# PeopleCentriX > PeopleCentriX is an independent, evidence-based people strategy advisory for Chief People Officers, founded in 2022 in Switzerland by Tanguy Dulac, PhD. We help HR leaders turn people investment into measurable results — strategies that get approved, interventions that get delivered, impact that gets proven. Independent by design: no implementation practice, no vendor partnerships, no agenda but yours. Site: https://www.peoplecentrix.eu Contact: tanguy.dulac@peoplecentrix.eu Location: Founex (Vaud) / Geneva, Switzerland — working internationally ## The founder Tanguy Dulac, Founder & Managing Partner. Joint PhD in Management Science, London School of Economics and Université catholique de Louvain (2001–2006), researching the psychological contract between individuals and organisations — the circumstances that predict fulfilment, breach and violation. Published in the Academy of Management Journal (Dulac, Coyle-Shapiro, Henderson & Wayne, 2008) and cited by more than 1,000 academic articles; that research is the intellectual foundation of the People Centricity Formula™. Also MSc Applied Economics and MSc Psychology, UCLouvain. Building people strategies since September 2006: joined PwC for its Saratoga practice (Jac Fitz-enz's human-capital measurement practice), then Deloitte (latterly Director, Human Capital Consulting, Geneva) — 90 engagements across 30 organisations, led personally, at PwC, Deloitte and PeopleCentriX, covering people strategy, people analytics, digital HR transformation and talent management. Teaches Sustainable Human Capital Management at the University of Fribourg and Human Risk Management at the Haute École de Gestion de Genève. Editor-in-Chief of WeAreHuman@Work. Works in English and French. ## Why PeopleCentriX exists Chief People Officers are asked to run the engine while redesigning it. Two failures follow: effort without proof (disconnected programmes that spread effort thin and prove nothing) and a strategy that stalls (approved on paper, lost in execution). Both trace back to missing architecture: getting stakeholders to agree, building a case the board will fund, governing delivery without losing momentum, proving the investment kept its promise. "A mandate without a map is just pressure." ## The evidence People-centricity is not a value; it is a performance model. Close the gap between what people expect and what they experience, fulfilment follows, fulfilled people perform, performing people drive results. The People Centricity Formula™: Expectation → Experience → Fulfilment → Performance → Results. Research shows people-centric organisations are 2.2x more likely to exceed financial targets, 2.4x more likely to delight customers, 5.2x more likely to be a great place to work, 5.1x more likely to engage and retain employees, 3.7x more likely to adapt to change and 4.3x more likely to innovate effectively. The people–performance link is among the most replicated findings in management research: 18 of 21 studies in top-ranked journals found a positive, significant link between human capital and performance (Giamos & Stroehle, 2024, Oxford Saïd; Schroders/CalPERS, 2023). Bersin (2024): only 11% of HR functions are strategic and systemic; those that are run 2x on financial targets, 12x on workforce productivity, 9x on engagement and retention, 7x on adapting to change. Every figure on the site names its source; baselines are set before work starts. ## What we do — two offerings, one principle **People Strategy** — for Chief People Officers carrying the mandate. "A list of initiatives is not a strategy. It is a record of who asked." An independent sparring partner from strategy to execution, the same team throughout: - Scope (Phase 0, four weeks): the plan is built with the client, not proposed to them; scoped and costed on its own, and either side can conclude the fit is wrong. - Define: listen to employees, managers, executives and the HR leadership team; build the evidence base, the strategy and the business case — in that order — so the strategy survives a hostile question and gets funded. - Activate: govern implementation from inside the programme (PMO and change office, never the delivery streams); run vendor selection with no agenda but fit. "Nobody kills a people strategy. It dies of attendance." - Prove: baselines set before the work starts, a KPI framework built to be acted on, and a value realisation report that reports what didn't move. Three questions a CPO should be able to answer without preparation — most can answer two: What is our people agenda, and what has it delivered? What have we stopped? What did the investment return? Who it is for: Chief People Officers and CHROs in organisations of roughly 500 to 50,000 people; what decides the work is how many geographies, businesses and how much of the organisation the strategy has to move. About half the work is private sector, half public and international (UN agencies, NGOs, intergovernmental organisations), with engagements across all continents. What PeopleCentriX declines to do: take implementation streams; carry vendor partnerships, referral fees or preferred platforms; sell a maturity model; define a strategy and leave. What it does: stay accountable to the outcome from first stakeholder conversation to board presentation; bring strategy, programme/change and analytical capability; report what didn't move; say when it is the wrong firm. **People Centricity** — for Chief Talent Officers and Heads of Talent Management (and the CPOs they report to). "Every employment relationship runs on a contract nobody signed": the psychological contract — what people believe they were promised and what they believe