Agility and Strategic Partnership of the HR Function
Financial, health, and geopolitical crises and instabilities compel companies and their HR function to increased agility. Your structure, business lines, and environment are constantly evolving. How can the HR function become and remain a strategic partner within your organization? This approach covers several dimensions: organization, business processes, HRIS architecture, change management, and business case.
Althéa supports you in defining your target model by addressing the following questions:
- What challenges must the HR function address?
- Which levers should be prioritized?
- Organization: Shared service centers or local teams? Specialized or multi-skilled managers?
- Processes: Global harmonization or adaptation to local specificities? Process digitalization?
- Tools: CORE HR architecture or payroll system as the data master? Integrated, best of domain, or best of breed? What contribution can AI, RPA and machine learning make to the HRIS?
- How do your practices and performance compare with market standards?
- How to effectively digitalize and build an agile HRIS?
- How can developments be prioritized to secure change and deliver results quickly?
The HRIS master plan defines the scope of your transformation, leveraging your development drivers and reducing potential barriers. It is a crucial decision-making tool for clarifying the target, designing the transformation roadmap, and allocating the necessary resources for HR transformation.
Optimize your HR function with a tailored master plan!
We support you every step of the way.
The main stages of our support:
- Framing the reflection:
Understand the context, meet decision-makers, map HR challenges.
Mobilize stakeholders to initiate the reflection. - Evaluating the existing:
Analyze organization, processes, tools, skills, governance.
Map practices, evaluate costs, identify strengths and optimization levers. - Designing trajectories:
Compare with market practices, analyze possible scenarios.
Use SWOT analyses, business case, macro-planning. - HRIS Urbanization:
Build a coherent, data-centric, and interoperable architecture. - Supporting decision-making:
Choose the target scenario, detail the operational and economic trajectory of the project.
Key figures
master plans
delivered each year for our clients
of completed scoping assignments
lead to the identification of projects with fast, positive ROI
of transformation projects
include an international dimension.
References
For one of the leaders in specialized retail
103,000 employees
Our client, after strong international growth coupled with very local employee management, needed to rethink its organization, processes, and tools to meet the challenges of the retail sector and foster the attractiveness and retention of future talent. The mission accomplished allowed for:
- Knowing the digital maturity of each process at a global level
- Imagining tomorrow’s HR ecosystem, which would bring more coherence to HR activities and greater visibility into employees.
The imagined target ecosystem was intended to enable the digitalization of certain key processes for the development of retail talent in a competitive environment.
For one of the leading engineering consulting firms
20,000 employees
As part of implementing a new corporate strategy, our client chose to change its global organization and needed to align its HR organization, processes, and tools. We supported them in writing the roadmap for their HR project and operating it.
To do this, we have:
- Conducted a diagnosis across different dimensions to identify initiatives to prioritize and the maturity to consider how to deploy them.
- Imagined tomorrow’s HR ecosystem, which would bring more coherence to HR activities and greater visibility into employees.
The trajectory must allow for the alignment of key HR operational elements of the company to ensure data mastery for management needs, but above all, the company’s ability to provide a structured and effective framework during external growth.
For one of the leaders in the agri-food industry
3,000 employees
Following the unbundling of the company from an international group, our client needed to build its future HRIS from scratch within an 18-month timeframe (TSA). We supported them in building their trajectory to guarantee control of this constrained schedule and to provide the HR function with all the IT solutions necessary to operate through:
- A Payroll service solution in BPO with a flattening of RACI responsibilities to ensure its mastery.
- A robust Time and Attendance Management (GTA) solution with a strong challenge related to the management of industrial sites.
- A simple Talent Management solution to operate interview processes, training, and recruitment.
Our knowledge of the market and project support enabled us to build a controlled trajectory with our client in terms of deadlines.
Challenges
Designing an Agile Roadmap
To remain adaptable to an evolving environment and implement a quick wins strategy to rapidly make the transformation concrete and visible.
Building a Collaborative Transformation Plan
Supported by all stakeholders, ensuring buy-in and anticipating and securing change management.
Valuing and Continuously Steering the Transformation
Place value analysis brought by the transformation at the center of the approach and ensure its long-term management.
Contacts
Frequently Asked Questions About the HR Master Plan
How do you develop an HR master plan?
Examine current processes
Rethink challenges and objectives: the HR master plan constitutes the foundational element of HR transformation. It establishes a precise assessment of the organization’s expectations regarding the HR function and allows for the prioritization of strategic challenges. In alignment with this HR master plan, the HRIS component must orchestrate the harmonization between HR organization, processes, and tools with the company’s strategic objectives. This structuring approach avoids simply reproducing the existing: it requires rethinking the HR target operating model based on the company’s new expectations and the regulatory framework in force.
This comprehensive diagnosis of the current HR situation within the company or community will lay the foundations for a true human resources strategy, taking into account the human dimension beyond purely financial aspects.
