization.

And encouraging your HR team to embrace this annual strategy creation is the best way to help them unleash their creativity, improve their own working conditions, and finally shine in their role.

If you found this helpful, you’ll love my Manager Training Series where I teach leaders like you how to develop a strong foundation of leadership skills. Click here for the details.