3 Reliable Steps to Align HR with Business Objectives

HR departments perform at their best when their strategic planning is closely aligned with overarching business goals, said Alexander Pullen, an HR consultant for SHRM Business, during a session at SHRM25 in San Diego. 

Too often, Pullen argued, organizations mistake having a list of planned initiatives for having a strategy. Pullen challenged conventional thinking by drawing a sharp contrast between planning and strategy. 

“Strategy is not just a series of plans or loose direction, a loose vision,” he said. “It’s a decision on how we’re going to win as the organization in our market.” He cautioned against “playing to play” and urged HR leaders to focus on “playing to win.”

Misalignment Can Prevent Necessary Change

When HR departments focus on routine programs out of habit or tradition, they may miss opportunities to drive meaningful impact, Pullen said. 

For example, HR leaders often prioritize long-standing initiatives, such as engagement surveys, purely because those initiatives are essential to how those leaders see the HR function. Instead, HR leaders should regularly investigate how HR programs contribute to the company’s success in the market. 

Additionally, organizations should even apply the same logic to talent planning, down to evaluating individual job listings, Pullen added. 

Instead of automatically looking to replace a departing employee as soon as possible, HR should ask, “Do we still need this role based on where we’re going this year?” he said. You may find that the job description needs to be adjusted, or perhaps the headcount can be moved elsewhere in the organization to support new strategic priorities.

A Lack of Strategy Leads to Conflicting Priorities

Misalignment between an organization’s goals and those of its HR department can create a ripple effect of inefficiency and frustration. When HR operates without a clear alignment to business priorities, it not only exhausts teams but also leaves critical opportunities untapped, Pullen said.

Pullen invited the audience to imagine an HR executive in the retail sector visiting a company store and being frustrated by a lack of speedy service. That executive might be motivated to change how the organization trains associates to provide better customer service based on that experience. But if the brand’s success is built on low prices, not quality service, costly service training could have a negligible impact on the brand’s perception, Pullen said. 

Not only does this sort of misaligned initiative waste resources, but it can also confuse and exhaust employees who can’t be sure what truly matters, he explained.

Winning Starts with Clarity and Focus

Pullen identified three critical steps that he has seen organizations reliably use to drive strategic alignment:

• Achieve clarity on goals. Real alignment begins with understanding the goals of the organization. HR leaders need to understand what “winning” looks like to their CEO, Pullen urged. HR leaders should connect with their CEO or a trusted proxy, such as the chief operating officer, to clarify how HR operations can connect to organizational priorities. Leaders should ask pointed questions about the organization’s vision but also seek to understand how that vision should translate into deliverable outcomes in the near future, he said.

• Drive functional collaboration. Once the broader goals are clear, HR must collaborate with the functions that are most responsible for driving organizational success, such as customer success or innovation teams, and agree on a common approach. Instead of every division growing as fast as possible, Pullen said different divisions need to “grow in the same direction.”

• Tell a clear and compelling story. Leaders shouldn’t be satisfied with distilling a strategy into a dense, data-heavy slide deck no one will ever read, Pullen said. Your strategy should be developed into a clear, concise narrative that the average worker can understand. He advised that the test of a good strategic narrative is whether employees could explain the strategy to a family member who was unfamiliar with the business and have them understand. This narrative is crucial for helping employees internalize the strategy and turn it into action. “The reality is, if we cannot translate our strategy into a story, it’s not going to enable the level of excellent execution that we want,” he said.

HR leaders need to challenge the idea that HR is simply a manager of processes, Pullen added. HR needs to be seen as a strategic influencer if it’s going to drive meaningful organizational change. 

“Our strategy shouldn't be living in aspiration. It shouldn’t just be a list of HR activities. It needs to live in how and what people are working on,” he said.