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We Ask the Experts
Redesigning your HR strategy for 2023
Yet another eventful year is nearing its end, and as always, the months have flown past us all. You’re likely still reeling from the fallout from the coronavirus pandemic, the challenging talent market and a financial crisis affecting millions - yet more challenges are on the horizon. Some may just affect your organisation, and some may be global. However, the first step in being able to overcome these challenges, is having clear goals and business strategies in place. Current issues must be addressed while potential future obstacles are being contemplated. So how should HR leaders revise their strategies to ensure their teams thrive in the coming months? To answer this, we turned to our Advisory Board experts to get some tips from the people at the top on how they foresee their business strategies for 2023. See what they had to say below.
Dawn Moore,
Group People and Comms Director,
Murphy
Any approach to redesigning HR strategy, in order to be effective, has to start by revisiting the overall business strategy and goals. This is to ensure that the revised HR strategy aligns with and is designed to support the achievement of these. It shouldn’t be the case, however, that an HR strategy simply follows on from the business strategy – they should mutually inform each other so any HR strategy redesign should ideally be done at the same time as the business strategy is reviewed and revisited.
It also should always be remembered that individual strategic HR activities will not drive overall better business performance. However, a clear framework, which links the various aspects of HR management and people development practices to business goals and outcomes will. These aspects include recruitment, talent and development, succession, employee engagement, reward and more. As the HR strategy is being redesigned, you should always have in mind what your success could and should look like. It is much easier to develop an excellent and commercially sound HR strategy than to develop a theoretically based HR plan which contains things that are ‘best practice’ to do but will never show real bottom line impact in your organisation.
Finally, it’s important to identify how you will measure whether your HR strategy is delivering effectively its goals or not. This comes down to establishing simple, and most importantly commercially quantifiable, key performance indicators. These should be tracked regularly over the course of each year of the strategy and used, along with the general business performance and employee feedback, to refresh and refine the strategy as and when necessary. HR KPI’s are most often quantitative measures but can also be qualitative, depending on which strategy goal they are designed to monitor and measure.
Dawn Moore,
Group People and Comms Director,
Murphy
Any approach to redesigning HR strategy, in order to be effective, has to start by revisiting the overall business strategy and goals. This is to ensure that the revised HR strategy aligns with and is designed to support the achievement of these. It shouldn’t be the case, however, that an HR strategy simply follows on from the business strategy – they should mutually inform each other so any HR strategy redesign should ideally be done at the same time as the business strategy is reviewed and revisited.
It also should always be remembered that individual strategic HR activities will not drive overall better business performance. However, a clear framework, which links the various aspects of HR management and people development practices to business goals and outcomes will. These aspects include recruitment, talent and development, succession, employee engagement, reward and more. As the HR strategy is being redesigned, you should always have in mind what your success could and should look like. It is much easier to develop an excellent and commercially sound HR strategy than to develop a theoretically based HR plan which contains things that are ‘best practice’ to do but will never show real bottom line impact in your organisation.
Finally, it’s important to identify how you will measure whether your HR strategy is delivering effectively its goals or not. This comes down to establishing simple, and most importantly commercially quantifiable, key performance indicators. These should be tracked regularly over the course of each year of the strategy and used, along with the general business performance and employee feedback, to refresh and refine the strategy as and when necessary. HR KPI’s are most often quantitative measures but can also be qualitative, depending on which strategy goal they are designed to monitor and measure.
Jo Bertram,
Managing Director, Business and Wholesale,
Virgin Media O2
In 2023, a continued focus for us at Virgin Media O2 Business will be bringing our people along with us on our ESG journey. As a brand we have a responsibility to leave a lasting positive impact in the communities we serve – and our people have an important role to play here.
Those businesses that empower everyone, whatever their level, to make a difference will see the real effect that people-led ESG initiatives can have at community level, and in boosting employee engagement.
Employer-supported volunteering (ESV) is one particularly rewarding way of doing this. The launch of our new Connect More Programme has been a major milestone for us – as a company-wide initiative that enables our people to make use of the five paid volunteering days we give them every year to deliver digital skills training in local communities. We work with public sector customers to match our volunteers with community groups most in need of support.
Our research finds that the UK’s digital skills gap is costing the economy about £12.8 billion, with 5.4 million Brits unable to carry out simple digital tasks. Connect More empowers our people to give others the skills and confidence to make the most of their online lives.
Giving employees the opportunities to contribute to causes close to their hearts allows them to feel more valued by their organisation, engaged in their work and invested in our collective success. It is these people-led policy changes which can help us through the difficult times ahead.
Jo Bertram,
Managing Director, Business and Wholesale,
Virgin Media O2
In 2023, a continued focus for us at Virgin Media O2 Business will be bringing our people along with us on our ESG journey. As a brand we have a responsibility to leave a lasting positive impact in the communities we serve – and our people have an important role to play here.
Those businesses that empower everyone, whatever their level, to make a difference will see the real effect that people-led ESG initiatives can have at community level, and in boosting employee engagement.
Employer-supported volunteering (ESV) is one particularly rewarding way of doing this. The launch of our new Connect More Programme has been a major milestone for us – as a company-wide initiative that enables our people to make use of the five paid volunteering days we give them every year to deliver digital skills training in local communities. We work with public sector customers to match our volunteers with community groups most in need of support.
Our research finds that the UK’s digital skills gap is costing the economy about £12.8 billion, with 5.4 million Brits unable to carry out simple digital tasks. Connect More empowers our people to give others the skills and confidence to make the most of their online lives.
Giving employees the opportunities to contribute to causes close to their hearts allows them to feel more valued by their organisation, engaged in their work and invested in our collective success. It is these people-led policy changes which can help us through the difficult times ahead.
Rebekah Martin,
Senior Vice President of Reward, Inclusion & Talent Acquisition,
AstraZeneca
When redesigning your HR strategy, it’s important to look at your wider organisational strategy. For an HR strategy to resonate, it needs to ladder up to the corporate strategy, showing how HR will support the delivery of your business goals. It should also be forward-looking – not only addressing current challenges but looking to the future and anticipating both the obstacles you want to overcome and the goals you want to achieve. Challenge yourself to elevate your thinking so you can identify future people themes.
It’s key to create a strategy that is simple, memorable, and bold. At AstraZeneca, we achieved this by implementing the rule of three – our HR strategy is underpinned by three pillars, which link up to the three pillars of our wider company strategy. By creating this effective structure, we empower teams and functions to develop aligned plans that bring our HR strategy to life, so we can achieve our purpose of delivering life-changing medicines to patients.
Rebekah Martin,
Senior Vice President of Reward, Inclusion & Talent Acquisition,
AstraZeneca
When redesigning your HR strategy, it’s important to look at your wider organisational strategy. For an HR strategy to resonate, it needs to ladder up to the corporate strategy, showing how HR will support the delivery of your business goals. It should also be forward-looking – not only addressing current challenges but looking to the future and anticipating both the obstacles you want to overcome and the goals you want to achieve. Challenge yourself to elevate your thinking so you can identify future people themes.
It’s key to create a strategy that is simple, memorable, and bold. At AstraZeneca, we achieved this by implementing the rule of three – our HR strategy is underpinned by three pillars, which link up to the three pillars of our wider company strategy. By creating this effective structure, we empower teams and functions to develop aligned plans that bring our HR strategy to life, so we can achieve our purpose of delivering life-changing medicines to patients.
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