Human Resource Function Should be at the Centre of Strategic Planning

There has been a lot of discussions on why business strategy fail to achieve their grand objectives. One of the main explanations to this failure has been the problem of converting the plan into action. Regardless how beautiful a strategic plan is if it is not implemented it will always remain a pretty piece of document.

There are various explanations on why strategies fail at execution stage. Most these reasons have to do with people. People are core to making any strategy work. Their skills, their commitment and their understanding will determine how well the strategy will be implemented.

This is the main reason why the human resource department should play a central role in development and execution planning of the business strategy. Unfortunately, in many cases the HR role is an afterthought and often completely ignored in the whole process.

HR is the one to put together the right people, skills and create an enabling environment for effective execution of the strategy. HR also needs to define new roles and determine the organization structure to support the new strategy. For a new strategy to work the organization may require a complete reorganization of its people. That is why HR must be heavily involved in the strategy development and execution.