How to Implement a People Strategy in 10 Steps for Lasting Impact

For companies to get the most out of their talent, and for employees to extract value from their time with an employer, there needs to be a plan. That means developing a robust people strategy that encompasses every stage of the employee lifecycle—from recruitment to offboarding and everything in between.

Strategizing about people may sound soulless, but get it right, and it injects life into every stage of your people operations. The right plan treats your employees as the individuals they are and supports their growth in line with your organizational goals.

Here are ten straightforward steps to creating an effective people strategy. We’ll also explore some common challenges and how to overcome them.

1. Assess your current situation

Begin by taking an honest look at the state of your workforce—this requires assembling relevant data to inform your decision-making. Go through the following steps to provide a vivid picture of your current people strategy, even if you’ve not labeled it as such until now:

• Conduct an HR audit and review your current people processes—do you have clear, documented workflows and an understanding of how each HR function influences or integrates with the others?
• Gather employee feedback—what do they like or dislike about their experience of working for you?
• Identify what is working well and what needs improvement—are there any areas that attract the most negative or positive feedback?
• Understand your organization’s cultural values—does your company’s mission statement align with your business objectives?

2. Identify current and future problems and desired outcomes

Based on the outcome of step one, pinpoint any issues you’re encountering right now and those you expect to occur in the near future.

For example:

• Are market changes impacting your ability to hire top-tier talent?
• Are your financial foundations able to support your growth forecasts?
• Have your previous people strategies failed or succeeded?
• Are your people equipped with the required skills to advance your business?
• Do any skills gaps exist?

Note down your current position and desired business outcome, then plot any anticipated challenges you may encounter. Here’s what this may look like:

• Current position: High turnover due to a lack of employee growth opportunities
• Desired outcome: Improved employee retention based on tailored development plans and defined career paths
• Anticipated challenges: Limited resources to provide additional training or development programs

3. Define clear objectives aligned with organizational goals

Your people strategy shouldn’t exist in isolation but mesh seamlessly with your organization’s overarching mission and values. The University of Strathclyde’s people strategy framework is a great example of this:

“Together, we will create an exceptional, values-based work environment where colleagues feel deeply connected with the University’s Vision 2025 and have the skills, motivation, and reward for delivering it.”

Link your HR priorities to the broader organization by focusing on:

Strategic alignment

Map out your key business goals over the next 1-5 years, then align each people strategy objective to one or more of these. For example:

• Business goal: Expand market share by 20% in 3 years
• People strategy objective: Develop a robust talent acquisition pipeline to support growth in key regions

Key focus areas

A successful people strategy doesn’t need to cover every aspect of the employee experience. You’ll need to prioritize based on the areas where your people strategy can make the biggest impact. Common options include:

• Talent acquisition: Attract and retain top talent by improving your recruitment processes and enhancing your employer brand
• Employee engagement: Foster a culture of engagement by promoting work-life balance, recognition, and employee feedback mechanisms
• Professional development: Ensure employees are equipped with future-ready skills and competencies through targeted programs and career progression opportunities
• Diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI): Create an inclusive workplace where diverse talent thrives and actively contributes with their best work to the company’s profitability, growth, and innovation

Prioritization is a crucial and ongoing challenge—after all, most companies will want to address all of the focus areas above. However, trying to tackle everything at once is unrealistic, so start with the most pressing issues and gradually build upon your strategy.

Achieve this by identifying where the greatest needs exist within your organization and addressing those first. The following factors can help you rank your objectives:

• Employee feedback: What are your people telling you is a priority to their experience?
• Business needs: Is your business missing out on opportunities because one of your focus areas is falling short?
• Market trends: How do your competitors or economic conditions affect your plans?

4. Design the people strategy framework

Your framework is where all the threads of your people strategy will come together. Follow these steps to create an actionable plan:

Define the core pillars of your strategy

Start by separating the sectors of your strategy into distinct areas, which will probably include:

• Talent acquisition: This subsection of your HR strategy will include sourcing, recruitment, and onboarding processes
• Engagement and retention: You might focus on strategic initiatives like recognition programs or providing a better employee wellbeing and work-life balance to enhance your employees’ experience working for you
• Employee development: You’ll structure comprehensive career progression pathways, complete with training and mentoring opportunities
• Performance management: This strategy is inextricably linked to your employee development component. Based on performance feedback, you’ll find tangible ways to advance, upskill, and grow within the organization

