People Strategy for Chief People Officers

A people strategy your board will fund — and see returned.

Defined, activated, proven.

We turn a mandate into a funded programme, govern it to delivery, and stay until the board has seen what it returned.

You work with the founder from the first conversation to the final board presentation.

No pitch. A free first conversation about your situation, 60 to 120 minutes.

“A trusted partner to Chief People Officers and their teams.” — Patrick Nicollier, Chief Human Resources Officer, World Health Organization

Carrying the whole mandate?People StrategyThe agenda defined, activated and proven — with us in the room until the board has seen the return. Fixing one named problem?People CentricityAttract, engage or unleash — one bounded intervention, closed when the problem is solved.

Years20building people strategies since September 2006

Engagements90led personally across private, public and international organisations

Organisations303 engagements each on average — renewed because the first held up

Organisation size500–50,000people in the organisations we serve, on every continent

Why this matters now

The board is watching. Can you answer?

Chief People Officers are asked to run the engine while redesigning it — accountable for the day-to-day of the people function while reinventing it as a strategic force. Volatile markets, shifting workforce expectations, generational change and artificial intelligence are not temporary disruptions. They are the new operating conditions.

A mandate without a map is just pressure.

11% → 75%The share of trends framed through artificial intelligence across the 10 reports behind our 2026 HR Trends Heatmap, in a single year. Every board now has a technology case that pays back by Friday. People make their case slowly.PeopleCentriX, 2026 HR Trends & Priorities Heatmap

A people strategy is a filter, not a list. Each year’s reports add signal and noise in equal measure, and a strategy built from them inherits both. The work is deciding what matters for your people and your organisation — and what does not.

The risk of no strategy

Effort without proof

Disconnected programmes spread effort thin and prove nothing. The Chief People Officer cannot answer the board’s first question: what is our people agenda, and what has it delivered?

The tell: three people in your leadership team describe the agenda three different ways, and every version is defensible.

The risk of one that does not land

A strategy that stalls

Approved on paper, then quietly consumed by the day job. The board loses confidence, the investment cannot be defended, and the gap between intention and impact becomes the story.

Nobody kills a people strategy. It dies of attendance — through diaries, not opposition.

Both trace back to the same diagnosis: the architecture was missing. Agreement, a fundable case, governance that holds, and proof the investment kept its promise. We address all four in sequence and stay to run them.

The evidence

People-centricity is not a value. It is a performance model.

Close the gap between what people expect and what they experience, and fulfilment follows. Fulfilled people succeed. Successful people move the business — not because they are told to, but because the conditions are right. That is the People Centricity Formula™: psychological contract research, made operational.

The People Centricity Formula™ — draft diagram, to be replaced by the designed version.

Organisations that outperform on people-centricity are 5.2× more likely to be a great place to work and 2.2× more likely to exceed financial targets — the money follows the people, not the other way round.

Business outcomes

2.2×more likely to exceed financial targets

2.4×more likely to delight customers

People outcomes

5.2×more likely to be a great place to work

5.1×more likely to engage and retain employees

5.1×more likely to create a sense of belonging

Innovation outcomes

4.3×more likely to innovate effectively

3.7×more likely to adapt well to change

Organisations at the highest of 4 employee-experience maturity levels, compared with the rest, in a study of more than 950 organisations commissioned by Microsoft. Bersin, J. (2021). The definitive guide: Employee experience. The Josh Bersin Company. Multiples are directional, not causal; the mechanism is what we work on.

What we do

Two offerings. Same rigour, different size of question.

People Strategy builds and governs the whole agenda and stays until the board has seen the return. People Centricity solves one thing precisely, then finishes.

For Chief People Officers

People Strategy

Defined, activated, proven.

01
DefineYour mandate becomes a board-approved, funded programme — evidence base, strategy and business case.
02
ActivateGovernance that keeps delivery on track, on scope, and free of your advisor’s next contract.
03
ProveBaselines before the work starts, and a report of what moved — and what did not.

Best forChief People Officers who walk into board conversations without a clear answer, or whose strategy has been approved and is already losing momentum.

Discover People Strategy

For Chief Talent Officers

People Centricity

Attracted, engaged, unleashed.

01
AttractAn employer promise built on what your people actually expect — one you can make and keep.
02
EngageThe moments that fail people most, redesigned so what they experience matches what you intended.
03
UnleashTalent frameworks that develop potential instead of grading the past.

Best forChief Talent Officers watching top talent choose competitors, engagement surveys return the same numbers, or a performance cycle grade the past and build nothing.

Discover People Centricity

One principle

Independent by design. We chose to be neither.

Two kinds of advisory failure define the market, and people leaders meet both. The strategy consultancy that thinks brilliantly and delivers nothing — the deck is polished, then they leave. And the implementation consultancy whose advice is shaped by the contract it wants next — every priority carries the weight of the engagement it is angling for.

Both cost the same thing: a Chief People Officer who cannot tell whether the advice was right or merely convenient. The first leaves a strategy nobody owns once the engagement ends. The second leaves recommendations you have to second-guess, because the firm that wrote them also priced what comes next.

Two offerings. One principle. No agenda except yours.

No implementation streams.We hold the programme office and the change office, never the delivery work underneath. There is no build we are angling to sell you.
No vendor partnerships.No referral fees, no alliances, no preferred platforms. When we run a selection, the recommendation is shaped only by fit.
No leaving after the deck.We stay until the board has seen what it returned — or, for an intervention, until the end condition agreed in writing is met.
No change requests.Phase 0 is iterative: scope, time, cost and quality are agreed with you before anything else is costed. What follows is delivered against that plan — no surprises, and no bill for discovering them.

How we work

Both offerings run on one method.

