It is no exaggeration to say that the lack of strategy has become the biggest weakness of the sustainable development and growth of enterprises in China, and solving this problem has also become a top priority for enterprises.
So, what is the key to solve the lack of enterprise strategy? Shit! Rely on a group of talents with strategic thinking, strategic awareness and strategic planning skills. In summing up its successful experience, IBM said: "An excellent and conscientious talent team is the foundation of success". Zhang Ruimin, Chairman of the Board of Directors of Haier Group, made a more in-depth and incisive exposition. He said: "Talent is the fundamental advantage of enterprise competition. Humans can know things and create things. As long as conditions are created for him, he can adapt to changes, maintain progress and become an inexhaustible resource. With talents, capital can be concentrated in enterprises and enterprises can win in the competition. "
It can be said that human resource is the most important strategic resource among all resources of an enterprise, and it is the "first driving force" to improve the strategic thinking and decision-making level of an enterprise. As the human resources department responsible for the operation, development and management of "human resources" in enterprises, it is bound to shoulder the heavy responsibility of improving the strategic management level of enterprises without hesitation.
Connotation of strategic human resource management
Improving the strategic management level of enterprises requires human resources management departments to attach importance to the cultivation of strategic talents. Especially the strategic planning, development, training and use of human resources. So, what is the core of strategic human resource management?
Generally speaking, strategic human resource management is to help enterprises acquire, establish and strengthen their own competitive advantages by using various human resource development and management tools, thus promoting the realization of the company's strategic goals. The strategic nature of human resource management is mainly reflected in the following two aspects:
First of all, the only purpose of human resource management is to promote the implementation of enterprise strategic planning and the realization of strategic objectives through the development and management of human resources. The relationship between strategic human resource management and enterprise strategy is shown in figure 1.
The Relationship between Strategic Human Resource Management and Company Strategy
Strategic human resource management is a management centered on promoting the realization of "company strategy". It takes "human resources" as the management object, and uses relevant human resources development and management means to improve the ability of employees, adjust their work behavior, establish and develop the competitive advantage of enterprises, and finally promote the realization of strategic objectives and strategic decisions of enterprises.
Second, the strategic nature of human resource management is also reflected in the fact that the human resource management strategy itself is an important part of the company's overall strategic planning. The enterprise strategic planning system is shown in Figure 2.
Enterprise strategic planning system (taking diversified group companies as an example)
The realization of the enterprise's overall strategy needs the step-by-step support of the lower-level strategy, which will eventually be transformed into the specific action plan of employees. It embodies the systematicness and hierarchy of strategic management: the strategic outline of the group has insight into the future development trend and direction; The strategic decision of the subsidiary determines the company's competitive strategy and method; Departmental strategic planning determines the focus and direction of resource concentration; The employee's personal work plan translates the company's strategy into specific business activities.
Cleaning up the Root: Correcting the Strategic Position of Human Resource Planning
Although everyone agrees with the strategic position of human resource management, it often backfires in practical work. The most typical performance is to confuse strategic human resource planning with operational human resource planning. All along, our "human resource planning" [1] is more of a narrow and executive work plan. It is more based on the balance between supply and demand of human resources in enterprises, rather than providing guidance for the strategic management of human resources as a whole. Although there is only one word difference between "planning" and "planning", their meanings and results are quite different.
So, what is the real strategic human resource planning? The real strategic human resource planning should be the planning of the selection, allocation, use, development and management of human resources, so as to cooperate with the overall strategy of the enterprise. It is the starting point of enterprise human resource management, and it is a guiding and programmatic document that stipulates how various human resource management functions and management tools should provide services for the realization of enterprise strategic goals. The position of real strategic human resource planning in the whole human resource management function strategy is shown in Figure 3.
Strategic position of human resource planning in human resource management function
The focus of strategic human resource planning is to adjust human resource management policies and determine the focus and guiding principles of various human resource management functions. Only in this way can we coordinate and comprehensively use various human resource management functions to ensure the realization of the company's human resource planning, thus providing a strong guarantee for the realization of the company's overall business strategy.
