8 Signals That It’s Time to Revamp Your People Strategy and Where to Start
The challenge for leaders has never been more daunting yet exciting. The pace of change is accelerating; significant uncertainty reigns socially, politically, economically, and organizationally; employee expectations have evolved, and new ways of working have emerged for many employees.
These circumstances make leading teams and organizations harder than ever before. An integrated people strategy is critical to staying competitive in the talent arena.
You might be asking, "what is a people strategy?" Your people strategy is the foundation upon which your programs, policies, and people priorities are built.
It's anchored in your business strategy.
It is a comprehensive plan to identify specific talent imperatives and the integrated actions required to achieve your business goals.
It's a living document with measures, is reviewed at least quarterly, and modified as circumstances and priorities shift.
There are eight key signals that it’s time to revisit your people strategy:
An external circumstance influence is impacting your business strategy
Economic changes - your customers are pushing for lower prices while your employees are looking for higher wages
Global supply chain concerns - the demand for your products is rising, but you can’t meet the demand
Pandemic impacts - employee priorities and expectations have evolved
An internal change in priorities or dynamics is driving change
Your organization is scaling quickly, and you’re not confident that your systems and processes are ready for that scale
Attrition is rising, and/or you’re experiencing low employee engagement scores.
Changes in service offerings - you’ve realized it’s time to add or modify your offerings but aren’t confident that you’ve thought through all of the talent implications.
New leadership - with new leadership, there’s often a desire to evolve or fully change the direction. With that, a shift in the talent strategy needs to follow.
Mergers & Acquisitions (M&A) - often, we underthink the impact on the culture when a new acquisition is brought in.
Let’s discuss why a people strategy review and refresh may be valuable.
External Circumstances
Economic changes like inflation or recession concerns: Organizations often react to this news by slowing hiring, beginning layoffs or furloughs, reductions in pay, or not paying out bonuses.
You can take these actions without a full people strategy review, but you may be missing out on identifying the downstream impacts of these actions.
Global supply chain issues have impacts spanning from sourcing strategies, customer support impacts, and sales strategies.
A people strategy review would help identify the talent implications related to those actions. Some actions might include retraining sales staff or adding additional customer support coverage to handle frustrated customers.
Pandemic impacts – had immediate impacts on how employees worked, how safety concerns would be handled, and how the offering some organizations sold.
A people strategy review is valuable in assessing the impacts on recruiting (do we broaden the talent location pool), how we support our employees' mental health and well-being, how we enable leaders who haven’t managed virtual teams before, etc.
Internal Circumstances
Your organization is scaling quickly: The obvious answer is increased recruiting capacity. However, other focus areas also come into play: how to address workplace seating, if your onboarding program is built to support significantly more new hires, if your managers are prepared to manage larger teams, if you will need more supervisors, etc.
Rising Attrition/Low Employee Engagement: Something is not going right when you see low engagement scores and rising attrition. The first reaction may be adding new programs, raising salaries, and adding retention bonuses. Those may be necessary reactions, but you want to be intentional in what you’re doing and for whom.
Some questions to look into in advance of a shift in your people strategies would include:
Where are the pockets of attrition? Is it centered on specific teams, functions, or demographics?
Is it unhealthy attrition or healthy attrition?
When did you last look at how competitive your total rewards package was?
Change in service offerings or locations: This may sometimes be overlooked related to shifting people strategies, but it’s important. Things to consider:
Training sales professionals in the new offering, as well as the customer support professionals
Any changes to onboarding programs
Setting up a new location involves understanding the talent market, setting up a facility, a leadership capability, etc.
New leadership: When new leaders come in, they may focus first on listening and learning, but followed quickly behind that will be a desire to make an impact. If their focus includes a shift in business strategy, work must be done to evolve the people strategy to realize the business impact.
Mergers & Acquisitions (M&A): If you’re bringing in a new organization that you intend to integrate with your current business, aligning their practices to existing ones may be tempting. However, depending on the acquired or merged company's capabilities and maturity, you may miss an opportunity to advance your talent practices.
What to Do
When we look at any of these circumstances, we need to start with a core set of questions:
What problem am I solving?
What outcome am I trying to achieve?
What are the root causes or drivers of this change?
What are all possible solutions with their related pros and cons?
Once you have the preferred solution, what will it take to make it work, and what will prevent it from working?
An example of how to evaluate a rising attrition signal could look like this:
Address reasons for leaving – working hour flexibility
What will it take to make it work?
Schedules are posted two weeks in advance.
Employee willingness to commit to a 2-week schedule
Method for sharing preferred shifts and when they’re not available
Regular communications on peak times
What will prevent it from working?
The employer not following through on their commitment.
Employees not following through on their commitment to schedules
A significant change in support requiring more shift coverage
Investing in people advisory support could be your next step if your organization is looking for these business outcomes.
Improved business performance through alignment of people strategies and actions
Higher levels of employee engagement
Increased leadership capabilities and performance
Organizational readiness for the next stage of growth
To get the "people stuff" right in your organization, one of these solutions may be what you need next.
Assessment & Recommendations - Advisory analysis on the current people strategy and barriers impeding performance
People Strategy Bootcamp to partner with your business and HR leaders to create a people strategy aligned with the business strategy
Upgrading the leadership capabilities and improving team effectiveness
Evolving the focus of the HR function from reactive to proactive and execution-oriented to strategic.
Just as you need business and customer strategies, all organizations need a people strategy.
Are you experiencing any of the eight signals that it’s time to revisit your people strategy? If so, you can use this link to schedule a time to discuss your organization’s situation.
To download a short version highlighting the signals, you can download it via this link.