Okay... So Now What? When HR Realizes It's Not Aligned to the Business
- Eric Martin
- 6 hours ago
- 2 min read
It's a question that has surfaced in every corner of HR over the last few years — the growing realization that HR strategy and the programs it designs and delivers need to be anchored in business objectives. Not adjacent to them. Integrated into them.
Making that point is the easy part. The harder conversation — and the one most organizations aren't prepared for — is what comes next.
In the video below, Meklen Managing Director Eric Martin responds to a question that gets to the heart of this challenge: "If an HR team realizes its programs aren't connected to business outcomes, where do they start, and how do they know what needs to change?"
The clip is a segment of a much broader 15-minute response to what is ultimately a massive and complex question. The topic may seem self-intuitive at this point — but awareness of the problem is not the same as addressing the underlying issue. And the "what's next" is where most HR teams get stuck.
The path forward has a specific sequence — and most organizations get it backwards.
As Martin explains, the primary segments of the journey are consistent regardless of the organization:
First, identify the business objectives. Then, understand the business strategy designed to meet those objectives. From there, assess the organization's current capability to advance that strategy.
And then — critically — forget everything that the HR function is today.
Instead, conceptualize the HR function that would need to exist to align business capability to business strategy. Only after that exercise is complete can an organization begin to understand and map the path from where HR is now to where it needs to move.
In most cases — and far too often — organizations start from the opposite direction.
They look at what HR is doing today, how it's structured, how it operates, and then try to figure out how to shift it within the context of that current state. This approach works in the wrong direction, and will likely lead to energy, effort, and disruption that doesn't bring the organization where it ultimately needs to go.
The transformation required in these situations is typically large, takes time, and is highly disruptive. But these are the changes that set the right foundation going forward.
Watch the full clip below.
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