Of course, different enterprises may have different definitions of human resource management tools and management functions, so the functions under the strategic human resource planning in Figure 3 will be adjusted differently.
Common human resource management functions
Therefore, the first step of strategic thinking of human resource planning is to trace back to the source and restore the strategic leading and commanding position of human resource planning in the overall planning of human resource management in the company. In the specific planning process, we should pay attention to three characteristics of strategic human resources planning:
First, the systematicness of human resource planning. Because the realization and implementation of human resource planning need to comprehensively use multiple functions of human resource management, such as the work plan of each specific function shown in Figure 3. Therefore, strategic human resource planning must be able to coordinate various human resource development and management tools and functions to promote the realization of the company's strategy.
Second, the strategic adaptability of human resource planning. The strategic nature of human resource planning is first reflected in its support for enterprise strategic adjustment and strategic change and its matching with the company's medium and long-term strategic planning. Only in this way can we effectively promote the realization of enterprise strategy.
Third, the strategic promotion of human resources planning. On the premise of strategic adaptation, the strategic nature of human resource planning is more reflected in the promotion of strategic results. Mainly manifested in: around the company's human resources planning strategy, make full use of various human resource development and management tools in the daily management system and business activities of the enterprise, and promote the development of human resources on the daily performance realization platform through close cooperation with specific businesses, thus promoting the success of the enterprise strategy.
One of the strategic adaptive thinking: the support of human resource planning to the strategy of different development stages of enterprises
"A good soldier is a good doctor. His illness will change and his medicine will change." Because the internal and external environment in which the enterprise is located is always developing and changing, the strategic change and adjustment of the enterprise becomes inevitable. Therefore, strategic human resource planning must be able to respond in time to support the change of enterprise strategy.
Generally speaking, there are two main factors that lead to the strategic adjustment and change of enterprises: one is the periodic contradiction in the growth cycle of enterprises. The second is the sudden change in the competitive environment of enterprises. Because the second factor is accidental and unpredictable. Limited by space, we will discuss the adjustment of human resource planning according to the strategic changes in the normal growth cycle of enterprises.
Before discussing how human resource planning can support the strategies of enterprises in different development stages, we need to consider a question: What are the core requirements of human resource planning for strategic change of enterprises?
We know that different enterprise strategies will put forward different requirements for the strategic quality and configuration structure of enterprise human resources, and then put forward different requirements and emphases for various functions and tools of human resources development and management. Therefore, from the perspective of strategic adaptability, the core of human resource planning is to consider how to make full use of various human resource development and management tools (organizational structure setting, post function adjustment, employee recruitment, employee training, performance appraisal, salary system design, etc.). ) acquire, cultivate, use and motivate the staff to meet the requirements of enterprise strategy for employees' ability and quality, ideas and behavior patterns, and give full play to their respective potentials for the realization of enterprise strategy. Specifically:
In the start-up stage, survival is the first priority of an enterprise. Cohesion and business orientation are the key points of enterprise strategy in this period. Therefore, human resource planning should focus on the selection, training, use and encouragement of "charismatic" leaders and "expert" business talents. "Chivalrous" and heroic talents who can attract employees with personal charm and independently complete even very arduous tasks are the key targets of human resources development. In the early days of Lenovo's development, the bold appointment of tiger generals such as Yang, Guo Wei and Sun Hongbin, as well as the "God-making Movement" of Ni Guangnan, brought great development to the enterprise, which is the best example.
In the growth stage, development is the last word. Paying equal attention to organizational expansion and orderly management is the focus of enterprise strategy in this period. Therefore, human resources policy planning should focus on the transformation from over-emphasis on entrepreneurship and personal heroism to standardized and professional management. At this time, a team of "general" talents who can lead subordinates ahead and "professional managers" who can help the company achieve standardized management has become the main demand of the company. For example, in the start-up stage, Vanke basically relies on the excellent personal judgment and intuition of Wang Shi and Vanke executives. However, people with such "critical eyes" are scarce resources after all. With the rapid development of Vanke, this method can no longer meet the human resource allocation needs of enterprises. Therefore, Vanke put forward the strategic requirements of specialization and refinement in human resources development planning in time, and launched a specific professional management tool-"talent qualification model". It has gradually developed into a series of qualification model systems including Vanke's general qualification model, Vanke's leadership qualification model and five sub-majors, including sales, design, engineering and customer service. It is precisely because of this precautionary arrangement that Vanke not only meets the demand for talents for its own enterprise development, but also exports many outstanding talents to other real estate enterprises, and is known as the "Whampoa Military Academy in the real estate industry".
