How 15Five Can Help with Strategic HR Initiatives and Management

Genevieve Michaels

Content Writer

If your HR team’s days are mostly filled with resolving employee disputes, getting forms filled out when onboarding employees, and meeting with leadership to learn which aspects of company culture they’re expected to trickle down over the next quarter, your HR department might be stuck in the past.

Many organizations still expect their HR department to exclusively handle these administrative tasks, without much input on other business functions. But others are proactively making a transition from administrative HR to a new approach: strategic HR.

In strategic HR, HR leaders become important partners in every aspect of an organization’s operations. They become a trusted advisor on productivity, turnover, and other aspects of managing the organization’s workforce. They provide key context in strategic initiatives, help identify leadership gaps, and prepare the organization for the future.

The shift from administrative to strategic HR can be a game-changer, but it can’t happen without a solid foundation. That foundation involves modern performance management tools that integrate seamlessly with existing HRIS systems, advanced data analytics, and continuous feedback cycles.

A dedicated performance management platform like 15Five has everything HR teams need to make that shift and become the strategic partners they need to be.

Key takeaways:

Strategic HR enhances business performance by aligning HR functions with company goals.
15Five’s HRIS integration ensures efficiency by centralizing HR data and workflows.
Real-time feedback and analytics empower HR leaders to make data-driven decisions.
Goal-setting tools drive employee engagement and productivity by aligning individual and organizational objectives.
Investing in strategic HR planning with 15Five leads to long-term workforce success.

The importance of HR as a strategic business partner

Strategic HR is an approach to human resources management that turns HR departments from an administrative function into a strategic partner for leadership and other departments.

So, what does this partnership achieve in practice?

HR professionals sit at the table when important strategic decisions are made. They have a hand in guiding overall business strategy, bringing their perspective on what employees and managers need to perform at their best, how organizations can retain their best talent, and how important skill gaps can be filled. They’re not just rolling out strategies handed down by leadership; they have an active role in building them.

Why strategic HR?

A better question might be, “Why not stick with traditional HR?”

Because organizations can’t afford to.

Employee engagement, retention, and upskilling have massive stakes. When replacing an employee can cost up to two times their yearly salary, keeping your top performers engaged is a massive priority. But traditionally, HR professionals have been reacting to employee engagement and retention issues rather than proactively planning to mitigate them. Strategic HR doesn’t just give them the tools to build the initiatives they need to do that; it gets them buy-in for those initiatives organization-wide.

Strategic HR makes HR professionals partners in strategy rather than just a department for handling administrative tasks trickling down from that strategy. It allows your HR function to tackle important issues proactively with more buy-in from the rest of the organization and it gives them the tools to prove the success of their efforts.

Add in the fact that HR priorities can change on a dime throughout the year, and a strategic HR function with the agility to pivot as needed becomes essential.

The benefits of making HR a strategic business partner

Administrative tasks will still be part of an HR professional’s day-to-day. But shifting their priority from that sort of work to strategy comes with significant advantages for the organization:

Better alignment throughout business functions: When everyone in the organization isn’t working towards the same objectives, employee engagement and fulfillment suffer. A strategic HR function can reinforce the company’s mission and values, aligning departments.
Organizational agility: Market conditions, innovation from competitors, and even evolving legislation can all force organizations to adapt. Strategic HR plays a key role in building upskilling processes that plug skill gaps and prepare your workforce for market changes.
Increased performance across HR metrics: Whether you’re trying to enhance employee engagement, reduce turnover, or increase productivity, strategic HR brings the alignment you need to see massive improvements.
Better ROI on HR initiatives: Strategic HR gives you the buy-in your initiatives need to accomplish more with every HR dollar you spend.
A stronger bottom line: Ultimately, the increased effectiveness of your HR initiatives leads to a massive boon for the organization’s bottom line. Not only will you be spending less on recruitment, you’ll give employees everything they need to be more productive and promote innovation throughout the organization.

Strategic HR makes a massive difference for your organization, both with individual employees and across your broader strategy.

