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Alignment: The Importance of Building HR Infrastructure
December 4, 2007
No matter what type of business you’re in and regardless of the size of your company, alignment in human resource structures is as critical to success as other infrastructures such as your technological, operational and financial systems. And like many of our clients, you’re probably saying, “Sounds good, but where do we start?”
Well, I tell them first that roles and responsibilities need to be defined. However, this does not mean that a laundry list of tasks makes for a sufficient job description. Thought about how each job fits into the larger organization needs to be applied to what results that job needs to produce. For example, sales targets are forecast so that each sales person knows what number he or she needs to hit within a certain timeframe. The achievement of that goal, or lack thereof, creates a tangible measure for all involved. Every job has similar quantifiable deliverables, although they are often not as obvious. So once you’ve learned to think about work in terms of results, rather than tasks, you will start to see what measurable markers are associated with them. Extracting these specific contributions and sculpting them into an appropriate job description is a huge step toward developing the clarity necessary to give job execution appropriate meaning for employees and tie it directly to outcomes relevant to the organization.
Now, that takes care of the “what.” The next thing to articulate for workers is the “how.”
Employees need to be clear about what attitudes and behaviors are expected from them as they carry out their duties. Remember, the way they act is a reflection of your brand and company. So their reputations are an important ingredient not only to your internal culture, but also as a means to fortify the cohesion of your company’s identity to the external world.
Finally, after roles have been properly structured and defined, you’re ready to create a sound and effective performance evaluation system that is aligned to expectations, evaluates past, and shapes future behaviors, and fulfills the needs of organizational demands. All you have to do is create criteria that measures the successful or unsuccessful fulfillment of the job descriptions. From there, the compensation decisions that follow will be straightforward, objective and unbiased because performance will have been defined and evaluated in a fair and strategic way.
Posted by Donna Flagg on December 4, 2007 | Comments (0)