In the mature stage, enterprises need to move from victory to victory. During this period, there are two focuses of enterprise strategy: first, how to deepen its own management level and shape it into the core competitiveness of enterprises; Second, and more importantly, how to make full preparations for future strategic development and changes. Therefore, training "professionals" who can help enterprises further deepen the level of human resources management and "handsome talents" who can assess the situation, adapt to the situation and formulate long-term strategies of enterprises has become the main talent demand at this stage. Moreover, with the maturity of the team of "commanders" and "generals" in enterprises, the focus of human resource planning should be further focused on how to prepare talents for the medium and long-term development strategy of enterprises.
From the perspective of deepening human resource management, there will be some new topics at this stage. For example, the coordination problem brought by the expansion of enterprise scale and the strengthening of employee diversity has become a sudden problem affecting human resource development. In a rapidly developing organization, when the nerve endings are more and more developed, the communication between nerves may be less frequent. Enterprises need to pay attention to the matching of personality, interest, quality, structure, organizational strategy and position of different types of employees in their own human resources development planning; Pay attention to strengthening communication and training for employees, and emphasize the standardization and consistency of employees' thinking mode and behavior mode; Pay attention to shaping a strong corporate culture, enhance the organization of employees, improve the overall combat effectiveness, and thus promote the growth of the organization. For example, Novo Nordisk, a well-known Danish pharmaceutical company, found problems in cross-departmental cooperation through employee surveys, and the company made a request to set the goal of cross-departmental communication in human resources planning. It is also stipulated that an internal customer satisfaction survey will be conducted at the end of the year, and all departments will score each other. Because they think that the working atmosphere will affect the mood of employees, and whether employees are happy or not is very important for their own growth and the development of enterprises.
Motorola's human resource planning is exemplary in preparing talents for strategic adjustment and cultivating outstanding talents. As early as 1988, after Motorola won the national quality award, the company leaders realized that by the beginning of 2 1 century, competitors might catch up, and then the product quality standards would change from management advantages to established standards. In the commercial war in the next decade, the most important weapon is the workforce with adaptability, adaptability and innovation. Therefore, in order to cultivate the above-mentioned abilities of employees, Motorola put forward the activity requirement of "lifelong learning for employees" in its human resources development plan. More importantly, Motorola closely combines education with the company's business goals. For example, if a company wants to set a goal of shortening the product development cycle, then it will design a course to solve this problem. The company's training is not only for education, but also for employees to receive some specific job training until they can master it correctly. So as to successfully complete the new strategic requirements.
In the stage of recession or post-maturity, what is needed is to get rid of the burden of history, resist the erosion of bureaucracy, inject more new vitality into enterprises and realize the "regeneration" of enterprises. The adjustment of strategic direction has become the focus of enterprise strategy in this period. In this situation, the promotion of talents has become an important part of human resources planning. In order to cooperate with the smooth realization of the company's new strategy, the overall planning of human resources needs to be systematically adjusted again. The human resources department should go deep into the planning of the new strategy from the beginning and fully understand the requirements of the new strategy for human resources management. In order to promote the development of human resources, the planning closely revolves around the requirements of the new strategy, and reconsiders the organizational structure, business processes, job functions and personnel changes, job evaluation, performance appraisal and salary incentives of enterprises. For example, when Lenovo proposed to transform from a product manufacturing enterprise to a service-oriented enterprise, their human resources planning made corresponding adjustments to the assessment and incentive methods. When determining the salary of IT service personnel, we should first adjust the object of market comparison, and the assessment time is not once every quarter as before, but according to the project cycle, we should design the ability and quality into several dimensions for comprehensive assessment.