Identify company strengths and weaknesses
The diagnosis highlights the company’s assets: HR expertise, quality of tools, attractive employer brand. It also reveals weaknesses: time-consuming manual processes, redundancies, obsolete tools, failing communication, and many others.
Map skills
The skills audit provides an overview of existing know-how and identifies critical expertise to preserve. This analysis highlights training needs and anticipates the skills required for the future.
Collect relevant data
The diagnosis relies on quantitative data (figures, statistics, indicators) and qualitative data (interviews, questionnaires). Comparison with sector practices allows the company to position itself within its competitive environment. This first step lays the foundations for the HR master plan. Its quality determines the relevance of the strategic objectives that will be defined subsequently!
How can the master plan be adapted to the company’s needs?
The elaboration of HR objectives cannot be done in isolation! It must directly stem from the company’s overall strategy and business challenges. If the company aims for international growth, HR will need to focus on attracting international profiles and developing mobility. For an innovation strategy, the emphasis will be on recruiting specialized talent and implementing advanced training programs. This alignment phase requires in-depth discussions with general management and operational teams to fully understand their expectations and constraints regarding employment, internal, or external promotion.
Build measurable and realistic objectives
Translating strategic orientations into concrete objectives is a crucial step. Each objective must meet SMART criteria to guarantee its effectiveness.
For example, rather than vaguely aiming for “improving employee experience,” we will define “increasing employee satisfaction rate from 65% to 80% within 18 months, measured by a quarterly survey.” These precise objectives allow teams to be mobilized around clear and achievable targets, while facilitating the monitoring of progress made.
Define a relevant measurement system
Managing the master plan requires the implementation of relevant and reliable indicators. Beyond classic KPIs (turnover, absenteeism, cost per recruitment), it is important to integrate more qualitative indicators such as the level of team engagement or the quality of recruitment. These indicators should be few but strategic, easy to measure and understand by all. Regular monitoring will allow for adjusting actions if necessary and demonstrating the added value of the HR function.
Rethink HR organization and processes
HR transformation primarily involves an intelligent redesign of processes. It involves identifying major pain points, eliminating tasks without added value, and streamlining decision-making circuits. This optimization must be based on a precise analysis of the needs of end-users (employees and managers) to ensure their buy-in. The digitalization of administrative processes frees up time for more strategic missions such as supporting managers or developing talent.
Deploy a coherent digital ecosystem
The choice of technological tools is crucial for the success of the master plan. It is not about adopting the latest trends but selecting solutions that meet the company’s real needs.
Priority must be given to integrated, easy-to-use, and scalable tools. The HRIS often forms the backbone of this ecosystem, complemented by specialized solutions for recruitment, training, or talent management. Interoperability between these different tools is crucial to avoid re-entry and ensure data reliability.
Prepare for collective upskilling
The success of the transformation largely depends on the teams’ ability to adopt new tools and methods. An ambitious skills development plan must be built, covering both technical aspects (mastery of tools) and soft skills (consulting, change management support). Managers, as primary HR actors, must receive particular attention to help them fully exercise their role in team management.
How can you monitor the evolution of the HR master plan?
Monitoring the HR master plan requires the implementation of a strategic dashboard structured around 4-5 major axes: HR performance, employee engagement, operational excellence, and digital transformation.
For each axis, it is essential to select a limited number of truly significant indicators. For example, rather than multiplying KPIs, we will prioritize key indicators such as average recruitment time, turnover rate of key talents, or the ROI of training. Automation of data collection via the HRIS and other HR tools provides reliable and up-to-date data without increasing the administrative burden.
Implement dynamic governance
The management of the master plan relies on a clear and agile governance structure. At the heart of the system, a steering committee meets monthly with key stakeholders: HRD, business representatives, IT director, and financial director. This committee analyzes progress, makes strategic decisions, and arbitrates any priority conflicts. Thematic working groups meet more frequently to address operational aspects.
Evaluate the impact of actions taken
Regular analysis of results allows for quick identification of deviations from set objectives. This evaluation should not be limited to quantitative aspects but also integrate qualitative elements such as user satisfaction or the adoption of new tools. Regular flash surveys among employees and managers help gather their feedback and identify areas for improvement. Calculating the ROI of different actions helps prioritize future investments and demonstrate the added value of the HR function.
Adapt the roadmap with agility
The master plan is not a fixed document but a living tool that must adapt to changes in the company, its environment, and its policy.
Collected feedback allows for adjusting priorities and reorienting certain actions if necessary. The important thing is to maintain the strategic course while demonstrating flexibility in implementation. Each quarter, an in-depth review allows for validating necessary adjustments and launching new initiatives based on emerging needs. This continuous monitoring approach not only guarantees the proper execution of the master plan but also contributes to its progressive enrichment. It demonstrates the concrete contribution of HR to the company’s performance, its personnel, and maintains the dynamic of transformation and integration of new management practices.
