Defining Strategic HR

"What is strategic HR?" That was the question thrown at me during a panel at a recent SHRM conference here in Louisville. It’s a classic—one that’s been debated for decades, yet many HR leaders are still chasing some elusive "silver bullet."

Let’s cut through the noise: It’s not that complicated. Too often, HR strategy gets over-engineered and under-connected to the actual business.

The foundation is straightforward: Deeply understand the business you support.

If you don’t grasp the company’s core value drivers, where margins are made, how revenue scales, what the key growth initiatives are, then your work can’t legitimately be called "strategic."

Once you have that business context, you can apply HR expertise to solve real business problems, not just functional ones. Study the operating model. Know which units are driving profitability and which are dragging. Understand how the P&L responds to scale, headcount changes, or market shifts. Only then can you prioritize people programs that directly impact enterprise value.

Too many HR leaders default to fixing "HR stuff" first: streamlining payroll, tightening compliance, optimizing benefits admin. These are essential, but they’re table stakes, and rarely do they move the needle on revenue or EBITDA.

No executive is high-fiving over a smoother HRIS implementation when a critical revenue team is stalled by unfilled roles or poor leadership alignment.

The real mindset shift: Operate as a business leader first, HR expert second.

When you view everything through that lens, HR initiatives naturally align with the areas that create (or protect) value.

Here’s how that played out in my own experience leading HR for a high-growth data and technology company in Louisville:

We were scaling fast: 20–30% annual revenue growth, while closing six acquisitions in 18 months. The priorities became crystal clear:

1. Rapidly scale leadership capacity and HR infrastructure to sustain the growth trajectory without breaking.

2. Build a repeatable people due diligence framework to de-risk future M&A and accelerate value capture post-close.

3. Design exceptional onboarding and cultural integration for acquired teams, ensuring retention of key talent and faster time-to-productivity.

Each initiative was directly tied to our growth strategy. The results were tangible: faster integration timelines, higher retention in acquired entities, and stronger leadership benches—all of which translated to measurable value at the board and investor level.

The bottom line: Stop leading with internal HR wins. Get embedded in the business.

When you do, you’ll see that true HR impact and business success aren’t separate tracks—they’re the same one. Strategic HR isn’t a mystery; it’s just HR done with unrelenting business focus.

Strategic HR for the win

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