You cannot build an HR strategy until you know what's really standing in the way of your business goals. And I don't mean systems, budgets, or lack of time; I mean people. Because every business goal, every sales target, margin improvement, or productivity push depends on people doing the right things in the right way at the right time. And the problem with that is that most small businesses don't know which people factor is helping or hurting them. So in today's episode, we're answering one big question: how do you figure out what your real people dependency is, that human factor that makes or breaks your business goals? Because if you don't know what people lever to pull to achieve business goals, your employees may end up working on things that don't actually drive growth. So let's figure that out together. I'm going to jump right in with five questions that tell you exactly where to focus your HR strategy next year and give you examples from our own client experiences of how these human dependencies were holding their business back. Welcome to the HR Connection, the podcast proving that small business growth happens through people, and HR is how you make it happen. I'm your host, Sabrina Baker, CEO of Acacia HR Solutions. After more than a decade helping small employers build people strategies that actually drive results, I've seen one truth hold steady: growth doesn't start with your business plan; it starts with your people. Every week we unpack how HR, when done right, becomes the engine behind every great small business. So whether you're the one-person HR department, a founder figuring it out, or someone who just got HR added to your job description, this show is for you. There are five people dependencies that HR should be considering at all times: capability, capacity, consistency, retention, and alignment. To figure out which one or which ones are keeping business goals from being met, you can ask yourself these five questions. Question one: where are we relying on heroes instead of systems? Every small business has them, the go-to people who can fix anything, answer any question, and keep the place running when everything else breaks. They're the heroes, and they are amazing until they're not there. If you're building your success on individual heroics instead of systems, that's not a strength; that's a risk. You should ask yourself, if one or two key people left tomorrow, what would stop working? Would payroll still run? Would invoices still go out? Would customers still get what they paid for? And if the answer is we would be absolutely screwed, you've just realized you have a capacity dependency, and one that has a lack of knowledge transfer. When HR identifies that dependency, your strategy shifts. It shifts from filling open roles to building a bench. It's about cross-training, process documentation, and making sure no one person is holding the business together with duct tape and experience. Here's a real story for you. A 75-person logistics company I worked with realized that one dispatcher held all the route data in her head. When she went on medical leave, it cost them thousands in delayed shipments. So part of our new HR goal was to cross-train three team members on routing by the end of that quarter. That one move made them more scalable than any software upgrade could have. Question two: what skill or behavior gap slows us down the most? Every small business has at least one missing skill that's costing them speed, quality, or money. It is a drag on performance. It's a gap that everyone's learned to work around instead of actually fixing. So here's a few questions you can ask yourself. What work keeps getting redone or delayed because someone isn't equipped to do it right the first time? What tasks cause friction between departments because expectations or communication aren't aligned? Where do you see inconsistency that can't be solved by another meeting or another policy? When you find those, that's a capability dependency, and it's gold for HR strategy. Because HR's value isn't in creating more training; it's in identifying the exact skill that's limiting the business and fixing that first. Here's a client story. One of our clients couldn't hit the revenue targets even though their sales team was full. When we analyzed the process, we found out that sales reps were great at building relationships, but they were really weak at closing. So instead of hiring more salespeople, HR focused on a six-week sales coaching sprint for closing skills. Within two months, revenue per rep was up 18%. That's strategy, not activity. Question three is: why would our best people leave, and what are we doing about it? Here's the uncomfortable truth: your best people are often the most likely to leave first. They're driven, capable, and they carry more weight than anyone else. But if your business depends on them too much and they don't see growth, recognition, or relief, they'll eventually find that somewhere else. Here are a few questions you can ask yourself. What signals tell us our high performers might be disengaging? Maybe they're showing up, but they're completely checked out. When's the last time their leader had a conversation about what's next for them here? Are we rewarding them for holding everything together or just assuming they'll always do it? If they left, could someone step in, or would the business absolutely stall? This is a retention dependency, and it's one of the most overlooked business risks in small companies. HR strategy here means protecting the business from that instability. It means identifying the critical roles tied to revenue, quality, or client relationships, conducting stay interviews before exit interviews ever happen, building visible career paths or skill ladders, and making sure that recognition and reward match contribution, not just tenure. Here's a real story. A 40-person manufacturing shop kept losing its best shift leads every 18 months. They weren't burnt out; they were bored. Once HR built a clear internal promotion ladder and small skill-based pay bumps, turnover in those roles dropped to zero for the next year, and productivity rose because they stopped constantly retraining replacements. When you understand why your best people stay, you stop losing them to the competition, and your HR strategy finally becomes a growth strategy. Question four: do our managers know how to lead towards this goal? I'm going to try not to get on a soapbox, but managers make or break execution, period. You can have the best strategy, best tools, best culture statements in the world, but if managers can't translate business goals into daily priorities, you'll stall out. You should ask yourself if your managers are equipped to connect their team's work to company goals. Do they coach effectively or just manage tasks? Are they aligned on expectations, or are employees getting five versions of what good actually looks like? If your answer to any of those is not really, you've identified a manager capability dependency. That means your HR strategy isn't launch more training; it's build leadership consistency. Here's an example. I worked several years ago with a small tech startup where every manager had been promoted for technical expertise, not leadership skill. I bet that sounds familiar. The result: absolute chaos. No feedback loops, inconsistent accountability, zero alignment on performance expectations. We implemented manager one-on-one training where we went over the basics of being a leader, giving feedback, holding people accountable, communicating effectively, and things started to improve. When managers lead consistently, the whole business moves faster. And then finally, question number five is: does everyone understand how their work connects to the larger goal, the larger business goals that we have? This one sounds really simple, but it's often the hardest to fix. When employees don't understand how their work impacts the company's success, motivation drops, priorities blur, and execution gets really sloppy. You should ask yourself, could every employee explain how what they do connects to revenue, customer satisfaction, or efficiency? Are departments rewarded for collaboration or just for hitting their own numbers? Do people see their impact or just their task list? If the answer is not really to any of these, your dependency is alignment and communication. And that's where HR strategy becomes storytelling, making the connection between company goals and daily work explicit. We did an entire episode on cascading goals if you want to check that out. But here's a real example for you. A nonprofit client set a goal to increase donor retention by 20%, but staff saw that as a marketing problem. Once HR helped leadership connect the dots, showing how faster response times and personalized outreach from every department affected donor loyalty, engagement surged. Everyone saw themselves in the outcome, and donor retention jumped 14% in the first quarter. When people understand why their work matters, you don't have to push performance; it starts to pull itself. So this is how you build an HR strategy around real business goals. You don't start with a project list. You start with these five questions. They'll tell you which human factor—capability, capacity, consistency, retention, or alignment—is standing between your company and its goals. And once you know that, your HR strategy practically writes itself. If you want a step-by-step guide to start small, grab our free download, set your first HR goal in four steps, and for a deeper dive, read our companion blog, Why HR Metrics Alone Don't Equal Strategy. And if you're ready to go from guessing to growing to build a people strategy that actually drives your business goals, I'd love to talk to you. You can book time directly on my calendar to explore how fractional HR support can help you identify your people dependencies. All of those links are down in the show notes. I hope this quick hit was helpful. If it was, I would love for you to like, subscribe, follow, or share this with another small business leader who might find it helpful. Thanks so much for being here on the HR Connection. I'll see you next time.