Strategic Planning

Strategic Planning

Strategic planning is an organizational development process that provides direction toward common goals and a shared vision for the future. It is essential for focusing energy and resources, strengthening processes, and setting priorities.

Our skilled facilitators at Employers Council can work with you to ensure a smooth strategic planning process.

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Why Update Your Strategic Planning Process?

Successful organizations have clear strategies for shaping and guiding why they exist, whom they serve, what they stand for, how they meet objectives and realize success. Employers Council’s consultants offer skilled facilitation in the strategic planning process using a collaborative and inclusive approach. Our services include organization-wide, department level, and team specific initiatives.

Strategic Planning FAQs

How long does a strategic planning process take?

The short answer is it depends. One factor is the degree of stakeholder involvement and how inclusive you want the process to be. For example, for smaller organizations with a limited scope of work, and minimal stakeholder involvement, the length of their planning process may take weeks rather than months. If you refresh your strategic plan every year, you might be able to work through this process in 4-5 weeks. Larger organizations with a broader scope and scale may take 6 months or more.

Once the plan is created, the most important factor to consider is putting it into action. Implementation requires the application of how, by when, and by whom to achieve the established objectives.

A common mistake organizations make is underestimating the amount of time to ensure a solid strategic plan. Rushing the process may cause harm, especially for long-term plans.

What goes into a successful strategic plan?

What makes up the strategic plan may look different for different organizations. Vision, mission, values, objectives (long and short-term), and an action plan are necessary standards. Robust strategies may include a detailed marketing plan, financial forecast, and an approach to anticipated changes. Important elements to keep in sight are what we need to do, how we want to get there, and metrics for process tracking.

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Employers Council offers a broad range of innovative training options to help your organization develop your employees. Employees can select classes from our catalog of offerings or contact us to learn more about tailoring our training programs for private group training designed to meet your specific business needs and priorities.

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Developing a Strategic Planning Process

The strategic planning process may look a little different from organization to organization, but there are a few core components that each process should have.

    • Involve the right people in the planning process.
    • Ensuring a clear understanding of the organization’s direction, particularly vision, mission and values.
    • Identify short and long-term objectives consistent with the vision and mission. What do you want to achieve?
    • Conduct an analysis of your organization’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats, often referred to as a SWOT analysis.
    • Establish goals that will allow you to take advantage of strengths, mitigate weaknesses and threats and to seize opportunities. Make sure these goals align with the vision and mission.
    • Formulate a plan to achieve these goals and establish appropriate milestones and measures to track progress.
    • Execute the plan. Communicate the plan. By creating a clear line of sight between an employee’s day-to-day activities and the plan, employees will be better able to contribute to the success of the plan and the organization.
    • Monitor performance on an on-going basis. Make sure that actions and decisions made during the execution of the plan continue to align with the vision, mission and values of the organization.
    • Adjust as necessary.

Employers Council professional staff is prepared to walk with you through each phase of the strategic planning process.

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I attended the harassment prevention workshop put on by Employers Council, and I wanted to share my praise for the presenter. I was skeptical about whether I would learn anything I didn't already know, but she presented the information in thought-provoking and nuanced ways. She answered questions well and had us do an activity that enlivened the presentation. As an academic, I particularly appreciated the way that she was able to address the issues intellectually and not simply give us an "information dump." Anyway, I was impressed with what I expected to be a boring presentation. - Professor, Regis University

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Our handbook needed to be updated. We had done minor revisions over the years, but more policies than we needed crept into the handbook over time. I wanted to keep what was important and get rid of the rest. I sent my handbook to Employers Council and staff went through all of the policies to first let me know what could be eliminated, and what needed to change in order to bring it up to date. The best thing was that this is part of my full membership dues, so there was no charge for this. I send in my handbook every one or two years for a tune up, so it reflects current laws and stays streamlined.

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Who We Serve

Employers Council is dedicated to helping HR professionals, executives, legal teams, and other professions across a broad array of employment law, compliance, and HR needs. We serve organizations of all sizes and all industries, and our membership options are designed to custom-fit your size and needs. We also provide a broad range of specialized legal services, training, coaching, and outsourced HR services to help your organization build an exceptional workplace.

Benefits of Membership

Founded over 80 years ago, Employers Council has a team of nearly 200 licensed attorneys, trainers, coaches and seasoned HR professionals on staff to help you get the most out of your membership, Our membership options give you choices and equip you with  easy and fast access to the resources you need to make informed business decisions.

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