People Strategy case study

A People Strategy Boards Could Fund, Not Just Approve

200voices heard before any solution
30+HR staff co-designing the initiatives
12objectives, each with its own indicators
8value levers in the business case

The situation

The question behind the question.

A new HR director had inherited a starting point: an early round of consultation and a draft set of priorities. What the institution did not yet have was a strategy it could fund. The brief asked for a finished narrative, measurable objectives, costed initiatives and a roll-out plan, taken through the institution’s own approval process. With more than 10,000 staff, the risk was a familiar one: a document everyone could sign and nobody would fund.
As it was asked

“Help us finalise our HR strategy and take it through approval.”

As we reframed it

Not how to finish the document, but how to make the case for it: what the institution would spend, year by year, what it would get back, and how much of the work had to start inside HR itself.

How we worked

Four moves, one loop.

This engagement ran on the People Centricity Methodology™: four moves turning what people say and do into insight, insight into choices, choices into measured impact — and impact back into evidence.

01

Empathise

Data → Insights

Understand before prescribing.

We started outside in. For a month, we read the institution’s strategic plan against its workforce data and the trends reshaping its labour market: demographics, critical roles, skills. Then we listened. The executive committee and the department administrators came first; 14 group sessions then reached every management layer, the staff bodies and the social partners, each voting live for its top 3 priorities. The HR function answered its own version. Some 200 voices, heard before a single initiative was drafted. More than half of the priorities pointed at HR’s own ways of working: the strategy had to start with the function.

02

Strategise

Insights → Strategy

Turn insight into choices.

Only then did we move to solutions, built with the people who would carry them: more than 30 HR staff co-designed the initiatives at an offsite. The result: 3 axes, 12 objectives and 42 initiatives, each tied to an objective. Priority came from impact × urgency; the order came from interdependencies and from when each stakeholder group would see its benefits, year by year to 2028. Some ambitions were cut on purpose, including a heavy 360-degree performance cycle and a redesign of HR’s own structure. The business case had one bar, set at the start: at least cost-neutral. A modest positive return was enough.

03

Realise

Strategy → Impact

Make it real, and make it yours.

Buy-in was built into the process, not saved for the launch. The draft went to every directorate in 8 one-to-one reviews, then to the college of heads of service. Finance challenged the business case line by line. The executive committee saw a plan it had helped shape before it went to the board. After approval, we took the strategy to staff with a full launch campaign: intranet, a roadshow through the departments and communication materials. The institution then retained us for the activation: building the programme governance that carried the strategy into delivery.

04

Analyse

Impact → Data

Measure, learn, return.

Every objective carries its indicators: 29 distinct measures across the 12 objectives, each tied to the initiatives meant to move it, with baselines written in where they existed. Each was kept only if it spoke to its objective, could be moved by the people answerable for it, and could be produced from the institution’s own systems. The business case’s levers were built on the same data, so the indicators that track delivery also track the return. They are reviewed every quarter, as part of the plan rather than on goodwill.

The instrument

A business case with both sides quantified

Costs, line by line. Every initiative costed for each year to 2028 and split into temporary staff, permanent staff and external spend, so finance could see what would end and what would stay on the payroll.

Benefits, lever by lever. 8 value levers built from the institution’s own data, from sickness absence and conflict costs to managers’ administrative time and succession on critical positions. Where we could not defend a gain, we set it to 0: 2 of the 8 levers carry no value.

One view for the board. Benefits phased in over time, both streams discounted, and the net return and break-even year on a single page.

What moved

What changed, and what didn't.

42initiatives approved by the board, each costed year by year and tied to an indicator
Evidence Decision taken Adopted in practice Measured impact
What moved

In December 2022 the board approved the strategy and its business case in one decision, all 42 initiatives at once. The case cleared its bar: break-even in year 5, with 2 of its 8 levers set to 0. Delivery followed: every 2023 post was filled, and every 2024 initiative started from a validated mandate.

What didn't move

Most indicators went in without target values. Baselines existed for only a handful, so the plan named what to watch before it could say how far each measure should move — a gap the first year of delivery had to close.

What we'd say to a peer

Boards fund investments, not intentions, and they fund them faster when they recognise their own problem in the plan. Start outside in, agree the problem before drafting a solution, then cost every initiative and quantify only the benefits you can defend. Set the bar honestly: a strategy that pays for itself is enough. Written as an investment case, a people strategy is read by the people who hold the budget.

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Method note:

Outside-in scan; design-thinking sequence, problem before solutions; impact × urgency; PeopleCentriX Transformation Value Case.

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