TABLE OF CONTENTS In my notes for writing this book I have collected many examples of documents with the words HR strategy on them. They may look like strategies to the untrained eye but to the eyes of the true HR strategist they do not even come close. I wish I could tell all the non-HR strategy stories I have but that would be a very negative way to proceed. Nevertheless, it is time to offer a critique of whether such documents really constitute a true HR strategy. Or whether they are sheep in wolves clothing.
One publicly available, ready source of such documents is UK universities, which publish their HR strategies on their websites (see www.city.ac.uk/hr/SLA/hrstrat.htm for one example). I presume they do this because of a government diktat rather than out of personal choice. This would also partly explain why they are all very similar in structure and content. Yet this is the first sure sign that they are not really strategies. HR strategies cannot be written to a set formula and, if they are, no university gains an advantage. Also, anyone openly sharing an HR strategy is admitting that they believe there is nothing in them that could be of any benefit to competitors.
What does a closer inspection reveal though? The example given above shows a very detailed document that looks as though it is linked to the university s business strategy. It looks and feels a bit like a strategic document but looks can...
