Chapter 6: Building Your Strategy

Overview

Understanding internal labor market dynamics is the starting point for building a human capital strategy. Like the business strategy it serves, a human capital strategy is all about the future. It is a plan for creating future value through the right workforce and the right workforce management tactics. Building these things depends on the answers to three questions:

1. Where are we now? What is our workforce, what internal labor market dynamics is it experiencing, and what are our most influential workforce management practices?

2. Where do we want to go? The business strategy seeks to achieve a specific vision. What are the implications of that vision for human capital?

3. What creates value? What workforce attributes and what human capital practices drive business success?

Knowing where a company is now and where it needs to be while closing the gaps between the two is what the process of building a human capital strategy is all about.