When HR management and your organizational culture and leadership are pulling in opposite directions, it’s like trying to sail against the wind—you spend more energy and effort and move slower toward your destination. But when you align your HR department’s people strategies with your company’s vision and mission, you ensure that everything HR does goes toward supporting your organization’s success.
From talent acquisition, retention, and compensation to workforce planning, legal compliance, and conflict resolution, HR leaders have the power to create a healthy organization that can succeed in its strategic goals while staying true to its values.
Let’s explore how leadership impacts organizations and the myriad ways you as an HR leader contribute directly to your organization’s success and growth.
How does leadership impact an organization?
Strong leadership is a make-or-break factor for organizations of any size and shape. Without it, your operations can easily become directionless and misaligned with your values, culture, and overall strategy. Across the entire corporate hierarchy, leadership determines:
Talent Retention and Team Morale
Great and motivated employees are more likely to stay in an organization if their leaders are inspiring and supportive. Effective leaders boost team spirit and contribute to a shared sense of purpose that keeps your best employees satisfied with their roles and the organization.
Conflict Resolution and Communication
Conflict is an inevitable part of any organization. Strong leaders set an example for communicating transparently and constructively to resolve disagreements.
Change Management and Adaptability
Organizations change. Employees and leaders come and go, economic conditions drive strategy shifts, and mergers and acquisitions can turn an entire corporate environment upside-down. Strong leaders foster an adaptable and resilient workforce and guide your organization through seismic shifts in its structure, circumstances, and goals.
Succession Planning
The great leaders of today pave the way for the great leaders of tomorrow. Your organization’s leaders are responsible for recognizing talent for leadership in your direct reports and grooming them to take future leadership roles.
Customer Relations
Leadership sets the standards for how employees treat customers and clients. Leaders have the power to model a customer-centric approach that prioritizes great customer experience and satisfaction by demonstrating it in their values and actions.
How can human resource management contribute to a company’s success?
Think about all of the things your HR department does every day to keep your organization running smoothly, maintain a satisfied and motivated workforce, and drive strategies that move you closer to your short-term and long-term goals. The multifaceted approach your HR department takes to creating a thriving and sustainable corporate environment, from the strategic management of talent to risk mitigation, helps your business succeed and grow.
The role your HR leadership plays in driving success and growth includes:
Attracting and Retaining Top Talent
As an HR leader, you set the standards and devise effective strategies for recruiting high-caliber candidates for both open positions and filling your talent pipeline. Once you’ve brought a great new hire onboard, your leadership and culture determine how likely they are to remain a part of your workforce in the long run.
Optimizing Budgets
HR leadership shoulders the responsibility of maximizing your organization’s return on investment in its talent management practices through spearheading cost-effective and efficient processes and strategies.
Engaging Employees
As an HR leader, the strategies you undertake to promote positive and healthy employee engagement maximize your organization’s return on its investment in employees and improve its positive reputation.
Improving Organizational Performance
HR management has another role to play in contributing toward business success—improving the performance of the people driving its success. Your department’s workforce performance management strategies help identify room for improvement as well as strategies to drive further workplace efficiency.
Ensuring Labour Law and Regulatory Compliance
One of the most important roles HR management, leadership and culture play in your organization’s growth is preventing non-compliance with labour laws or industry regulations from derailing your strategies and scuttling your growth plans. HR leadership informs your department’s attentiveness to ensuring compliance with laws and regulations and mitigating the risks of damage done to your organization that can inhibit or reverse its growth.
How to Influence Culture in the Workplace
We’ve answered the question, “How does HR contribute to business success?” As it turns out, HR management not only contributes but is essential to it. One of the most fundamental roles HR leadership in particular plays here is in leading the way to shape a healthier culture.
You serve as architects of your organization’s values, behaviours, and norms. Through strategic initiatives and consistent communication, they set the tone for the entire workforce.
The HR Leader’s Roles in Workplace Culture Transformations
A healthy culture for your organization as a whole flows from positive, strong HR leadership and culture. But where do you begin when you see an organizational culture in need of transformation?
As an HR leader, understanding leadership impact is the first step toward knowing what power you have to transform your organizational culture and leadership as a whole. From there, you have the power to be a champion of cultural transformation—identifying what needs to be changed, building a clear vision and strategy for attaining the organization’s desired culture, and promoting awareness for activities and initiatives that will shape that culture.
You set the standards for your HR policies, procedures and practices to align with the organization’s desired culture and fix any existing processes that may get in the way. You also have the power and the responsibility to be an advocate and coach to your fellow leaders beyond the HR department and ensure they buy into your strategic goals.
Finally, you have the power to implement change management strategies such as employee recognition and reward systems that minimize resistance and encourage participation in your cultural transformation. You may be the HR leader, but at the end of the day, transforming company culture is a group effort.
Lead the Way in Game Changing HR Leadership With HR Velocity™
Senior HR professionals have a critical role to play in driving organizational success. But even when you have a clear picture of how leadership impacts organizations, it can be difficult to figure out where to start.
Fortunately, you don’t have to figure it out alone.
Many senior HR leaders end up feeling like they’re all alone on an island, but we in the HR industry all understand how important community is to achieving our goals. With hands-on learning and in-person networking experiences held every other month, our HR Velocity™ program connects you with other senior HR professionals and some of the biggest names in HR thought leadership.
You’ll find answers to your most crucial questions about organizational culture and leadership and learn together with and from your peers how to lead for organizational success. Apply today.