A People Strategy That Listened to Every Shift

We started outside in: the organisation’s strategic direction, its move to process-based operations, its workforce data and the trends in its labour markets. Then 247 voices, over 5 months in 3 formats. 35 interviews reached every director, the HR team, programme leads, the ombuds and the staff representatives. 63 people rated the organisation’s people capabilities in a survey. Then 25 focus groups brought together 149 staff and group heads, at headquarters and at the sites in South America, timed around rotations, with evening sessions for shift teams. The problem statement was agreed where the survey’s widest gaps met the focus groups’ first choices.

We drafted in strategy sprints with the HR team, then mapped each group’s priorities onto the draft separately: directors, staff representatives, managers and staff, so that no group’s voice was averaged away. The result: 5 priorities, 10 objectives, and 3 enablers written as mutual commitments: for staff, for leaders and for HR, what the organisation asks and what it commits in return. The survey sorted the organisation’s capabilities in 2: 13 to strengthen, 11 to sustain. Some topics raised in the consultation, from pay and recognition to employee relations, were placed outside the strategy on purpose, and the document says so.

Approval came in 2 stages: direction first, money second. Each director had a 45-minute one-to-one before the orientation was decided in January; the staff committee and the unions then worked their comments into the text and endorsed it in February. The second stage carried the cost: a full investment case, with quantified benefits and the cost of inaction, and 3 waves to 2031, each defined by what staff, leaders and HR would gain by its end. The governing council approved it unanimously in June, and we took it back to every site: town halls, a roadshow, the intranet and a brochure. We were then brought back to set up the delivery programme.

Progress is read on 2 clocks as well, a leading one and a lagging one. The attitudinal side takes the last engagement survey as its baseline, mapped to each priority, so staff experience can be measured again on the same questions. The operational side sits in the dashboard of the new HR system and tracks structural change. Above both, 20 programme indicators, from each wave’s deliverables to spending within the approved envelope, are reviewed as each wave closes. None went in unless it was relevant to a priority, within the programme’s control and measurable with data the organisation already holds.