People Strategy case study

Ask HR’s Users and HR’s Providers the Same Questions

11executive interviews
19HR team members surveyed
24capability domains mapped
8priority areas in the plan

The situation

The question behind the question.

A people strategy is a stack of good intentions with a budget attached, until someone tests it against the people it was written for. This one had been written a few years earlier by another advisor, without a real listening phase. Then the pandemic made hybrid work permanent and tightened the funding environment. By late 2023 the executive committee was questioning it, and HR had to answer fast. The ambition still held. What no longer held was the order in which it was being delivered.

As it was asked

“Is our people strategy still the right one?”

As we reframed it

Not whether the ambition was right, but in which order to deliver it: which pain points to answer first, which to fold into the day job, and which to set aside, with the reasons said out loud.

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 listened on both sides of the counter. On the receiving side, the executive committee, where the questions came from: 11 one-to-one interviews, plus the feedback already reaching HR. On the delivering side, 19 members of the HR function, in a structured survey rating each topic and naming its root cause.

Laid side by side, the 2 voices show where both see the same problem, where one sees a symptom and the other its cause, and where only one side feels the pain. In 2 half-day workshops, the HR leadership team tested the combined list and agreed on the problem before anyone proposed a fix.

02

Strategise

Insights → Strategy

Turn insight into choices.

Then the choices. We kept the ambition and rebuilt the plan: the content stayed, the order changed. Each of the 24 pain points was mapped to one of the 5 pillars of the existing people ambition and sorted 3 ways: a dedicated project, continuous improvement inside the day job, or out of scope, said out loud. The order followed 3 tests, in turn: the business impact of fixing it, or the cost of leaving it; then the same question from HR’s side; then HR’s capacity to deliver. What survived converged into 8 priority areas, each with a named lead and a date to report back to the executive committee.

03

Realise

Strategy → Impact

Make it real, and make it yours.

The refocused plan was delivered by the organisation’s own HR leadership through the rest of the year, outside our engagement. Some priorities built on work already under way; others started from zero. Each was reviewed with the executive committee every quarter, starting 3 months in, using the same numbers from the metric dictionary, and benefits were promised from the following year, not before.

04

Analyse

Impact → Data

Measure, learn, return.

Before anything could be reported, it had to be defined. With the HR team, we built the measurement layer behind the dashboard: a metric dictionary in which every indicator is written down once, with its definition, its formula and its data source in Workday. We kept only metrics that measured a priority, that an owner could move, and that the platform could actually produce. Progress is reported from that single source, on the executive committee’s quarterly cadence.

The instrument

A two-sided pain-point map

24 domains, one map. The listening started from the PeopleCentriX HR Capability Framework™ — 24 capabilities across Run, Grow and Shape — tailored into 24 domains in the client’s own language.

The receiving side. Each domain scored by criticality: the share of executives who raised it in a structured interview. A domain raised by most of the committee outranks one raised by 2, however loudly the second is discussed in the corridor.

The delivering side. The HR team rated the domains it owns on severity, scale and urgency, and traced each to its root cause.

Overlaid, the 2 maps separate the pain everyone sees from the pain only one side feels.

What moved

What changed, and what didn't.

20 of 24pain points built into the plan within 2 months, each with a named lead, a milestone and a reporting date.
Evidence Decision taken Adopted in practice Measured impact
What moved

Every one of the 24 pain points had an answer. 83% of what the executives and the HR team had raised is owned in the plan; the other 4 were declared out of scope, in writing. Progress then went back to the executive committee every quarter, on the same numbers.

What didn't move

The deadline left no room to hear staff and managers directly, and the refocused plan was shared only with the executive committee and HR. Part of what the HR team raised about its own capacity was also deferred to a later review. The plan answered the executives faster than it relieved the providers.

What we'd say to a peer

Under pressure, the reflex is to rewrite. Often the ambition is sound and only the order is wrong. Ask the people who receive HR’s services and the people who deliver them the same questions, lay the answers side by side, and sequence by what the business loses if a pain is left alone. A refocus is cheaper than a rewrite, if it listens to both sides of the counter.

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Method note:

PeopleCentriX HR Capability Framework™ as a two-sided pain-point map; 3-test sequencing; a metric dictionary.

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