I’m sure we all have moments in the day when we’re working on a specific task or going through a standard process and think, “I know how this could be better.”
Having ideas isn’t the hard part—HR teams have to be creative every day with limited resources. What’s difficult is getting the whole organization behind these ideas and leading the changes you know are necessary to better support people and your business.
So how do you take ownership of your vision and get others on board? I know it may seem like a big question to answer amid all the other responsibilities you have to manage, but here’s some good news—it doesn’t start with that big picture. It starts with you.
Let’s take a quick look at three ways you can set yourself up for success and begin owning your vision.
- Define Your Plan for Goal Setting
Creating change starts with being clear about what you want—and what you can realistically achieve. This means setting actionable goals for yourself to create a clear path for making change. It may sound a lot like a typical performance management plan, but I promise it’s not.
Remember all those great ideas we were just talking about? Well, good goal-setting is the first step in making them happen. After all, if you can outline practical steps for yourself that align with your future vision, it makes it easier to work with stakeholders and employees toward their own goals, connecting everyone’s efforts.
Here are three questions to ask yourself when forming a goal-setting plan:
What needs to happen before writing the goals?
Before you can put pen to paper and write your goals, a lot goes on. Think about how you frame the areas you’ve identified so you can easily see their impact on the business. What tangible actions can you take to turn your goal from an idea into reality? How will you measure progress? Ensure that you outline practical steps so you can share your plans.
How do you test your goal-setting process?
When filtering through everything you want to accomplish, it can be challenging to focus. Start with a high-priority area and test how you navigate all the steps toward achieving that goal.
What does it take to make goal-setting repeatable?
This is where the initial plan comes in. Now that you have an idea of what it takes to write achievable goals and the steps to achieve them, it’s time to put resources in place that enable continuous development, adjustment, and execution of those goals. Having these in place helps you scale your efforts across your organization and share your vision with others.
- Gain Executive Buy-In
Clearly setting your goals is a great step, but how do you secure the resources your HR team needs to achieve them, especially if they are ambitious? This requires having business leaders in your corner who understand your vision. To build such a relationship with your executives and gain support for the tools and best practices you believe will help create change, you need to demonstrate the practical value of your HR initiatives for both people and the business.
Building this level of connection with executives takes time, but you can take several steps to optimize your efforts:
Learn to Speak Business
Think about the vocabulary your leadership team uses and what terms, topics, and phrases resonate with them and their business objectives. Beyond that, consider how you use that language to highlight your needs and how HR can contribute to strategic business conversations.
Highlight Key Metrics
Ideally, your HR team tracks a variety of different statistics throughout the employee lifecycle. Consider which of these are tied to business impacts, such as turnover or overtime, to reinforce them with executives.
Actively Embrace Business Goals
Listen to the direction your leaders are setting for your organization and think about how your HR vision can support and enhance it. Don’t wait for the business strategy to be handed to you. Instead, ensure you stay ahead of these conversations, take opportunities to spend time with executives, and link what you learn to HR initiatives and innovations.
Find Allies in Your Organization
To drive change and create common ground with other members of your organization—such as payroll, managers, and other stakeholders you work with like IT or sales—collaborate with them. Highlight the benefits you can gain to present a united front to executives.
- Focus on Management Practices
A big part of turning your vision for HR into reality is holding yourself to the highest standards when managing others so you can, in turn, help managers across the organization uphold those standards. Creating a simple, actionable management plan to reflect on practices and use them to reinforce the bigger picture you have in mind makes a significant difference in your effectiveness and that of other managers throughout the company.
A strong management action plan starts with three core elements:
Outcome: What do you truly want from a specific management goal or initiative?
Purpose: Why do you want it?
Action: What specific steps can you take to make it happen?
Conclusion: It’s time to dig deep and turn your vision into reality.
Source: https://www.ukg.com/
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