How 15Five empowers strategic HR initiatives

Strategic HR is both a state of mind and a deliberate practice. While you can make the transition to strategic HR with the platforms you already have, a dedicated performance management platform comes with significant advantages that facilitate that transition:

Integration with existing systems: A new tool shouldn’t force you to throw out everything you’re already using. A performance management system can integrate with your current tool stack to ensure a seamless flow of data.
Better data collection and analysis: How is your HR team currently collecting and analyzing data? Most still rely on a combination of spreadsheets and manual work when performance management tools can automate and streamline much of this process.
Continuous feedback cycles: Manually managing a continuous feedback cycle involves massive administrative overhead. The right tool can streamline this significantly.
Goal-setting and performance management: Setting goals and tracking progress towards them is much easier with a platform that turns raw performance data into meaningful insights.
Automation of routine tasks: HR teams are already responsible for a ton of administrative work, and performance management tools can automate your more routine tasks.

A performance management platform can be the lynchpin in your transition towards strategic HR, and no tool serves that purpose better than 15Five. Here’s why.

15Five HRIS integration and performance management tools

Your HRIS is the platform of choice for storing data, but rarely the best place to act on it. Don’t abandon the data you already have; sync it seamlessly with 15Five’s HRIS connector so you can base your strategy on hard facts.

Many HR platforms require significant IT resources or third-party consultants in order to properly integrate with your existing systems. But with 15Five, you can start syncing data from your HRIS system to your new performance management hub in just a few clicks, whether you’re using BambooHR, Salesforce, ADP, Paycor, or one of the many other integrations supported by 15Five.

Start doing more with your data in minutes with 15Five’s HRIS integrations and go from strategy to action in a fraction of the time.

Data-driven decision making with 15Five

Data-driven decisions are better decisions. But if you’re not a data analyst, turning a pile of performance metrics, employee engagement surveys, and feedback into useful insights can be an uphill battle. That’s why 15Five’s analytics tools crunch the data for you, turning people data into clear takeaways in the HR Dashboard.

Build direct causal relationships between performance management metrics and business outcomes. Find the best place to take action. Plan your initiatives around quantifiable success metrics and drive results throughout your organization.

From there, your data feeds overview dashboards both HR teams and executives can use to plan better initiatives and orient their strategy.

Continuous feedback and employee development

Feedback works best when it’s a two-way street. Managers should feel equipped to provide timely, constructive feedback to their direct reports, while employees should feel empowered to evaluate their manager’s performance. 15Five’s engagement surveys and feedback tools keep feedback flowing throughout your organization, while also turning it into useful data for your HR strategy.

Do you know what drives employee engagement in your organization? Or what you’d need to do if you noticed a downward trend? 15Five’s engagement surveys use machine learning to cross-reference your employee engagement data with results from over 600,000 surveys so you can identify specific issues and build a better action plan.

With 15Five, you can centralize employee engagement surveys and feedback in one platform to ensure everyone gets the feedback they need and do more with every bit of feedback.

OKR and goal-setting for workforce alignment

OKRs (objective and key results) are a useful methodology for turning broad, vague goals into actionable objectives with metrics you can track to measure progress and identify success. While you can plan these goals and track them in just about any platform, they’re even more effective when they’re built right into your performance management platform.

15Five’s OKRs and goals help managers turn overarching company goals into objectives for their direct reports, track progress on those objectives, and identify challenges before they throw everyone off track. Built-in weekly reviews mean managers and employees alike always have an up-to-date perspective on how they’re contributing to their objectives.

Be the best strategic partner you can be with 15Five

Strategic HR allows HR teams to progress from managers of administrative tasks into the partners organizations need to improve productivity, reduce employee turnover, and enhance employee engagement. But beyond just pushing these metrics in the right direction, strategic HR puts HR leaders at the table for every major decision, meaning the workforce perspective is built right into the organization’s strategy.

Making the shift to strategic HR isn’t just a change in mindset and processes. You also need fully-integrated tools that support your strategy. 15Five is the performance management platform that can get you there. Book a demo to find out how.