Strategic adaptive thinking 2: plan ahead for the long-term strategic development of enterprises.
One of the characteristics of strategy is forward-looking and direction-oriented. Therefore, in order to provide guidance for future development, general companies will formulate medium-and long-term strategic development plans for enterprises. Therefore, the human resource planning of an enterprise must also make a medium-and long-term human resource development plan according to the requirements of the company's medium-and long-term development plan, and decompose it into the annual human resource development plan.
If the strategic adaptive thinking discussed above is the dynamic support of human resource planning to the company's strategic development, then what we should focus on here is the static decomposition and support of human resource planning to the company's medium and long-term development strategy. Its core work is to plan a multi-level and multi-echelon human resource construction system around "two cores" (core talents and core competence) to support the realization of the company's medium and long-term strategy. Due to the limitation of space, this paper mainly discusses the leadership construction.
The new strategy deals with new situations and uncertainties. Therefore, its implementation often needs the support of leaders. However, many enterprises that lack strategic human resources planning thinking often fail to systematically evaluate their leadership ability before the implementation of strategic measures, which often leads to the members of the core management team being busy filling vacancies at the last minute.
In the long run, the company will fall into a vicious circle: good leaders are either overworked or tired of dealing with various temporary tasks, leaving less time for cultivating young talents. When they want to hand over the management power, they can only face some inexperienced and unprepared successors. If this vicious circle cannot be contained, it may eventually lead to the company's current business and future strategic development in danger.
Therefore, strategic human resource planning requires the company to take leadership as the development focus of human resource planning to meet the requirements of the company's medium and long-term strategic development. Generally speaking, the problem of leadership construction needs to be planned within the framework of three time periods.
I. Long-term planning
The purpose of long-term planning is to reserve talents for the realization of the company's long-term strategic goals in the next 3-5 years. For example, a Korean consumer goods company plans to expand its core business to Japan within five years. To this end, they formulated a formal leadership platform construction plan. We hired managers five years before the expansion, and then sent them to Japan in exchange for Japanese friendly partners to train them how to operate in Japan, and then set up a leadership team composed of Koreans in Japan. Five years later, when the company expanded, they successfully entered Japan, a mature market famous for its closure, within 18 months.
Excellent domestic enterprises also performed well. In order to successfully complete the replacement of old and new management teams, Lenovo has promoted and used a large number of young people since 1990, and dozens of young people have been promoted and reused almost every year. Lenovo's slogan for managers is: you won't authorize, you won't be authorized; You won't be promoted, you won't be promoted, and the emergence of young talents is guaranteed by the system.
Two. Medium-term framework
The medium-term plan mainly considers training leaders for the future development of 1 ~ 3 years to adapt to specific positions within the company. This requires first determining the skills, working methods and ways of thinking that future leaders need. For example, with the gradual growth of the group, Haier realized that the group needs more and more outstanding talents with long-term vision, overall ability and familiarity with many fields. In view of this situation, the group clearly put forward the principle of "rotation" in human resources planning. After the expiration of a post, according to the overall goal and personal development needs, the core talents will be transferred to other posts to cultivate all-round leaders.
On the other hand, another company proposed in its human resources planning that the appointees should be informed of their new tasks in the next six months in advance, and then they should participate in the pre-job training program. All leaders should write a personal development contract, the content should be related to the challenges faced by the new position, and at the same time list a series of learning opportunities and development measures to actively prepare themselves to perform their new duties.
Third, short-term planning.
Short-term planning is generally expressed as an annual work plan, which mainly solves the problem of how to meet the needs of leaders in practical work. Actually, work is the best teacher. Challenging practical work and expanding task areas are the best tools to train leaders. According to the enterprise's performance goals and personal development goals, it is very important not only to provide the current or potential leaders with a suitable working platform and opportunities to achieve performance breakthroughs, but also to cultivate practical leaders.
Strategic promotion thinking: building a platform for talent growth and performance realization
Training talents in actual combat is the primary problem that strategic human resources planning should pay attention to. By building an effective performance management platform, employees can continue to grow in their work, thus promoting the realization of enterprise strategy, which has become a problem that must be considered in human resource planning. Perhaps it is for this reason that Motorola put forward: "Human resource management = performance management". It can be said that the process of performance management is the process of human resource development and the process of enterprise strategy realization.
