Strategic Human Resources ActionsBeing strategic is sort of like the weather-everybody talks about it, but nobody does anything about it. Here, San Francisco State University professor John Sullivan gives some examples of actions that he says have proven to be strategic. Here are what John Sullivan (in his new book) lists as some of the actions workforce management professionals can take that are a little bold. General management Human resources administration Recruiting Retention and employee relations Workforce planning Compensation and incentives Motivation and communication Development Common strategic errors of human resources departments GENERAL MANAGEMENTIntegrate your managers through metrics - Managers often work independently and fail to share best practices among each other. By offering each individual manager on the management team an incentive, based on the overall performance of the management team, you can encourage managers to cooperate. By tying managerial performance together with a common bond, you can encourage top managers to help improve the performance of the below-average managers.By asking employees to rate the quality of their own management and then rewarding managers with high scores, you can also encourage managers to play closer attention to their people management practices.Bad management-identification program - One of the primary reasons that employees quit their jobs is the bad management practices of their direct supervisor. Develop a program that can identify bad managers, and then develop strategies for fixing these managers, transferring them back to more technical jobs, or releasing them.Measure and reward managers for good people management - Managers who practice good people management have the most productive employees. Unfortunately, most firms have no measurement system for assessing individual managers on how they manage their people. Human resources should send a clear message to individual managers that managing people is important by developing a system for rewarding managers for great people management.Off-cycle actions - Going against the grain might seem unwise on the surface, but in some cases, it can lead to being the first or the only competitor in the field. For example, if the economy is down and no one is recruiting on college campuses, you might find that if you actively recruit, you might get some superstar hires that you would have had little or no chance of getting when everyone else was going full speed in college recruiting. Yes, this means creating open positions when the company is not doing well, but it might also mean that you will be able to explode out of the box better than your competitors can when the economy improves.There are other off-cycle actions; for example, intensifying retention programs even though your turnover rate is currently very low. Most employees expect special treatment when they know there is a high demand for their talent. This off-cycle approach is so effective because, when you pay attention and recognize employees when its not needed, employees tend to appreciate it more. In addition, when the job market improves, they might just remember how well you treated them when you did not have to.HUMAN RESOURCES ADMINISTRATIONReward results in human resources - Human resources managers must be recognized and rewarded for their results in maintaining a competitive advantage over the organizations competitors. Human resources lags woefully behind in the use of incentives for its people and programs, however. Combining metrics with significant bonuses for performance can have a dramatic impact on human resources productivity.In particular, rewards should be offered to all if human resources meets its overall goals. Incentives are also effective for recruiters, generalists (if their business unit achieved its goals), and those in leadership development. It does not take much; as little as a five percent bonus will improve performance by significantly more than five percent. A note of caution, though; bonuses must be tied to numerical results, not subjective terms like merit or leadership.Reward cooperation - Human resources is known for having functional silos; this runs counter to the goal of developing a competitive advantage. In order to ensure that human resources functions work together, human resources needs to develop a common metric and reward that crosses all critical human resources functions. This way, human resources professionals are given incentives to work together.Prioritize programs - Its not important to be great in every area, just in critical ones. That means that human resources must identify which programs and processes are critical to the firms success and focus on maintaining a competitive advantage in those areas.Shifting resources - In addition to prioritizing programs, h