Wayne Cascio, Robert H. Reynolds Chair in Global Leadership, University of Denver, author of milestones literatur on HR and a „rockstar of HR-strategy“ gave most valuable insights in the ways to align HR with the overall business.

What some omit – but what is crucial to make a strategy is a strategy –  is to deal with risks and rewards.

Human Capital risks reflect the uncertainty arising from changes in a wide range of workforce and people management issues. Such issues that affect the company’s ability to meet its objectives may include talent management and sucession planning, tone at the top and ethics and pay, employment training and development.
To date, the dominant approach to such risks has focussed on risk mitigation (danger) rather than risk optimization, emphazising opportunity.
The way to do it, is „to live it from the top down“. For this sentence I will quote him for the rest of my life.  Since from an academic point of view he has proved in research what I have experienced during my 25 years of practical work: No influence is stronger than leading by example.

His top 5 HR risks:
* shortage of critical skills of the company’s workforce
* compliance/regalutory issues
* succession planing / leadership pipeline planning
* the gap between current talent capabilities and business goals
* the shortage of critical skills in the external labor force market

The way to adress those risks is to rank order them in terms of two key indicators:
1. likelyhood of occurence
2. impact.

From my point of view to deal with the result of this analysis is hard work and there are no short cuts.

While Dave Ulrich gives us a new slogan „from the outside in“, Wayne Cascio reminds us of the hard work in front of us.