So, how is a complete and effective performance management platform formed? How should strategic human resource planning coordinate and comprehensively apply various human resource management functions to this platform to ensure the realization of the company's human resource planning, thus promoting the realization of the company's overall business strategy? The composition of enterprise enterprise strategy performance is shown in Figure 5.
Enterprise enterprise strategy performance
The strategic performance management system of an enterprise is actually a process of linking the efforts of departments and individuals with the strategic objectives and business plans of the enterprise. Its core goal is the improvement of employees' comprehensive skills and personal performance and the realization of the company's business objectives. However, the performance management of many domestic enterprises only stays at the level of performance appraisal (performance appraisal is only a part of the performance management system), and no real performance management system has been established. It is difficult to improve the system execution of enterprises, and it is difficult to give employees a good platform for growth and promotion.
Therefore, strategic human resource planning must put forward its own guiding principles and work priorities on how to use human resource management tools to build an enterprise strategic performance management system. The requirements of performance management system construction can be summarized as "one center, four key points".
The so-called center is to combine the development and management of human resources with the specific practice of enterprise management with the strategic objectives and business plans of the enterprise as the center, which requires the managers of various departments to undertake the responsibilities of human resources development and management. Only in this way can human resource planning be implemented and truly serve the realization of business strategy.
The so-called four focuses refer to the four operational links of the performance management system: goal decomposition and action plan, responsibility allocation and assessment indicators, performance inquiry and performance counseling, performance evaluation and salary incentive.
In the stage of goal decomposition and action plan formulation, human resources department is needed to provide technical support and process management in goal management and plan formulation. For example, in Motorola, at the beginning of each year, the human resources department will be responsible for guiding and coordinating all departments to formulate performance goals and specific action plans in combination with the company's overall strategic goals, departmental business goals and personal and career development goals. The annual work goals set by Motorola employees include two aspects. One is the strategic direction. Including long-term strategies and priorities; The other is performance and employee ability. Including the actions of employees in finance, customers, employee relations and partners, as well as the improvement of employees' abilities in leadership, strategic planning, customer concern, information analysis and management.
In the stage of responsibility assignment and assessment index setting, the human resources department needs to establish a process-centered organizational structure and post responsibility system, and adjust key performance indicators (KPI). The formulation of key performance appraisal indicators (KPI) should highlight the direction and key requirements of the company's strategy to strengthen employees' ability. For example, when Lenovo proposed to transform from a product manufacturing enterprise to a service-oriented enterprise, their human resources planning adjusted the post value and the weight of assessment indicators accordingly. Lenovo adopts an international work evaluation system based on Swiss CRG3P theory. CRG believes that external communication is more difficult in the evaluation of communication ability, so the score of external communication is higher than that of internal communication when other dimensions are the same. However, Lenovo believes that sales and after-sales service are not only the personal behavior of sales and service personnel, but also related to Lenovo's brand image, an intangible asset. Therefore, after consulting the opinions of the company, the internal and external communication is defined as the same score, which makes it more suitable for Lenovo's strategic requirements and actual situation.
In the process of performance inquiry and performance counseling, the human resources department needs to provide training for managers of various departments on how to conduct effective performance inquiry and face-to-face counseling. The core of this link is that on the one hand, performance management can be changed from post-event control to process control or pre-event control, on the other hand, it can help managers at all levels to feedback employees' shortcomings in time and promote their growth. For example, in order to cooperate with its future leadership training strategy, Motorola clearly put forward the purpose of performance evaluation in human resources planning: closely combining individual, team business and company goals; Constantly define the specific leadership behavior of the results and needs to be achieved; Improve the quality of dialogue; Strengthen the joint responsibility of managers, teams and individuals in achieving continuous progress; Find the best fit between job requirements and personal abilities, interests and priorities.