The People Centricity Methodology™: four moves — Empathise, Strategise, Realise, Analyse — turning data into insight, insight into choices, choices into measured impact, and impact back into data.

Assembled from design methods, human capital measurement and lean experimentation; each fails alone in a way the other two prevent. Refined over twenty years of engagements, run as one loop on every one of them, and published in full so you can judge it before you meet us.

Explore the Methodology

The People Centricity Methodology: Empathise, Strategise, Realise and Analyse around Data, Insights, Strategy and Impact

About us

The advice comes from the people who sign it.

Tanguy Dulac

Founder & Managing Partner, PeopleCentriX

PeopleCentriX is a small, evidence-based people-strategy advisory, founded in Switzerland in 2022 and working with organisations of 500 to 50,000 people on every continent. We define, activate and prove people strategies with Chief People Officers, and solve bounded talent problems with Chief Talent Officers.

We never subcontract and we never outsource. Every engagement is run by our own team, with the founder in the room from the first conversation to the final board presentation.

More about us

Proof, not promises

Some of the organisations that called.

90 engagements across 30 organisations, led by the founder since 2006 — at PwC, at Deloitte, and now at PeopleCentriX. Our case studies are anonymised. Our client contacts are not — we share them on request.

Pause the logos

Private sector

Cartier

Lingaro

Novartis

Cartier

Lingaro

Novartis

Public sector and international organisations

International Committee of the Red Cross

International Organization for Migration

Belgian Railways

European Southern Observatory

International Labour Organization

ISO

Medicines for Malaria Venture

Belgian Railways

European Southern Observatory

International Labour Organization

ISO

Medicines for Malaria Venture

“PeopleCentriX is a trusted partner to Chief People Officers and their teams, providing the expertise and guidance they need to develop and implement successful people strategies. They have a unique ability to bring people together and create a shared vision for the future.”

Patrick NicollierChief Human Resources Officer, World Health Organization

“PeopleCentriX helped us navigate challenging waters. Using a human-centred design approach, they helped us think creatively and develop a fresh approach to people development and performance that resonated with all stakeholders — and a tailored implementation plan aligned with our ambition and culture.”

Samantha Stokes-BaydurChief Human Resources Officer, Open Society Foundations

“Thanks to PeopleCentriX’s guidance, we developed our talent acquisition strategy in just eight weeks. We benchmarked our function against leading practices, collected feedback from new hires, hiring managers and business leaders, then co-designed our strategy and roadmap in sprints.”

Vivienne TardieuGlobal Head of Talent Acquisition, Ferring

Ask for a client introduction Read our case studies

Start with the evidence

What the field is saying, and what the seat demands.

Free, fully sourced, no form. One tells you what the field is saying this year; the other, what a Chief People Officer’s mandate looks like from the inside.

The evidence

2026 HR Trends & Priorities Heatmap

64 trends across 20 themes from 10 publishers, hand-coded and cross-referenced — so you can see what the field is saying before deciding whether to believe it. This year, 9 of the 10 named the same top priority.

Read the Heatmap

10 reports read so you don’t have to. 5 minutes of yours.

The playbook

Chief People Officer Playbook: From Mandate to Momentum

Written for Chief People Officers new to the seat, and for sitting ones whose mandate has changed under them. How to build the evidence, the strategy and the case — in that order — and keep the board with you. 24 pages.

Read the Playbook

A better use of your time than a call you are not ready for.

Work with us

Bring us the problem before it becomes the board’s.

Most first calls are spent on your situation — what is breaking, what you have already tried, what your evidence is telling you. If we are the wrong firm, we say so on that call, not in month four.

Four steps, no surprises. You tell us who you are, where you work and what is breaking — a few sentences are enough. We come back with a straight answer: whether we think we can help, and what a conversation would look like. We talk. Then we agree the next step, which for some is Phase 0 and for many is a suggestion and nothing else.

Let’s talk Who is behind PeopleCentriX

No pitch. A free first conversation, 60 to 120 minutes. Some end with a proposal. Many end with a suggestion and nothing else.

“We developed our talent acquisition strategy in just eight weeks.” — Vivienne Tardieu, Global Head of Talent Acquisition, Ferring

WeAreHuman@Work

The only weekly newsletter on people sustainability.

Every Sunday: the evidence on how work depletes or regenerates people, read for you and turned into recommendations you can defend in front of a board. Others’ research first, our thinking last; every figure sourced; one instrument given away in full per edition. No pitch, ever.

Weekly, evidence-based, 5 minutes to read
One original instrument per edition, ungated
Read by more than 15,000 HR and business leaders

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Before you get in touch

Five questions, answered plainly.

Are you a strategy firm or an implementation firm?

Neither, by design. In People Strategy we hold the programme office and the change office, never the delivery work underneath. In People Centricity we scope one problem, solve it, and close. No implementation arm, no vendor partnerships, no next contract to angle for.

What does it cost?

The cost is a function of the plan, and the plan does not exist until we build it with you. That is why every engagement starts with Phase 0: 4 weeks, scoped on its own, in which we co-design the methodology and the project plan. Everything after it is costed against that plan, and you see the number before committing to any of it.

Who does the work?

A PeopleCentriX team, with the founder in the room from first conversation to board presentation. We never subcontract and we never outsource — no associate network, no partner firm, nobody billed through us who does not work here.

Do you work outside Switzerland, and in which languages?

Yes. Engagements have run on every continent, for organisations of 500 to 50,000 people. We work in English and French, and in the other languages our team speaks.

Can I speak to a client before deciding?

Yes. Our case studies are anonymised; our client contacts are not. Ask, and we will make an introduction to someone who has commissioned comparable work.