Q.1) Write a Note on 5 Steps to Strategic Talent Planning?

The 5 Steps to Strategic Talent Planning

Recruiting rarely is based on any sort of strategic plan. For most organizations, recruiting is a tactical operation – a series of things that take place that result in qualified people getting hired. It is mostly reactive, and few recruiters have the time or charter to look forward more than a few weeks. To ensure that your organization has a chance at hiring the best people – and to successfully operate in a global, competitive environment, organizations – you will need a strategic plan coupled to appropriate resources and tactics. Here’s a quick overview of the five essential first steps needed to put this plan together and to begin making it operational:

The five key steps in strategic talent planning

Step 1: Talent Plan

Workforce or talent planning is the first and hardest step. It means deeply understanding the organization’s business goals and the competitive environment the organization functions in. It is a combination of understanding and predicating demand, while at the same time being educated and aware of the talent supply situation from all the sources that are available. This step needs to be far more than simply listing the jobs projected in the annual budgeting process and factoring in turnover. It is an evolving process, as opposed to an annual event, and is the most dynamic and critical stage of any strategic process.

Step 2: Image and Brand

It is not true that if you build a great strategy or a great organization, people will necessarily flock to your doors. Getting people aware of your organization is a tough job. It requires having a consistent communication process as well as a plan to raise general awareness through advertisements, promotions, or by getting listed as a "best place to work." You have to be able to answer questions like, "What makes your company different or unique?" or "Why would I want to come work for you?" Not only should you have answers to these questions, but you should also make sure your advertising, web presence (which is essential), and overall corporate advertising support this image. This has to be an organization-wide effort. It takes time and an accumulation of messages to be effective. One or two advertisements or a handful of posters will not do it.

Step 3: Sourcing Methods

Develop a multi-faceted sourcing strategy. Embrace active candidates who are responding to your brand and image-building messages, but maintain the capacity and skills to tap passive candidates. Decide based on past experience what works best for you in locating candidates, and then build those sourcing channels to the max. Make sure you are using referrals from current employees, your network of professionals, web-based search, your own web site and also develop methods to keep in touch with potential candidates that you have no current position for but might have at some later time.

Step 4: Screening and Assessing Candidates

Are you going to invest heavily in educating managers in behavioral interviewing? Are the recruiters going to be the main screeners, or will you use testing and other tools? What role will the Internet play, if any? Are you going to look into using web-based tests? How much will you rely on candidates screening themselves out or in? What role does the hiring managers play in screening and assessing, and what are the differences between what you do and they do? This is an area where there can be great improvement with reasonable effort, but where things are still done mostly the way they have always been done. A focus on automating screening to some degree reduces the volume of candidates and actually raises candidate satisfaction.

Step 5: Market and Communicate

Candidates want to be in the know about their status and prospects. They seek out feedback and information. Your organization’s website is an invaluable tool, but you will also need to develop systems to communicate with candidates personally and to send out newsletters and emails. Probably all the people you need at one time or another sent a resume or expressed interest. They were most likely told that there were no current openings. Would it no’t be wonderful if you could actually stay in touch with those people and let them know when there is an open position? That’s what CRM (candidate relationship management) systems can do. Unfortunately, they are not yet generally available or optimized for recruiting. But ask your ATS vendor what they doing about this and urge them to provide you the tools you need to effectively keep qualified candidates interested in you. Make sure that whatever systems you choose fit your strategy and make economic sense

A few other things to keep in mind:

· Make sure all managers and recruiters have a simple system for deciding on a candidate. As you know, speed is the real differentiator today, and the recruiter/manager who moves the most quickly will usually get the candidate. Eliminate unnecessary approvals, and make sure your selection criteria are clear to avoid slowing down the process.

· If you are a decentralized firm, work out a system for who owns what. If you all agree together then the areas of dispute will be limited. The rule I use is that the central or

corporate function should set standards and establish corporate-wide systems. Local offices should participate in that process and have great autonomy on the day-to-day stuff. They can supplement broad image and branding activities with local advertising within the bounds of an agreement you all make with one another.

These initial steps and processes are what enable the back-end activities of scheduling, interviewing, making offers, and on-boarding.

Q.2 Discuss Different Retention Strategies In detail.

