Kellanova

Heather Wheaton, Senior Director of Human Resources at Kellanova, brings over 15 years of HR experience across the medical device, pharmaceutical and consumer goods sectors. Holding a doctoral degree in Management Organizational Leadership and certifications as a Clifton Strengths Gallup and Hogan Coach, Heather also serves on the HR Advisory Board at Grand Valley State University. She enjoys softball, triathlons and family time in Portage, Michigan.

Through this article, Heather Wheaton outlines a strategic approach for new HR leaders to build a 3-year talent plan in just 120 days. She emphasizes the importance of conducting strategic interviews, performing a SWOT analysis, using diagnostic tools, identifying critical jobs and creating a comprehensive talent strategy. Heather offers practical advice for onboarding, including avoiding significant changes early on and ensuring alignment with leadership to add value and drive organizational success quickly.

Starting a new role can be exciting and overwhelming, especially if you don’t have a well-structured onboarding plan. As HR, we often may not get the privilege of getting an organized and well-thought-out onboarding plan. For one, improving these types of employee experiences might be precisely why you were hired in the first place! As you grow in your HR career, you probably know enough to maneuver through it gracefully. However, it can still be a daunting experience for most new employees, as we all want to add value to the business as quickly as possible. What if I told you you could build a 3-year strategic talent plan in 120 days? Interested? That is precisely what I am going to share with you.

As you probably know, with any onboarding experience, ensuring you know your way around the office, having general meet and greets with your peers and team(s) and having access to suitable systems and document repositories is essential. Still, if that is your only priority, you may be missing the mark. Follow these five easy steps to building a talent strategy in 120 days:

First, conduct strategic interviews.

Connect with 20-50+ people who have historical context and insights into the business. This number may vary based on your organization’s size, but it’s better to include more people than fewer. You are looking for individuals who can give you credible and specific information about what’s going well and what problems to solve. Examples are senior leaders, functional experts, sales, peers, regrettable loss ex-employees and the team.

Outside of general meet & greet conversation, ensure you ask questions such as:

● What are the strengths and opportunities of the business today?

● What is the “perception” of the business from senior leadership?

● What are the top 3-4 priorities must the business’s current leadership team focus on to win?

● As an HR leader, what advice do you have for me?

I guarantee that when you ask these questions, you will get top-of-mind answers and start to gain credibility as a strategic HR leader.

Second, identify the current state: From these interviews, your observations and leveraging data, complete a SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) analysis. This starts on Day 1 through Day 100. Strengths and weaknesses are internal factors, whereas opportunities and threats are external factors that impact or can impact the business. Therefore, understanding the external environment and your industry, product, or business’s challenges is just as crucial to understanding the internal drivers.

Familiarize yourself with the business’s strategy and priorities. Know the commercial metrics that drive the business. Attend business reviews, customer insight meetings and strategy sessions. Follow up with leaders or SMEs on questions you have to understand, which will be critical to developing the “why” behind your 3-year plan.

Third, use tools and resources: Assess the organization objectively using 3-4 diagnostic tools or internal data, such as:

o Current Talent Review data

o Employee Engagement Survey data

o Talent and Workforce Risk Template

o Strategic Workforce Planning assessment

Fourth, Identify Critical Jobs To Be Done (JTBD): Determine the five most critical JTBD for the highest-level leader in your business unit, such as a General Manager, to drive through the organization or team.

Finally, create a 3-Year Talent Strategy: Develop 4 or 5 key people’s essential priorities to meeting business goals. Include, at minimum, the following for each in your strategy:

o Purpose: Identify the problems you’re trying to solve, such as “optimizing the organization to strengthen brands and enter new market segments.”

o Key Priority: Identify a summary of “work” that will solve a unique problem for the business. For example, “Design a fit-for-purpose organizational structure and ways of working to enable our business strategy.”

o Actions: Outline 3-5 actions needed to deliver on the priority and their timelines within the next three years. One example is “ identifying and communicating clear strategic alignment and

 swim lanes between the commercial business unit and sales teams.”

o KPIs: Establish Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to measure the effectiveness of your actions. As Peter Drucker, Austrian American management consultant, educator and author, said, “You can’t manage what you don’t measure.” KPIs include hitting financial targets, reducing turnover or overtime, resource utilization and process effectiveness scores.

Additional Tips for Onboarding

Avoid Major Changes: Avoid making significant decisions or changes within your first 120 days to avoid unnecessary rework and gain credibility. Exceptions include emergencies or global/regional rollouts.

Align and Communicate: Ensure all talent strategies are aligned with leadership, communicated broadly and reviewed regularly. They won’t be effective if they sit on the shelf or in the cloud.

While this plan is geared toward a strategic HR business partner, these concepts can be applied to any role or function to identify the problems and actions needed to address them. Starting a new role, especially in HR, can be a challenging yet rewarding experience. By following these five steps: conducting strategic interviews, identifying the current state, utilizing tools and resources, identifying critical jobs to be done and creating a 3-year talent strategy, you can effectively navigate your new role and contribute significantly to your organization. Remember, the goal is not just to survive but to thrive and add value quickly. With a clear plan and strategic approach, you can build a robust talent strategy in just 120 days. So, are you ready to make a difference?”