It is vital HR Strategy is developed to enable delivery of the overall comapany strategy. THIS IS VITAL. Too often HR strategies are written for the benefit of HR departments & individuals within the department - i.e. because they want to do certain things rather than for the benefit of the business.

The model that I think is best for driving HR strategy in an efffective way is the COPS model. COPS stands for:-

C   =        Culture

O   =       Organisation

P    =       People

S   =       Systems

It is important to keep all four areas in balance as, if one area falls out of line, it will affect the others.

An example of this is as follows:

      Culture:           One of the cultural values of a company is "teamwork"  

      Organisation:   The orgnisation is structured around teams

      People:             A teambuilding programme is run

      Systems:           The reward system is purely based on individual performance

In the above scenario the reward system must be sorted out or else the value will be seen as aspirational only. The structure will not be as effective as it can be and team players will be frustrated at seeing non team players being rewarded despite not being team players.

Strategically it is vital to constantly analyse whether the "blockers" to delivering the business plan from an HR perspective are Culture, Organisation, People or Systems and then put in a plan to deliver.

More details on each of these four areas can be seen in the sub menus on this section