Retention Strategies

Our research revealed six dimensions critical to influencing retention. These dimensions must be infused into three major components that must be in place and aligned for an organization to achieve excellent retention:

1. Manager Retention Practices: Managers play a significant role in influencing employee commitment and retention. A number of manager retention practices increase the probability that an employee will remain committed to an organization over time. These retention practices represent the manager’s actual behaviors on the job and often have little to do with the amount of classroom training they have received. In fact, the best retention practices are not the same as the standard menu for good organizational management. Most organizations ask managers to make productivity the highest priority, underscored by pressures to fulfill “obligations to our investors.” Good retention practices focus not only on what the employee is contributing to the company but also on how the manager can create a climate that fosters employee retention and commitment. While enlightened leaders balance the needs of the organization with the needs of the employee, the truth is that such leaders are rare. Though managers play a very crucial role in retention, they do not control all of the factors that affect attrition. Therefore, the second component represents the organization’s responsibility in the retention equation.

2. Organizational Retention Systems: A number of organizational systems and processes influence retention. Some are evident, such as pay scale equity. Others are less obvious, making their impact on retention often unrecognized. For example, evidence shows an organization’s recruiting systems and processes can significantly impact retention ratios. These systems support the manager retention practices and increase the likelihood that employees are committed and performing at their best.

3. Measurement and Accountability: This component, closely linked to the others, ensures retention becomes an ongoing priority. Many organizations do not even know what their attrition rates are. And others often lack enough data to pinpoint where the problem is most severe or to uncover the specific causes. For example, organizations that measure attrition sometimes do not track it by length of service. That is a mistake, because tenure patterns of departing employees can reveal valuable information on the potential causes of attrition. Additionally, many organizations only track attrition by

“manager” or “non-manager.” This simple segmentation does not provide the refined information the organization needs. Measurement goes hand in hand with accountability. Organizations must hold their managers personally accountable for retention. Likewise, they must hold their corporate staff accountable for developing, maintaining and upgrading their retention systems. When retention is seen as an “HR issue,” it often falls to the bottom of the managers’ priority list. When it becomes one of their business goals, however, it takes on a new perspective. An example comes from one of the world’s top hardware manufacturers. In a recent meeting, the new director of the telephone technical support group presented four new business goals to his management team. The first three were:

1. Fulfill Technical Support Contract Obligations

2. Maintain the Highest Level of Customer Satisfaction

3. Manage Costs Aggressively

And the fourth goal is to retain employees. After some discussion, the entire management team realized they would not achieve the other goals if they could not achieve their retention goals. In another division of the same company, the senior managers’ personal bonuses are calculated on how well they retain their best people. This type of accountability drives ongoing motivation to examine and enhance their personal retention practices.

Different types of talent will look for different things which is why talent can’t all be treated in the same way with a “one fix meets all” solution. This makes it difficult for HR but in the war for talent flexibility is going to be essential.

· Have an audit of your talent’s needs and keep them up to date

· Audit past talent to see what they say about you as an employer

· Identify the cost of replacement (include opportunity costs)

· Detail the benefits of working for your organization

· Manage the talent’s career and development effectively

· Train managers in managing top talent

· Monitor and reward line managers for retaining talent

· Identify talent for promotion

· Have a good internal and external “E-image” to attract talent

Why top talent is attracted to a business:

· The work is interesting and challenging

· There are promotion opportunities

· The company will look good on the CV

· High performers are recruited and looked after

· There is a boss or mentor that is admired

· The company has a good reputation and is a strong performer

· There is long-term commitment to top talent

· Culture and values are liked

· There is trust in the senior management

· Top talent is recognised and rewarded for their individual and team contribution

Q.3 Explain Lore’s talent maturity model.

The Lore Talent Management Maturity Model

The Lore Talent Management Maturity Model (Lore TMM) is a diagnostic and prescriptive framework that allows organizations to assess the current state of their Talent Management (TM) efforts, identify what needs to be done to move to the next higher stage of practice, and develop the plans to get there. The Lore TMM used in

conjunction with Lore’s diagnostic assessments and services provides a complete Talent Management roadmap for success.

