Employees - their knowledge, experience, skills, innovative ideas, concepts are all valued possessions within an organization. An organization must understand its employees well to expect the best from them. Human capital management refers to developing strategies to hire, manage, train, develop and retain top performing employees.

Human Capital management includes the following:

• Recruiting the best available talent
• Career development Plans for employees
• Coaching and mentoring employees
• Motivate employees to deliver their level best
• Developing performance management strategies

Strategic human capital management refers to alignment of human capital strategies with the goals, objectives, mission of an organization through extensive planning, analysis and management of human capital plans.

Human Capital Planning helps an organization to design human capital policies, strategies, programs to increase efficiency of employees and help them accomplish goals and objectives of organization. Implementation of human capital plan helps human resource professionals to hire the right candidate, train him, upgrade his/her skills, manage him/her and also retain an employee.

Let us go through key components of a strategic human capital plan:

• Clarity in Direction
• Clarity in human capital goals
• Strategies/Policies to accomplish already defined goals and objectives
• A foolproof implementation Plan
• An accountability system

Let us go through each of the component in detail:

Clarity in Direction

This component involves the complete understanding of an organization. It is essential to understand the budgetary constraints, vision of an organization, requirements and expectations of stakeholders, customers, senior management, needs of current workforce to achieve a clear strategic direction.

Discuss and collect data from stakeholders, customers, employees to understand their needs and expectations. It will help you define the vision of an organization and its workforce. Try to analyze the current state of employees and where they would exactly like to see themselves and organization two years down the line. Such an analysis will help you understand the gaps in the system.

Clarity in Human Capital Goals

Understanding the gap between current and desired state helps in developing human capital goals which would not only increase the overall efficiency of employees but also make them feel attached towards the organization.

Set human capital goals such as:

• Only the best talent should be hired.
• Developing realistic induction programs for new employees.
• Continuously develop skills of workforce in line with the requirements.
• Retaining hard working and dedicated employees

Strategies/Policies to Accomplish Already Defined Goals and Objectives

The next step once goals and objectives are set is to design strategies and policies to achieve the same. Human resource professionals should design long term plans to ensure employees are satisfied with their jobs and deliver their level best.

Delegate responsibilities to employees as per their skills, educational qualification, expertise and interest areas. Assign a team leader. Team Managers should take proper feedbacks from team members to monitor their performances. Know what your team members are upto? Managers must interact with their team members on a regular basis to understand their expectations from the system and also to keep a track on their growth in the organization.

Implementation Plan

Implementation Plan includes the actions and steps required to implement human capital plans.

Successful implementation plans include:

• Allocating a responsible resource for the same
• Setting a timeframe/deadline for implementing human capital plans
• Allocating budgets for the same

Accountability System

No process or plan is successful unless and until it is managed well. It is essential to keep a track. Accountability system involves measuring the success and failure of an implemented plan. It also helps you to analyze the loopholes in the plan (if any) and ways to rectify the same.