Human Resources (HR) plays a vital role in providing a sustained competitive advantage to the organization. Many organizations fail to see HR functions as a strategic collective process. To position HR management as a value-added process, organizations must combine intergraded HR functions with the organization’s long term business strategy. A strategic process consists of interconnected disciplines from talent and organizational management to create a holistic process. Once these functions are intergraded, they can be implemented with long-term goals and objectives.
Strategic Planning
Strategic planning is the process of identifying an organization’s long-term goals and objectives and then determining the best ways to achieve them. The process of strategic planning has been characterized as a process that:
• Determines an organization’s current situation.
• Involves long-term planning for periods ranging from three years to two decades.
• Formulating a strategy and identifying objectives to achieve it.
• Continual monitoring assures successfully implementation.
Tactical Planning
Tactical Planning is the process of taking the strategic plan and breaking it down into specific, short term actions and plans. The relative length of the planning horizon will vary from one market to another but typically the strategic plan will cover a period greater than three years while the tactical plan covers the period from today through to the end of year three.
Reasons for Merging HR Tactical functions and Strategic process:
Tactical Planning
• Focuses on the short term goals of the organization, typically a 1 to 18 month time frame.
• It’s all about the How (i.e., process) of things that can be done.
• Focus is on operations; including creating and executing effective and efficient action plans such as improving customer service, reducing the number of outside commitments to simplify your life, and creating action plans for your strategic (big picture) objectives.
• Manage and control administrative problems, organizational conflict and monitor compliance.
Strategic Planning
• An organization’s long term goals and objectives, which usually ranges from 3 to 5 years.
• Guides the fundamental decisions and actions that will shape the long term direction of a business.
• It answer questions like Who (you are), What (you want to accomplish) and Why (reasons behind the accomplishments).
• Identify major competitive advantages in an organization.
Tactical planning and strategic planning are integrally related and must be aligned to complete an effective HR process. Tactical planning should focus on what to do in the short term to help the organization achieve the long term objectives determined by strategic planning