The Maturity Model itself is based on an extensive array of research covering organizational theory, technology and innovation adoption, and talent management practice and systems. From this research, Lore has developed and validated a four-stage model of TM system growth. The following graphic illustrates the four developmental stages of a corporate Talent Management system. Associated with the progression from one stage of development to the next higher stage of development is a specific crisis that must be successfully resolved in order for the enterprise to advance (adapted from McClure, New Entrepreneur Guidebook, 1998 and Adizes, Corporate Lifecycles: How and why corporations grow and die and what to do about it, 1988). The initial crisis is related to gaining organizational commitment. When enough commitment is achieved, the new initiative starts, but a crisis of leadership must be overcome before progressing to Expansion. When a strong leader has emerged, the Talent Management system can progress to a stage of Professionalism. Organizations in this stage face the crisis of autonomy, standardizing and ensuring consistent quality while allowing leaders at all levels to lead. Many efforts falter at this point, remaining disconnected from the business. Lastly, before reaching the Best Practice stage, organizations must address the crisis of control. Addressing this crisis means that the entire organization is pulling in the same direction, so that the Talent Management system is finally contributing its true value to the business.

Talent Management Maturity Model (TMMM) Crisis Definitions

Crisis of Commitment: The initiative idea dies if no one makes a real commitment to it. A real commitment means giving of one’s self and/or vital resources to pursue the new idea (initiative). Equally important as the commitment of time and resources is the reason for making the commitment. At this stage, the founding leaders are committed to the dream, the burning vision, of making the initiative a success and seeing it widely appreciated. The founding leaders have to have desire in order to sell the dream and get others committed and involved. Once this happens, the initiative can become a reality and enters the New Initiative stage.

Crisis of Leadership: The founding leaders are usually risk takers with little or no patience for administration. These founding leaders directly supervise or do everything themselves. The founding leaders are the initiative. As the initiative grows, it becomes a

mix of dreamers and doers, without many checkers and organizers. Only when strong managers emerge or are brought in will the initiative be ready for the Expansion stage.

Crisis of Autonomy: The new leaders flex their muscles and head off in new directions. They decide things differently than the founders would have. Mistakes happen, and the founding leaders feel blindsided and threatened. Control is pulled back to the founding leaders, but eventually, delegation returns. If there are no guidelines in place, managers cannot use their delegated power without getting crosswise with other parts of the organization. The implementation of policies, procedures, and guidelines will be necessary to ensure that all parts of the organization are headed in the same, correct direction and allows the initiative to enter the Professionalism stage.

Crisis of Control: No amount of professional glue (i.e., policies, procedures, and guidelines) can hold human nature in check forever. Strong leaders will want to run their own shows. The initiative will require better coordination in order to rise to the Best Practice stage. This means that coordination must be addressed structurally, through resource allocation, and reward/incentive alignment.

The resulting stages of Talent Management system development, from New Initiative to Best Practice, are used in the Lore Talent Management Maturity Model to organize the activities that represent normal TM activities at that stage of development. Lore’s research has identified three success factors that a comprehensive TM system must address: Organizational Support Conditions, Talent Management Utilization and Talent Management Activities. In each of these strands are critical components that must exist in the TM system in order for it to be effective. So for example, within the strand of Organizational Support, the attributes of Leadership, Alignment and Infrastructure determine the success of the TM system in the organization. The Lore Model shows how each of these three attributes must change from one stage to the next in order for the TM system to move to higher levels of performance.

The table below shows the full Lore Talent Management Maturity Model. The model presents each of the four maturity levels in terms of the three organizational success factors, and identifies the critical and measurable attributes in each factor:

Maturity Stage CrisisOrganizational Support Conditions

Talent Management Utilization

Talent Management Activities

Stage 4: Best Practice

Control Leadership: Full ownership and accountability at all organizational levels, CEO and Board proactively

Metrics: Value-based metrics & ROI

Focus: Business Impact

involved

Alignment: Aligned with business strategy, goals and objectives reinforced by compensation

Uses: Talent Management efforts are part of the business fabric and evolve continuously with business

Components: Complete suite of Talent Management Components

Infrastructure: Integrated with enterprise IT systems and extensive support resources including funding

Adoption: Enterprise wide

Integration: Seamless with business execution

Stage 3: Professionalism

Autonomy Leadership: HR, Executive Sponsor, ownership and accountability at most organization levels

Metrics: Activity, Commitment, Results

Focus: TM Results

Alignment: Aligned with business strategy, customized to fit business needs

Uses: Data from TM efforts drive strategic decision making ensuring that Talent Management efforts meet business needs