they owe back. Break it and nothing shows up in a system; engagement drifts, good people become reasonable people. PeopleCentriX finds where it broke — the promise, the experience, or the potential going unused — fixes that one thing, then finishes: - Scope (Phase 0, four weeks): the brief describes a symptom; Phase 0 finds the cause and can conclude the intervention asked for is the wrong one. - Attract — the promise: an employee value proposition rebuilt from researched expectations rather than assumed ones. Closed when the proposition is live in recruitment and internal communication, managers can state it without the deck, and the expectations research has a re-runnable baseline. - Engage — the experience: map the employee lifecycle, find where promise and reality diverge, redesign the moments that decide the rest. Closed when the redesigned moments are running and the experience gap has narrowed against the starting baseline. - Unleash — the potential: performance and development frameworks built around potential rather than backward-looking assessment. Closed when managers run development conversations unaided and employees can describe their growth path. Three questions about the unwritten contract: What did we actually promise? Where does the promise break? Are we building for what people can become? The evidence base: 78% of workers know what motivates them, only 33% believe their organisation or manager does (Deloitte Insights, 2025); managers blame pay, workload and health, leavers cite not feeling valued and not belonging (McKinsey, 2021); roughly 55% of employees report a broken promise within two years (Robinson & Rousseau, 1994; Zhao et al., 2007 meta-analysis). Breach (noticing a promise was not kept) and violation (what people feel and do about it) are separable; what determines the cost is whether the breach was explained, warned of and visibly regretted — which the organisation controls. Bersin (2021): only 20% of organisations reach Level 4 employee-experience maturity; those that do are 2.2x more likely to exceed financial targets, 5.2x more likely to be a great place to work, 5.1x more likely to engage and retain. Gallup (2026): global engagement at 20%, manager engagement down from 27% to 22%. The People Centricity Framework™ diagnoses six dimensions — three on the worker side (expectations, experiences, fulfilment) and three on the organisation side (what it contributes, how it behaves, which channels it uses) — which is what makes an intervention scopeable and therefore finishable. People Centricity interventions never become programmes: the end condition is agreed in writing before work begins. The principle: neither the strategy consultancy that thinks brilliantly and delivers nothing, nor the implementation consultancy whose advice is shaped by the contract it wants next. In People Strategy we take the PMO and change office, never the implementation streams. In People Centricity we solve what needs solving and close when it is solved. ## How we work — the People Centricity Methodology™ "A method is only worth having if it can tell you that you were wrong." Most people decisions are made on consensus — the loudest voice, this year's trend reports, the initiative with a sponsor. The People Centricity Methodology™ is used instead: four moves around one continuous evidence loop, each converting one state of evidence into the next. - Empathise — Data → Insights. Understand before prescribing: interviews, focus groups and surveys triangulated with HRIS, exit, mobility, absence and cost data, starting with the people who do the work. Moves on when there is a problem statement both executive team and workforce recognise — agreement on the question, not the answer. - Strategise — Insights → Strategy. Separate the priorities that decide the future from the merely loud; size investment to the measured gap; list and test the riskiest leap-of-faith assumptions first. Moves on when every objective traces to a named piece of evidence. - Realise — Strategy → Impact. Operating model, sequencing, governance and success measures defined before anything moves; a minimum viable pilot before rollout; PeopleCentriX holds the programme and change office, never the delivery streams. Moves on when the work runs under client governance with dated baselines. - Analyse — Impact → Data. Outcomes tracked against baselines and reported in full, including what did not move and why; each turn is an experiment with a scheduled continue / adjust / stop decision. Analyse has no exit: its output feeds the next Empathise, which is what makes it a loop. Why the first move matters: 60% of 700+ executives put poor problem formulation among the two biggest barriers to problem-solving (Chevallier, Enders & Barsoux, 2023); half of 350 decision processes failed to achieve the intended result (Nutt, in Binder & Watkins, 2024). Three recurring errors: assuming everyone sees the same problem; framing that is a solution in disguise; deciding the frame alone. Lineage, credited: design methods (Conference on Design Methods, 1962 — understand before prescribing), human capital measurement (Jac Fitz-enz, Saratoga Institute, 1977 — baselines before the work, two metrics per objective) and lean experimentation (Ries, 2011 — validated learning, pilot before rollout). Each fails alone; the combination prevents the failure modes. Three habits keep it honest: actionable not vanity metrics; a scheduled pivot-or-persevere call; root cause before remedy. Four principles: evidence over consensus, human-centred, independent, honest measurement (limitations stated where findings are correlational). The same loop at two sizes: People Strategy runs all four moves across Define (Empathise, Strategise), Activate (Realise) and Prove (Analyse) as one continuous commitment; People Centricity runs the full loop once, on a single bounded question, with a stated end condition. ## Original instruments and research (given away in full) - Workforce Risk Mapping — thirty workforce risks across seven dimensions and three tiers, scored on likelihood, consequence and preparedness. - Human Capital ROI (HCROI) formula — (NOPAT + HCCF) ÷ HCCF, with the Human Capital Cost Factor as fully loaded people cost. - HR Trends & Priorities Heatmap — annual hand-coded cross-publisher analysis (ten publishers, twenty themes, sixty-four trends). 