People Strategy

Recruiting, Retaining and Compensating your Best People
 

Companies are always seeking a competitive advantage that will catapult the ahead of their competition permanently. In the past things such as location, production, distribution, supply cost, pricing, innovation and speed to market have been the key to competitive advantage. Today organizations are recognizing that the best and last source of competitive advantage is in a company's unique human capital - it's employees - and the process for managing and aligning your workforce.

Companies that act early in identifying and measuring the human capital factors and aligning their human capital strategy with business strategy will carve out a significant advantage. Competitors will have difficulty in copying these moves because they lack the unique people processes and technologies that make the alignment work at a particular company.

One of the most critical factors in aligning business strategy with people strategy is the ability to effectively communicate with a company's workforce. A great business strategy that cannot be understood by the people responsible for it's execution is likely to fail.

There are some questions that your workforce should ask regarding task they are performing for the company.

• Does the proposed action fit within the overall business strategy?

• What is the return on investment?

• How long until the results are evident?

The process of answering these questions will quickly change the mindset (and ultimately, the behavior) of management and employees.