Generally, the recession should not have an impact on the Human Resources Strategy. The HRM Strategy should be a general goal of the HRM Function in the near future and it should not depend on the economic cycle. But this is a theory.
In reality, the HRM Strategy is born in the times of the economic boom and the demand for the additional HR Processes and expensive training and leadership initiatives. The top management wants to make the managers and employees happy and agrees to the additional costs carried by the HRM Function.
This practice is very dangerous as the HRM Function can run a lot of initiatives, which are not seen important and they can be cancelled, when the organization needs to make cost cuts. Then, these initiatives should never be the part of the HRM Strategy.
The HRM Strategy should shape the HRM Vision of the organization and the HRM Strategy should not be about enormous costs invested to the employees and managers. The HRM Strategy should be about the perfection and efficiency of the HRM Function, not the expensive initiatives to make the HRM Function popular.
The HRM Strategy is a public document and it is a promise of the HRM Professionals to bring tools to the organization to get to the desired status. The employees have a long memory and they will remember the parts of the HRM Strategy, which were changed and cancelled. They will not trust to the updated version of the HRM Strategy as they will think, the HRM Strategy can be changed again when needed.
The recession is not a reason to cancel the HRM Strategy. The initiatives from the HRM Strategy can be postponed, but most parts of the HRM Strategy should continue.
