Make Strategic Personnel Decisions the Right Way

There are few more important decisions in an organization than choosing strong leaders and leaders-in-training. The weight of a company’s future rests on the selection of employees that can both perform at high-level immediately and those who can be coached into taking on a leadership role over time.

When making strategic decisions about personnel, keep the following in mind about the employee:

·       Their strengths

·       Their unique capabilities

·       Their current performance

·       Their growth potential

·       Their fit for future talent needs in the organization

Identifying these capabilities helps ensure that the talent requirements across the business are met. The discussion should also consider the organization's vision, strategy, goals, objectives, and competitive landscape.

Constructing the answers to “Where are we going and do we have the talent to help us get there?” is the start of the talent and succession planning process. This discussion also offers the opportunity to discuss the information and formal coaching and mentoring inter-departmentally. Benefits of this approach include potentially discovering “hidden gems” within the organization.

Don’t forget to acknowledge that the ability to make good strategic decisions often arises from the experience of having made bad ones. Take the time to reflect back on some of your toughest lessons learned and keep those in mind as you move forward.

Here are a couple more resources to help you frame your decision-making process and make it as productive and beneficial as possible:

Developing Your Leadership Pipeline from Harvard Business Review

“The fundamental rule—the one on which the other four rest—is that succession management must be a flexible system oriented toward developmental activities, not a rigid list of high-potential employees and the slots they might fill. By marrying succession planning and leadership development, you get the best of both: attention to the skills required for senior management positions along with an educational system that can help managers develop those skills.”

4 Steps to Strategic Human Resources Planning from Lucidchart

“When 71% of CEOs believe that their employees are the most important factor in their company’s economic success, it’s easy to understand the importance of the human resource management planning process—the process by which organizations determine how to properly staff to meet business needs and customer demands.”