Components: Most standard TM components

Infrastructure: Set of IT systems or Separate TM system, appropriate level of

Adoption: Most business units, attributes

Integration: Activities are connected and integration with business execution

support resources

has started

Leadership: HR, Some Executive Sponsorship, multiple pieces of organization

Metrics: Activity, Commitment

Focus: TM Development (developing new TM components)

Stage 2: Expansion

Leadership

Alignment: Aligned with pieces of business strategy or with units of business

Uses: Data collection from TM efforts to identify and address local and/or tactical issues

Components: Multiple components

Infrastructure: Some IT stand alone applications, some support resources

Adoption: Some business units, attributes (Early Majority)

Integration: Mostly stand alone activities, maybe some activities connected

Leadership: HR, Program Owner

Metrics: Primarily activity based

Focus: TM Activity Delivery

Stage 1: New initiative

Commitment

Alignment: Little alignment, may be “off the shelf” program activity

Uses: Data collection to identify and/or address local issues

Components: Single or a few components

Infrastructure: No or little IT, program support resources only

Adoption: Early adopters only

Integration: Little or no integration, likely a stand alone activity

Set 2

Q.1 Explain 360 Degree Feedback.

360 degree feedback

For many companies, this time of the year is often touted as “the review season”. The previous year’s financials have been determined and goals for the next year are set. Managers are juggling their priorities – trying to balance their “real work” with HR pushing them to do performance reviews. The happiest time of the year – or not, depending upon whether or not like Santa Claus, you have kept a careful list of who has been naughty and who has been nice all year long.

As a human resources manager, you understand the importance of having a strong performance management process in place. Such a process helps align individual goals with overall corporate objectives, reinforces desired behaviors and creates a more engaged workforce. But if your company is one of the many where your current performance management system consists of a word processing document that is manually collected by HR, this no longer needs to be the case. More and more small and mid-sized businesses are turning to HR technologies to improve their performance management processes. The availability of affordable, web-based solutions automating the performance management process is no longer just for very large employers

At the senior staff meeting one of the tasks we are working on is creating our own Performance Appraisal form to use in the platform for our organization. And if you think it is difficult to obtain consensus of an appraisal form in your organization, try getting 5 “HR types” to agree on one to use. But, we all agree on how important it is.

Studies show that employees value clear, consistent feedback and acknowledgement as much as they do the money. For those companies who have invested in a performance management solution, the review season is not so bad and provides a number of benefits, including:

1. Recognizes your best performers

Actual progress against performance goals is tracked so you can identify who is delivering…and who’s not

Reinforces continued positive behavior and set expectations for non-performers.

2. Provides clarity for employees

Set goals, establish timelines, track progress, and identify obstacles to communicate what’s expected of them

Give employees a clear understanding of their individual goals and how they fit into the bigger corporate picture

Provide the link between overall business objectives and employees’ day-to-day actions

3. Protect yourself legally

Provides documentation to support employment actions such as termination, demotion, or lack of compensation adjustment

4. Stabilizes your workforce

Reduces employee turnover and attrition

Q.2 Explain the role of an HR Manager in talent acquisition

Role of HR in Talent Acquisition

The worldwide market for talent management technologies is thriving. A number of factors are fueling the exponential growth: a dynamic geo-economic climate that increases focus on the workforce; a changing global labor market; and the need for organizations to transform their workforce and build a climate and culture of performance and innovation.

The impact of organizational brain drain and the fear of a global talent shortage due to an increasingly aging workforce have caused companies to focus on finding, developing and retaining superior, talented employees. That makes talent management technologies must-haves for organizations committed to developing a competitive human capital advantage. Demand for talent management solutions is pervasive throughout North America, Europe and Asia, where interest is high and adoption is brisk.

The talent management market includes HR process functionality for recruitment, performance, compensation, succession planning, learning and other capabilities around self-service, analytics and reporting. Many vendors have pursued a suite approach in an effort to leverage the data and intelligence across the various modular capabilities while others have chosen to go deep in distinct modular functionality.

It forecasts the growth of talent management technologies will nearly double by 2009 and will exceed US$4.0 billion, a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of more than 26 percent in the next four years. Based on the heavy influence of the on-demand, software-as-a-service subscription model, many organizations are attracted toward talent management solutions based on low upfront costs, limited deployment risks, and predictable pricing model. It estimates over 2300 companies worldwide adopted some

form of talent management technology in 2005. Of those companies, approximately 65 percent of those companies deployed their talent management solution in an on-demand model.

