Strategic HR decisions establish standards for each job role to define its competencies. Then, performance management systems measure employee achievement relative those competencies. Managers use performance management systems to assess and reward the behavior of their employees. Additionally, a strategic human resource management function handles the recruiting, interviewing, hiring and development of all personnel required to ensure your company can achieve its goals. The relationship between performance management and strategic planning links day-to-day operations with your company’s vision.

Setting Organizational Goals

As part of the strategic planning process, an organization defines its goals and objectives. For example, a company may decide to focus on specific IT trends such as cloud computing, data security and global markets. As a result, strategic direction may dictate whether a company maintains research and development spending. This impacts the HR department's ability to attract and retain top talent.

Defining Personal Development Goals

An individual establishes her personal goals by aligning her development activities to the organization’s needs. For example, a strategic HR department can publish self-assessment tools that allow an employee to determine how she rates in terms of attributes. These attributes might include accountability, reliability, integrity and customer-centric behavior. Performance gaps may reveal a need to improve in one or more areas. Establishing a specific, measurable and attainable goal makes it easier for an employee to achieve her objective. Goals should also be realistic and time constrained. To complete the process, managers usually require employees to submit a development plan. Only after approval can the employee begin completion of her defined activities.

Managing Change

Ensuring an organization’s capability to provide critical services usually requires assessing the entire workforce against a defined competency model for each role. Work usually involves a combination of technical and professional skills. For example, if a business needs to make a shift from doing business one way to transforming to using new processes and technology, skill in change management becomes a priority. Managers need to recognize, through performance management processes, individuals who can act as leaders and help others achieve strategic goals.

Providing Training

Strategic HR management allows you to recognize the need to offer training and development opportunities that ensure personnel can respond to challenges both now and in the future. Workshops, seminars and self-paced podcasts, videos and job aids can help prepare employees to address problems in the workplace. By analyzing performance review results, HR administrators identify problem areas, such as communication, collaboration and business acumen. Then, they can offer learning and development options. Or, if all employees appear to lack technical knowledge about a new infrastructure, the success of the entire company may depend on addressing performance gaps. The HR department needs to rise to the challenge of developing, delivering and evaluating training that meets this learning need.