How To Develop Your People Strategy For 2020
The end of an era and the beginning of a new decade of work is fast approaching. The way we work has already changed significantly over the past 10 years and shows no signs of stopping. How will you ensure your workforce succeeds in 2020?
Why Is A People Strategy Important?
A people strategy focuses on aligning people operations with business strategy to achieve maximum performance and outcomes. Today, business strategies are rapidly evolving to accommodate the growing digital economy. Organizations are always on shifting ground, facing new threats on a daily basis. Business leaders understand that continued success is only possible if their organization is willing and able to adapt. This starts with its people.
To succeed your workforce must have the right combination of skills to react and adapt to the future of work. Business leaders must start with an in-depth understanding of their people’s capabilities to develop a people strategy that is ready for action.
Follow these 5 steps to creating your people strategy for 2020.
Capture and Organize Your Data
There’s no room for negotiation here. The foundation of your people strategy must be built on dynamic, actionable data. However, this is often the most time-consuming process that leaves managers relying on static spreadsheets and unreliable information. Without an efficient data management process, it’s nearly impossible to gain the visibility and detail necessary to build an agile workforce.
That’s why your first move in 2020 should be to invest a people analytics tool that will help you automatically capture and organize skills data for efficient insights. This will save you valuable time and set you up for success well beyond the new year.
While there are many people analytic tools on the market, there are specific capabilities you’ll need to create a solid people strategy. First, the tool you choose should generate a dynamic skills inventory that is easy to update and provides real-time visibility of your workforce. A dynamic skills inventory enables you and your managers to adapt your people strategy quickly so you can proactively prepare your workforce for change.
The second feature you want to look for is data visualizations. These powerful little images do the heavy lifting for you, making it unbelievably easy to capture key insights. Whether you are analyzing individuals or entire organizations, data visualizations connect your managers with the answers they need to take the right action.
Evaluate The Current State of Your Workforce
Now that you have collected and mapped your organization’s skills data, it’s time to evaluate your current situation. Understanding your current state will give you a starting line for your 2020 plan.
Here are some questions you want to answer:
What are the strengths of my workforce?
What are the weaknesses of my workforce?
Which projects or initiatives were most successful?
Who did we hire in 2019? What skillsets did they bring? What skillsets did they lack?
What training programs did we implement? Were they effective?
Were you able to easily answer those questions? The goal is to seek out patterns across individuals, teams, departments, and your entire organization. This is where data visualizations can save you time, eliminate the guesswork, and give you the accurate answers you need.
Define Your Future Business Goals
Before jumping into your people strategy, you must know your future business goals. If the last step defines our starting line, this step defines our finish line. Spending time on both enables us to layout a roadmap and measure progress.
For a people strategy to be effective, it must be aligned with your business strategy. Ultimately, your business goals should be dependent on achieving your people goals.
Use these questions to help you align business and people:
What major changes are coming in 2020? (i.e. Digital transformation, mergers, market expansion, new product)
Do we have the right skillsets and experiences to implement these changes successfully?
Now that you’ve created your course, let’s dive into the core of your people strategy.
Develop a Roadmap To Guide Change
You’ve defined your starting line and your end goals. How are you going to get there?
Whether you plan to train, hire, or reposition your roadmap should still rely on data. Let’s look at a hypothetical scenario with Head of Talent Strategy, Jennifer.
From her workforce analysis, Jennifer recognizes that her IT department lacks key cloud computing skills. In Q3 of next year, her company is planning to move from on-premise to cloud-based data management to maximize internal efficiency, reduce costs, and gain an advantage over competitors.
Jennifer knows that her IT teams must be prepared to implement and maintain the new cloud systems. First, she uses her people analytics tool to uncover change champions across the organization that can help lead the implementation. Jennifer finds three employees in Product Development with excellent cloud computing skills that she can temporarily reposition to the IT Department.
Second, she identifies the skills that collectively need the most development. These skills are in the “yellow zone.” They are key to long-term maintenance, but not an urgent requirement for implementation. She’ll allocate training budget towards these improving these skills over the first half of the year.
Third, Jennifer can identify if there is any critical experience or industry expertise that the team is missing. These are “red zone” skills. If this is the case, her skills inventory will enable her to easily develop job requirements that align with the cloud transformation goals. She will give these descriptions to recruiters to help find the right candidates for the job in Q1 of the new year.
Through Jennifer’s hypothetical experience, you can see how you use existing workforce data to develop a plan that maximizes current resources and identified the optimal areas for training and recruiting spend.
Only data provides you with depth and breadth you need to make accurate, timely decisions around your workforce. Whether you are planning for a large transformation like Jennifer or seeking to fill skill gaps impacting your current operations, start learning to build your people strategy around data for maximum results.
Put Your Plan into Action
Congratulations! You’ve done the hard work of creating your 2020 people strategy. Now it’s time to put it into action. Here’s how to implement your plan successfully.
Justify your plan to decision-makers
Even the best plans are rarely implemented without passing through the hands of multiple decision-makers. What’s the easiest and fastest way to earn support from stakeholders? Present your people strategy in a clear, data-driven, visual format. Use data visualizations to easily communicate your plan and add an extra layer of credibility. Stakeholders are more willing to approve budget spend, if they understand the impact of those dollars spent.
Track and measure progress
While a strategy is a great starting point, it will inevitably change throughout the year. This is why a dynamic skills inventory is so important. You must be able to track progress towards your goals and adapt programs, people, and focus based on the results.
Again, you can use data visualizations to help communicate changes to your strategy. For example, data visualizations can make your performance reviews more effective by showing employees an unbiased view of their progress. Management can also use visualizations to quickly identify a lack of progress and make necessary adjustments to ensure they stay on track towards the end goals.
Reward your team and yourself
When you reach a milestone, don’t forget to reward your people. While data can help us plan, people put that plan into action. Achieving change is never easy, so celebrate their accomplishments.
That’s it! With a data-driven people strategy in place, you are ready to take your workforce to the next level in 2020. Remember to seek tools that help you automate the heavy lifting so you can spend more time taking action.