North America and Europe account for the majority of investment in talent management. Recruitment and learning categories will fuel growth in Europe because of an increasing talent shortage and focus on training and career development. North America and Europe will continue to lead spending in talent management; Asia-Pacific also will invest and spend more between 2006 and 2009.

Most attributes strong market demand in talent management to the following factors:

• Increased focus on retaining talent: High performing employees are always in demand. More than 40 percent of HR managers surveyed in a recent Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) study said turnover has increased in the past 12 months; 55 percent expect workforce retention to be a high or very high challenge for their firms in the next five years. Companies are finally starting to align pay with performance for non-sales functions to encourage high performance. Good recruiting organizations focus equally on internal candidates and external candidates. Companies have placed additional focus on building value and quality within the recruitment function. HR leaders are gaining more influence over organizational direction and value.

• Continued convergence of organizational expertise for strategic HR processes: Recruitment, compensation, performance and learning have been disparate HR (and even non-HR) functions with distinct and unrelated business outcomes. The ability to share intelligence between HR processes and minimize data redundancy is the incentive many companies need to pursue integrated talent management strategies. Organizations recognize the value of well-integrated HR processes such as learning, performance and succession management and are committing centralized resources to ensure planning and success.

• Renewed focus on acquiring and managing talent: CEOs and HR executives are recommitting to talent management. Leading companies are deploying resources and capital to talent and career development programs, including succession planning and management.

Q.3 What are the different approaches that organizations generally follow for workforce planning?

Workforce Planning

Approaches to Workforce Planning: In general, organizations can take one of three approaches to workforce planning or use a combination of the three: – “Workforce approach” examines the current workforce and occupations and

projects the number and characteristics of jobs and the number of employees needed to fill them at a specific point in the future.

– “Workload approach” focuses on the amount and type of work the organization anticipates handling at a specific point in the future, and uses this information to project the number of resources (people and skills) needed to perform that work.

– “Competency approach” identifies sets of competencies aligned with the organization’s mission, vision, and strategic goals. This approach assumes the organization has already considered workforce and workload and can focus not only on the number of people, but the competencies employees must master for organizational success.

1. Workforce Approach – profile people and occupations, and conduct workforce forecasts. With this approach, your goal is to analyze the following:  the jobs that will need to be done, the type of occupations needed to do these jobs, the number of people needed to achieve organization strategies.

The current workforce profile is a starting point to assess the workforce your organization will need in the future. Supply analysis provides the data needed for your current workforce profile. A traditional job audit also may help you get needed information. Specifically, you will need to evaluate: What jobs now exist? How many people are performing each job? What are the reporting relationships of these jobs? How essential is each job? What are the characteristics of anticipated jobs?

The next step is to project the current employee population into the future as if there were no new hires. Make projections at whatever level the organization desires, estimating the employee population over the next three to five years as if nothing were done to replace employees lost through attrition. The result will show your demand for new workers if you institute no appreciable changes in work or workload.

2. Workload Approach – assess critical work, determine processes that drive work, and forecast future workload. This approach starts with your organization’s strategic planning cycle, which will identify critical work (type and amount) the workforce must complete to achieve strategies. You will need to capture workload data such as cycle time, volume, cost, and performance measures when feasible. Your organization also may want to create flow charts for those key processes that will “drive the work” to aid in looking at efficiency and effectiveness. Your organization may decide workflow re-engineering is necessary to reduce redundancies or inefficiency, and this review will likely include considering further automation.

Workflow engineering may affect the strategies your organization uses during the planning period to project workload. You will want to consider all relevant metrics (time, speed, cost, and volume) and translate the amount of work and the time it takes to complete that work into the number of people and critical competencies needed to perform the work.

