7 Examples of a Good HR Strategy

HR management is the glue that holds the company together. Its organizational role has become more vital in the last few years as worker demands have changed and labor shortages have made scouting top talent much more competitive.

An organization that wants to be the place where employees want to work needs to keep up with these changes and rethink its HR strategy. A good HR strategy can mean the difference between high retention rates and high turnover.

Below, we share the top HR strategies to implement to keep your organization at the lead. Use these methods to equip your HR department so that they can rise to the challenge of creating and maintaining a vibrant and effective workforce.

What Is an HR Strategy?

An HR strategy is a systematic approach that optimizes the work of human resource management. Since HR activities may vary from pre-employment screening and onboarding to employee benefits and disputes, developing a sound strategy will require looking at the HR management in its entirety. The preliminary assessment should consider a company’s goals, values, and vision and build a path forward to incorporate them.

The best strategies are innovative beginnings. They may require some tweaking, but with care and consideration, they should put you on a path towards an efficient, sustainable workplace.

Why Is HR Strategy Important?

HR strategy is more critical than ever. Employees everywhere are renegotiating and changing the standard of what they expect from a company, and organizations need to respond to keep up with today’s workforce. At the end of the day, people are the lifeblood of any business.

The cost of turnover because of poor hiring practices and a lack of in-company support can be astronomical. Consider a recent study that found the average cost of a bad hiring choice is at least 30% of that employee’s first-year earnings.

Finding and attracting the right person to meet your company’s specific needs is essential if you want to invest your earnings into your business’ growth. And all of that starts with your HR strategy.

7 Best HR Strategies 

1. Efficient Hiring Practices

If your company is missing an essential piece of the puzzle, it’s your job to figure out how to fill that gap. Creating a hiring profile is vital for getting the right resume on your desk.

Businesses don’t have the luxury of approaching hiring from an “I’ll know it when I see it” standpoint. Creating a specific, thoughtful hiring profile will help applicants put their best (and most relevant) foot forward. It can also save you a lot of groundwork digging through a pile of non-qualified resumes.

It’s important not to keep promising applicants waiting because of a slow background check. In today’s competitive job market, while you’re waiting for the results to come through, your frontrunner might be scooped up by another company. For an efficient hiring practice, you have to consider every aspect, from the job post to the screening.

2. Real-Time Communication for Feedback and Appreciation 

The corporate mentality has left a lot of employees feeling disenfranchised by their work. Many employees say they’d prefer to forgo performance reviews for real-time evaluation. This mindset represents a cultural shift from accountability to learning.

Admittedly, hands-on, real-time feedback creates more work up-front. However, in the long run, staying connected with your workforce through regular communication, feedback, and appreciation is vital to its sustainability. A company with a high turnover rate spends too much of its valuable energy and resources recruiting instead of focusing on the team building required to meet its yearly goals.

As new hires get oriented to your company, check in with them weekly to see how their new position is going. Attentiveness can make all the difference in retention and provide clarity between job expectations and realities.

It’s important to remember that almost all employees want to excel at their jobs. Regular feedback will make your employees feel seen and appreciated while giving them the tools they need to initiate their growth.

3. Growth Opportunities 

This constant communication should create a sense of progress and opportunity for the employees seeking it. A stagnant worker is an unhappy worker. Creating opportunities for training, mentorship, and team building keeps your workforce engaged with a healthy sense of challenge and connectivity.

Workplace events can help build a sense of camaraderie, as well as foster connections between departments that generally might not cross paths. So many great ideas fall through the cracks because there is no space to share and compare notes and experiences. Workplace events can help to replace a sense of cutthroat competition within your company and replace it with cooperation and collaborative creativity.

Mentorships are crucial to providing your employees with a sense of growth and satisfaction. People of Color and women have said that formal mentorship has been an enormous benefit to their careers. Mentorship can also aid in employee retention by fostering intra-personal connections.

When it comes down to it, personal growth will correlate with company growth. If your company is stagnant, your employees have likely felt that stagnation for quite some time.

4. Competitive Salary and Benefits Flexibility

Staying up to date on the going-rate salary for each job description and keeping tabs on the duties and expectations across companies is a must. While each HR team will be working with different budgets, knowing what’s out there is essential. Your workforce will know this, especially if you ignore our third strategy.

While you can’t always compete with every company’s budget, what you can do is know the job duties that are required and their corresponding salaries. Compare and contrast this with other companies and find what makes your organization’s offerings unique.

