Even today, HR roles and functions tend to operate in relative isolation from one another. HR generalists tend to handle the day-to-day people issues, and HR specialists tend to the day-to-day of running their functions - recruiting, training, leadership development, compensation, and benefits. Sometimes one or the other “rolls out” a program intended to plug a gap or improve a process. But mostly HR generalists provide general guidance to business leaders and, from time to time, ask for some service from a specialist function. All this despite a decade or more of concepts like “strategic HR”!

I think a major reason why this is so is because few senior HR leaders know how to lead and organize people to produce holistic, integrated talent strategies tightly connected to business strategies through a holistic, integrated talent assessment and workforce planning process.

Yet, right in the middle of all of the issues about “talent” and “human capital” is the person in charge of learning & development whether titled as CLO or not. The people in this role are in a unique position to pull together their HR colleagues and fashion a holistic, integrated process with which they can engage business leaders to attend to their current and future talent. Why should the L&D people take on this challenge? The reason is that it is likely the most significant learning challenge their organizations face, learning how to operationalize talent strategies robust enough to execute business strategies, year-on-year.

A place I like to go for fresh thinking on this topic is http://www.newlearningplaybook.com/ hosted by Jeanne Meister.

Manage Learning Strategically

We will show you how to move away from a demand-driven service and how to become a value-driven strategic partner. We will guide you as you build your:

• Annual Learning Plan and budget in a way that is aligned to business strategies and managed as a portfolio of prioritized investments.
• Measurement Plan aligned to the human capital performance objectives required by your business strategies and operating plans.
• L&D Strategy Assessment and Roadmap: your organization structure and staff roles; decisions about selective insourcing and outsourcing of roles; learning technologies and vendor selection; learning design methods for different delivery media; and your use of performance support.

Managing Learning Strategically (Open in Notes view to see narration)

Managing Performance Strategically

For decades, the major emphases in performance management have been performance objectives and performance assessment. Important as these are, they only become strategically important when they are integrated into a coaching culture, development opportunities, recognition, and rewards that increase workforce competencies, engagement, and retention. We will help you build your:

• Annual Talent Engagement and retention Plan focused on developing a “talent as an asset” mindset in your leaders at all levels and managing their adoption of practices which evidence that mindset.
• Measurement plan focused on increased competency in the workforce, on selected measures of engagement, commitment, and retention, and on the adoption of “talent as a mindset” practices.
• Assessment of and Roadmap for your “people leadership” capabilities.

Managing Performance Strategically (Open in Notes view to see narrative)

Managing Talent Strategically

Strategic talent management is about taking a systemic view of your business strategies, identifying the key roles in those strategies, and ensuring that you will have enough of the right people with the right competencies to make the business successful year after year. We will help you build your:

• Annual Integrated Workforce Plan in which you take a holistic view of the entire talent management process for each line of business and identify near term and longer term initiatives. Within the context of business strategies, your planning process will address workforce planning, talent acquisition, on-boarding, learning and development, performance management, and rewards and recognition. The result will be a coordinated, comprehensive plan.
• Succession Planning Process to address leadership roles, pivotal positions, and key positions challenged by competitive and demographic forces.
• Assessment of and Roadmap for your talent management capabilities including core issues such as data integration, process coordination, and technology support.

Managing Talent Strategically (Notes view with narrative will be available 3/23/09)