3. Competency Approach Competencies are sets of behaviors (encompassing skills, knowledge, abilities, and personal attributes) that, taken together, are critical to accomplishing successful work and achieving an organization’s strategy. Competencies represent the most critical knowledge, skills, and commitments that underlie superior performance for your organization and/or within a specific job. The competency

approach to workforce planning is futuristic and focuses on the “ideal” workforce. Competencies may be defined at several levels: Organizational: core competencies identified during strategic planning Leadership: the behaviors your organization expects all leaders to demonstrate or to develop

Functional: competencies that cascade from the core competencies and are associated with specific work functions or business units

Occupational: competencies that cascade from the core and functional competencies and then are anchored directly to the needs of a specific occupation

Individual: what each employee brings to his or her function

Team: what members of a team, in the aggregate, bring to their work

Your organization will need to determine the competency definition levels essential to ensuring critical work gets performed. Strategic planning usually provides the means to pinpoint the most critical, or core, organizational competencies for success.

Examining the Workforce’s Competency Requirements: To use the competency-based planning approach, your organization will need to examine its workforce for current and future competency requirements. During strategic planning, managers will develop core competencies at the organization level. Leadership/management, functional, and occupational competencies should flow from the core competencies and align with operational and functional work activities. Individual and team competencies are also critical components of organizational competencies. If individual competencies do not match organizational needs, your workforce planning effort will point out these gaps. You can assess current worker competencies through several ways: Performance management tools already in place 360-degree evaluation instruments the organization can develop or purchase Assessment processes designed to specifically determine employees’ current competencies, usually involving interviews with employees and supervisors.

What is a Competency Model? One way to assess competencies is with a “competency model,” which is a map to display a set of competencies that are aligned with your organization’s mission, vision, and strategic goals. These models are simple, visual representations of the most critical knowledge, skills, and behaviors that underlie and drive superior performance in an organization and/or a specific job. The competency model is future-oriented and describes an ideal workforce. The competencies that make up the model serve as the basis for HR practices in the organization since they play a key role in decisions on recruiting, employee development, personal development, and performance management.

A competency model helps an organization bridge the gap between where it is now and where it wants to be. This occurs in two ways. First, because it is based on the competencies that support the mission, vision, and goals of the organization, the competency model serves as a guide for management decisions. Second, the competency model serves as a map to guide employees toward achieving the mission of their organization and their functional areas. The result is that management and staff has a common understanding of the set of competencies important to the organization. A well-developed and documented competency model will serve as the basis for

organizational training and development activities as well as recruiting new employees with critical competencies.

The Generic Workforce Planning Model The generic model shown in Figure 1 integrates the concepts described above – workload, workforce, and competency assessment. To develop this model, we researched and evaluated many models in use by federal, state, and local government as well as the private sector.

The generic model assumes your organization has conducted strategic planning and has documented its direction, including short-term and long-term goals. One of the strengths of workforce planning is its ability to adapt to agency or departmental strategic and operational planning processes. Aligning the workforce plan with your organization’s strategies will connect your HR program to the operational needs of your organization and provide the visibility and organizational support needed for overall HR program success.

 Figure 1: Generic Workforce Planning ModelSteps in Conducting Workforce Planning

Management leadership and support are essential at all phases of workforce planning. Assuming this support is in place, there are four major steps to conduct workforce planning using the generic workforce model. An overview of the four steps is presented first, followed by an in-depth explanation of the activities associated with each of the steps.

Step 1 – Scan of the Environment (SWOT): As you scan the environment in which your organization functions, you will collect information needed for workforce planning. Later, you will apply this information to your planning efforts. Environmental scanning examines internal and external Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats (SWOT analysis). Of course, budget must also be a major factor in this review.

Step 2 – Supply and Demand Analysis: The supply and demand analysis is based on the scan of your environment (SWOT analysis), strategies, and operational direction. You can conduct this analysis whether you use the workforce, workload, or competency approach to workforce planning. IPMA recommends focusing on competencies, but you will have to select the approach best suited for your unique organizational needs.

The supply and demand analysis will allow you to assess whether there is balance in the organization, or whether imbalances among the workload, workforce, and competencies exist now or may exist in the future.

Step 3 – Gap Analysis: Gap analysis compares information from the supply and demand analysis to identify the differences between the current and the future organizational workload, workforce, and competencies. This analysis must use comparable workload and workforce elements and the competency sets you developed in Step 2, the supply and demand analysis.

Step 4 – Action Plan Action plans should be developed to address the most critical gaps facing your organization so human capital can support organizational strategy. Each organization should determine its own action plan based on the relationships between strategy and the gaps identified. Depending on the gaps, the action plan may address some or all aspects for HR, including recruitment, selection, compensation, training, performance management, succession planning, diversity, quality of work life, retention, etc.