In the stage of performance appraisal and salary incentive, the human resources department needs to provide performance appraisal methods and training to managers of various departments, and communicate and implement the corresponding salary incentive scheme. Through performance evaluation and salary incentive, help employees to define development goals and improvement directions, and provide motivation for employees' continuous improvement. Huawei's approach in this regard can be said to be an example. "Huawei pays wages not only as a result, but also as a process to let employees know the company's strategy, the company's positioning, their own values, their own advantages and disadvantages and future development ... not just to pay money, as long as it is related to assessment, such as quarterly routine assessment, labor attitude assessment, qualification certification, your supervisor will communicate with you, tell you the origin of the assessment results, where are the advantages and disadvantages, and even make detailed performance improvements. (Tang Shengping, "Out of Huawei")
The biggest strategy of human resource planning: establishing human resource development mechanism
"He who does not seek eternal life does not seek a moment." James C. Collins, an American management scientist, once put forward a core principle of lasting success: "Make the clock" instead of "tell the time". Therefore, strategic human resources planning must be based on "making clocks" rather than "telling the time".
To be a clock is to establish a management mechanism for the selection, development, growth and renewal of human resources. As Lenovo said in the "Necklace Theory" mentioned in its own human resources development, the competition for talents is not to buy back the biggest and best pearls, but to sort out their own lines first, form a perfect management mechanism, and string pearls into a beautiful necklace. Without this line, no matter how big the beads are, they are still scattered. Without a good management mechanism to form a strong enterprise cohesion, it is difficult to retain talents only by relying on high salary.
The formation and successful application of the "punch card" mechanism also lies in the establishment of an institutional system including overall policies, specific systems and a series of supporting measures. The talent training mechanism of "horse racing is not like a horse" advocated by Haier and carried forward by Lenovo is a typical representative.
This mechanism holds that enterprises are not short of talents, everyone is a talent, and the key is to give full play to everyone's best quality and potential. In order to give full play to everyone's best quality and potential, we must "turn horses into horses" and establish a talent competition mechanism based on market economy.
In order to implement the policy of identifying good horses in horse racing, they put forward three problems that need to be solved emphatically in human resource planning:
1. There should be an "arena", that is, providing suitable positions for talents;
2. There should be a "runway" division, and they should be guided to compete in an orderly manner.
3. Formulate competition rules, that is, establish a more scientific performance appraisal and reward evaluation system.
At the same time, in order to make this horse racing mechanism work effectively, they have formulated three supporting measures.
1. The coexistence and dynamic transformation of "three industries". Haier divides employees into three categories according to their performance: excellent employees, qualified employees and probationary employees, and makes dynamic transformation to realize the flow of talents in the dynamic transformation. Probation employees can be transformed into excellent employees through hard work, and excellent employees may become probation employees if they don't work hard and settle down.
2. Middle-level cadres can go up and down. Haier's cadres are also divided into excellent managers, qualified managers and unqualified managers. Moreover, the positions of cadres are not fixed, and poor work will be eliminated. Because of this competitive mechanism, the average age of middle-level cadres in Haier is 26 years old, which makes many young people stand out in their work.
3. Leadership construction of "dolphin-style" promotion. Dolphins are the cleverest animals in the ocean. The deeper it dives, the higher it jumps. If a cadre grows up in the production system, if he is appointed as the minister of a business department, then his experience in the market system may be very lacking. Therefore, he needs to go to the market. After arriving at the market, he must work at the grassroots level below, and then work step by step from this grassroots position. If you can do it, you will be hired. If you can't do it, you will be dismissed on the spot. Some managers have reached a very high position, but if they lack some experience, they should also carry out dolphin training. Such a "top horse" is a unique skill.
Zhang Ruimin, president of Haier Group, once summed up the significance of the construction of talent training mechanism in Haier's human resources development plan: "As far as Haier is concerned, the success is not young people in important positions, but that we have a very good mechanism to continuously promote new people. ...... In recent years, we have been building a stage for young people and providing opportunities for all young people. Those who run in front have a sense of crisis in order to maintain their competitive state, and those who run behind always want to surpass those in front and will redouble their efforts. "
Not the end of the end: strategic thinking on the requirements of human resources management department