2026 finding: the share of trends framed through AI went from 11% to 75% in one year; 9 of 10 publishers named the same top priority — a clear HR value proposition delivered through a fit-for-purpose operating model. - State of Employee Expectations — annual research on what employees expect from employers. - The Chief People Officer Playbook 2026: From Mandate to Momentum — 24 pages, free, no form; for CPOs new to the seat and for sitting CPOs whose mandate has changed. ## Clients 90 engagements across 30 organisations since 2006, led by the founder at PwC, Deloitte and PeopleCentriX — 3 engagements per organisation on average, renewed because the first piece of work held up. Case studies are anonymised; client contacts are shared on request. - Private sector: Audemars Piguet, AXA, Cargill, Cartier, DHL, Ferring, Galderma, GSK, Gunvor, Lingaro, Lombard Odier, MSC, Nestlé, Novartis, Philip Morris International, Pictet, Richemont, Socar, Swiss Re, Temenos, Zurich. - Public and international: Abu Dhabi Government, Belgian Railways, CERN, Eurojust, European Commission, European Southern Observatory (ESO), GAVI, Hôpitaux universitaires de Genève (HUG), International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), International Labour Organization (ILO), International Organization for Migration (IOM), International Organization for Standardization (ISO), Medicines for Malaria Venture (MMV), The Global Fund, UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), Université de Genève, World Health Organization (WHO), World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), World Trade Organization (WTO). ## What clients say - "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." — Patrick Nicollier, Chief Human Resources Officer - "Using a human-centered design approach, they helped us think creatively and develop a fresh approach to people development and performance that resonated with all stakeholders." — Samantha Stokes-Baydur, Chief Human Resources Officer - "Thanks to PeopleCentriX's guidance, we successfully developed our talent acquisition strategy in just eight weeks." — Vivienne Tardieu, Global Head of Talent Acquisition ## What guides us — in practice, not just on paper - We built our business to never compromise on advice: no implementation practice, no vendor partnerships, no downstream agenda. - We listen before we recommend: every engagement begins with evidence, not assumptions. - We stay until the impact is proven: Define, Activate, Prove — we do not leave after the deck. - We make rigour readable: sophisticated thinking, direct communication. Clients work with the founder from the first conversation to the final board presentation, and with a team shaped by the same rigour, independence and accountability. Values cannot be delegated; they are shared. ## Commitments PeopleCentriX Sàrl is a member of the Swiss Triple Impact programme by B Lab Switzerland, measuring its contribution to the Sustainable Development Goals. PeopleCentriX name and logo are registered trademarks of PeopleCentriX SARL. ## Key pages - [Home](https://www.peoplecentrix.eu/en/): the people agenda, answered - [People Strategy](https://www.peoplecentrix.eu/people-strategy): Define, Activate, Prove — for Chief People Officers - [People Centricity](https://www.peoplecentrix.eu/people-centricity): Attract, Engage, Unleash — for talent leaders - [How We Work](https://www.peoplecentrix.eu/how-we-work): the People Centricity Methodology™ — four moves, one loop, and a record of what didn't work - [About Us](https://www.peoplecentrix.eu/about-us): the firm and Tanguy Dulac - [CPO Playbook 2026](https://www.peoplecentrix.eu/cpo-playbook-2026): From Mandate to Momentum - [Insights](https://www.peoplecentrix.eu/blog): articles and instruments for CPOs on people strategy and for Chief Talent Officers on people centricity - [Our Work](https://www.peoplecentrix.eu/blog/tag/our-work): anonymised client case studies - [Our Thinking](https://www.peoplecentrix.eu/blog/tag/our-thinking): thought leadership - [Work With Us](https://www.peoplecentrix.eu/work-with-us): contact form — PeopleCentriX works with a select number of clients at any one time, qualifies fit as carefully as clients qualify it, and responds with an honest first assessment within five business days; first conversation is no pitch, no proposal before listening - [Newsletter](https://www.peoplecentrix.eu/en/subscribe-to-our-newsletter): the quarterly PeopleCentriX newsletter — curated trends, thought leadership and case studies ## Related - [WeAreHuman@Work](https://www.wearehumanatwork.com): Tanguy Dulac's newsletter on sustainable work — Work with Purpose — read by 10,000+ HR and business leaders - [Tanguy Dulac on LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/tanguy-dulac) - [PeopleCentriX on LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/company/peoplecentrixconsulting) - [Tanguy Dulac on Google Scholar](https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=lE2o3sYAAAAJ)