Jaluch Limited

A recent report from the CIPD and Tomorrow’s Company, suggests that companies that focus solely on financial issues are more likely to fail, and that to adapt to the challenges of the next decade they will have to redefine {how they determine} success.

They stated that research on organisational behaviour carried out by Jeffrey Pfeffer (http://jeffreypfeffer.com/), demonstrated that the combination of a number of powerful tools and policies of human resource management, acting as a total system, produce the highest levels of employee commitment and sustained company business success.

Just this week many of us have no doubt read of the extent to which businesses are again focussing on reducing and monitoring cost. Recruitment freezes and cancelled contracts are yet again widespread as are many other financial initiatives to guarantee survival through what could be the long awaited double dip. But if you agree with Pfeffer, then such severe cost cutting is short sighted indeed and perhaps, whilst being cautious, it would be dangerous to take our eye off the bigger picture which is of course, long term success.

However if you are in a business that is cautious about cost, but equally mindful of positioning for the future, then you might be interested to read that Pfeffer set seven dimensions that characterise most , if not all, of the human resources practices of companies producing profits through people.

These are:

• Security of employment
• Selective hiring
• Training
• Reduction in status differences
• Sharing information
• Self-managed teams
• Pay for performance

If you are in an ambitious organisation and know that staff can contribute enormously to business success, here are a few of our questions to support you when reconsidering your HR strategy for 2012:

If you did an HR audit today, overall how would you measure up against these seven 'dimensions'?

In terms of input to business decision making with 1 scoring low and 10 scoring high, how would you score the current profile of the HR function at Board level?

Is there one or more 'dimension' that your board will/will not buy into as relevant or important for business success? Do you agree with them?

What would your current staff identify as the 'dimension' that whilst being important to them receives least focus in the organisation?

What skills or experience do you lack in your current HR team to be able to address the 'dimensions' relevant to your organisation?

Is there one 'dimension' that your competitors do better than you?

If you could make one change to HR policy or practice this side of Christmas to better position yourself for business success would you focus on recruitment, training, organisational structure, knowledge sharing, distribution of responsibilities or pay policy?

These are interesting times and perhaps what you did last year is no longer applicable for what you want to achieve next year. At Jaluch we often find that in redeveloping or rethinking strategy, the HR team can be held back by factors such as:

• A lack of confidence with business financials
• Not addressing reskilling issues early enough
• Lack of credibility with the Board and not feeling able to step up to Board level
• Not using often (or early) enough skilled specialist resource from outside the organisation, to support with complex areas such as pay and remuneration strategies.