Having a people strategy is essential. Your business strategy amounts to no more than words on a page if you don’t have the right people in the right seats on the bus.

All elements of your employee life cycle must be linked, from attraction through to talent management, leadership development and ongoing performance management.

There is a great reward in doing this. Studies tell us that organisations that prioritise their employee experience are four times more profitable than those that don’t.

What is people strategy? Is it different to HR strategy?

Yes. HR strategy tends to focus more on the planning side of people, including structures for hiring, onboarding, developing and retaining.

People strategy is more about helping employees grow by creating an environment that nurtures and enables high performance. People strategy usually focuses on:

• Values.
• Fostering diversity.
• Inclusion and employee wellbeing.
• Predicting and reacting to workforce needs.

In essence, it’s about creating a culture where employees share equal billing with shareholders and business goals.

According to the world-renowned Boston Consulting Group, the three pillars for developing a people strategy are leadership and culture, talent and skills and HR.

“In these challenging times, organisations must elevate the most important asset they have: their people. By focusing on the fundamentals of people strategy—leadership, culture, talent, reskilling, and HR—companies can emerge stronger, more agile, more innovative, and better able to respond to an ever-changing environment.”

Exploring the pillars

Let’s take a closer look at  two of those three key pillars – leadership and culture, and talent and skills.

1. Leadership culture and strategy

There are many levers at a leader’s disposal to drive their organisation’s success and effectiveness.  Strategy and culture are the most important.

Strategy provides clarity of the organisation’s goals, and helps to align people around them. Culture tends to express goals through organisational values and beliefs. Culture also guides tactics, activity and implementation.

One thing is sure and that is culture and leadership are linked. Poor leadership and resultant toxic culture usually determine the fate of a business. Studies tell us up to 30% of employees cite poor leadership as a key reason for them leaving. These findings highlight the need for every organisation to address this factor.

Culture in more detail

Culture is a more puzzling lever to activate. This is mainly because culture can be ambiguous and embedded in unspoken behaviours, mindsets and social expectations.

Many leaders don’t appreciate the power of culture.

A recent Gartner Survey revealed that 75% of leadership believe that they run a culture of flexibility. Unfortunately, only 57% of employees agreed.

This lack of appreciation can cause leaders to either let culture go unmanaged or delegate it to HR, where it can slip to a secondary focus for the organisation.

Successful leaders embrace the ambiguity of culture. Many leaders use the available culture diagnostic tools to understand where their organisation’s culture is right now. These valuable tools help them to answer questions such as:

• Is it more of a creative culture or a reactive culture?
• How does the culture snapshot of the board and senior leadership vary from the operational managers’ perspectives?
• How “real” is the conversation in the organisation?

Gaining clarity around culture can be as confronting as it is it enlightening – but it’s well worth the investment of time and focus. We partner with many specialists in this area, so reach out if you’d like to explore further.

2. Talent and skills

Sixty-four per cent of the world’s most admired companies say they have a good understanding of workforce needs two or more years into the future, compared to 54% of their peers.

The Gartner Survey also revealed 75% of leadership felt that they did a good job incorporating employee voice into decision-making. Unfortunately, only 47% of employees agreed.

The forced extreme disruption of the last two years during the pandemic has meant that most businesses were focused more on survival than future talent and skills needs. But now is the time to think about your requirements going forward. Some steps to take include:

• Ensure Employee Pulse Surveys acknowledge and act on the feedback provided.
• Use customised psychometric assessments to identify traits and skills gaps.
• Incorporate customised 360° surveys as part of your development programs.
• Facilitate regular check-ins between individual teams and managers.

Lastly, working from home during lockdown is different from working remotely long-term. Organisational psychologists accept that loneliness, communication and isolation can trigger depression.

So, if there is a disconnect in your business between HR policies, or the leadership strategies propelling them, and employee sentiment on the ground, greater emphasis must be placed on the needs this new work approach demands.

For example, consider what capabilities and skills (soft and hard) are essential to be future-ready? Do all employees possess the discipline, conscientiousness and results orientation to deliver in a hybrid environment? What might this mean for remote work and flexibility?

Through our business offering, we have many people analytics resources and tools to assist with developing both these pillars. Reach out if you’d like to discuss how we can help with the future of your people.