Benefits are another way of encouraging company loyalty. There are some things money can’t fix, such as the difficulty of dealing with a bad insurance company. Offer your employees tiers of insurance with the flexibility to meet their (and their family’s needs). It is just one way of making your workforce feel supported and cared for on a person-to-person level.

5. Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI)

Diversity is the future. It’s how we incorporate new ideas and strategies into our lifeblood. It fosters innovation and resilience and aims to make every person in your team feel seen and heard, regardless of race, gender, sexuality, or different abilities.

Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion are non-negotiable for modern-day companies. EDI work begins with your hiring practices but continues into your everyday work environment.

Your company must do more than just the yearly unconscious bias training in today’s world. Your organization should be building and analyzing EDI data regarding recruitment, progression, access to growth opportunities and development, and attrition.

Maintaining comprehensive data will help to foster a commitment to EDI that goes beyond box-checking and is an overarching perspective for your company. This data can illuminate the bigger picture and help you see beyond your institution’s best intentions to recognize the patterns beneath the words, good or bad.

6. Corporate Social Responsibility 

As the millennial generation takes center stage in our workforce, the expectation that companies take social responsibility is higher than ever. It’s safe to say that trend will continue with Gen-Zs and well after.

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is the philosophy that businesses are responsible to the communities around them. There are three prevalent social responsibilities that are at the forefront of concern: Environmental, Ethical, and Philanthropic.

With cities worldwide reaching record temperature highs, employees are asking more than just their governments to act on global warming. Employees expect commitments like reducing pollution, increasing reliance on sustainable energy, and offsetting the negative impacts of your company’s contributions to climate change.

Ethical responsibility speaks to fair treatment of all company stakeholders, from leadership and investors to employees, suppliers, and customers. Sourcing products and components according to Fair Trade standards is an excellent example of a company’s commitment to ethical responsibility.

With the prospect of committing almost a third of their lives to work, it’s no surprise that employees want their companies to give back. Philanthropic responsibility is a commitment to investing and bettering the communities around them. It acknowledges that a company has a duty to make the world a better place through economic and cultural means.

7. Employee Wellbeing 

The United States just initiated its first nationwide mental health hotline. Now more than ever, both sides of the American aisle seem to agree that mental health is just as important as physical health. But the well-being of your employees is hard to track.

This point returns us to our second strategy. Communication and appreciation open the doorway to more profound consideration. It’s impossible to gauge the well-being of your employees if you do not regularly check in with them.

As the workplace is more remote than ever, it’s crucial to incorporate the lessons we’ve learned about burnout and sustainable work practices to promote mental health.

Incorporate check-ins during small meetings, and foster a company culture of care. It might initially feel like you’re wasting valuable company time. However, studies show that even five minutes per day checking in can be enough to keep your workforce in a mindset of self (and community) care.

What Makes a Great HR Strategy?

Creating a great HR strategy takes a commitment to understanding your company, its values, both, and its aims for the future. It involves talking to your workforce and recognizing the gaps between those aims and the resources your team has to achieve them.

Any successful HR strategy seeks limited turnover while also planning for succession within the company. It encourages and incentivizes its employees with regular audits of their compensation, benefits packages, and work environments.

More than anything, an HR strategy is made great by the people who implement it. Real-time follow-through, adjustment, and consideration of feedback create strategies that are as fluid and changing as the people that enact them.

Conclusion

With these seven strategies as guideposts, you can reconsider and shape your company’s needs and lead it further down a path of positive, sustainable growth.

Ready to implement the first strategy and make your hiring practices more efficient? ScoutLogic makes screening hassle-free, with a dedicated “Scout’ who works directly with your company. Our pro-active services give you more time to interview your perfect candidates.

Contact ScoutLogic and save your HR team valuable time and resources.

David Garcia

David Garcia, co-founder and CEO of Scout Logic, is an industry leader in the bulk background check world. With his strategic acumen and expertise in the HR sphere, specifically in hiring, recruiting, legal compliance, background checks, and resume screening, he’s an invaluable asset and consultant.

David's counsel extends across the boards of ScoutLogic, YipitData, and Supplier.io, drawing from his impactful stints on the boards of Infutor and Avetta. With an extensive 25-year journey, he champions unparalleled B2B commercial leadership within data & analytics, significantly shaping the HR landscape.