Consider the unified employee experience

The pillars of your strategy aren’t standalone—rather, they should intertwine to represent the typical employee lifecycle from recruitment to offboarding.
Here are a handful of examples that demonstrate how these pillars combine to produce a healthy work environment where employee engagement and wellbeing are a priority:

• Talent acquisition and employee engagement: Providing a positive candidate experience, transparent communication, and cultural alignment during the hiring process sets the foundation for high post-hire engagement. When the journey from candidate to employee is smooth, each new starter will be invested in the organization from day one
• Employee development and retention: Continuous learning programs equip employees with the skills they need to advance in their roles. These also demonstrate the company’s commitment to their personal and professional growth
• Engagement and performance management: Engaged employees are more likely to perform at higher levels—a well-structured employee performance management system maintains and enhances that engagement

Establish metrics and KPIs

Once your people strategy framework is up and running, you’ll want to measure its effectiveness in helping you achieve your organizational objectives. Based on your unique goals, define relevant metrics and KPIs to track at regular intervals, enabling you to make data-driven decisions. Some examples include:

• Employee satisfaction or engagement scores
• Turnover and retention rates
• Time-to-fill rate for open vacancies
• Diversity and inclusion metrics, such as representation in leadership positions
• Employer branding metrics such as your Glassdoor rating or applicant conversion rate.
• Internal mobility rates

5. Develop a detailed implementation plan

With your framework in place, rolling it out hinges on two main factors: when and who.

Create a timeline

Break your implementation down into the following phases, then set specific milestones for each to track progress and make any required adjustments:

• Planning
• Pilot testing
• Review and adjustment
• Full rollout

Assign responsibilities

Ensure everyone understands the part they play in your people strategy implementation by:

• Defining roles and responsibilities for HR leaders, executives, and managers—these may differ between pilot testing, implementation, and post-launch, so clarify this information as required
• Identifying and training change champions within the organization to support and advocate for the new strategy

6. Communicate and involve stakeholders

Your business strategy will only succeed if your people understand what it is and their role in implementing it. This all boils down to communication:

Develop a communication plan

Create a detailed communication plan that informs all key stakeholders about:

• The people strategy objectives and what it means for the organization
• Why the change is necessary
• How it will affect employees, managers, and your people team in their day-to-day roles
• When changes are happening
• Any progress you’ve witnessed
• What support resources are available

Distribute your communication

Select one or more ways to communicate your strategy with your stakeholders; for example:

• Hosting a webinar with a slide presentation
• Providing detailed documentation such as an email series or PDF guide
• Creating a video from your CEO or CHRO

Engage employees

Encourage buy-in by involving employees in the process from the offset, collecting their feedback, and listening closely to their ideas and experiences. This step builds trust and clarity around the people strategy.

7. Conduct a pilot test and collect feedback

Once you’ve planned everything perfectly, begin phase one of your implementation by rolling out your strategy to a pilot group.

• Choose a diverse group to test the new strategy—for example, you might choose a particular department like sales, a specific branch office, or even a region if you have global HR needs
• Run the pilot for at least three-six months to gather valuable data and feedback to analyze
• Use surveys and one-on-one interviews to collect feedback from pilot participants—aim for a range of questions; quantitative answers are easy to measure and compare, while qualitative answers provide in-depth insights
• Analyze your feedback and make any necessary tweaks to your strategy before the full rollout—for example, if your data reveals low employee morale, you may need to reassess your engagement or wellbeing initiatives

8. Roll out the new strategy across your entire organization

Following a successful pilot project, roll out your people strategy company-wide. Keep these tips and best practices to ensure success:

• Provide ongoing support so everyone knows exactly what’s happening and where to reach out with any questions
• Ensure your strategy integrates seamlessly with existing HR systems and processes—for example, if your performance management system needs updating to align with your new strategy, tackle this before rolling it out
• Celebrate milestones and successes along the way to maintain motivation and excitement for the new strategy
• Be flexible and ready to adapt the strategy based on ongoing feedback and organizational needs

9. Monitor and evaluate

The work doesn’t stop once you’ve launched your new people strategy. Track progress against your KPIs by keeping these tips at the top of your mind:

• Conduct an annual review of your people strategy to assess its effectiveness and alignment with business goals
• Use data and continuous feedback to improve and refine your strategy, ensuring it remains relevant and valuable to your people
• Establish feedback loops to gather frequent input from employees and managers to gather frequent input from employees and managers—to prevent this from being cumbersome for your Human Resources team members, weave questions into your existing surveys, focus groups, and one-on-one meetings to gather insights into how your strategy is working for everyone

10. Establish a culture of continuous learning and development

When your employees regularly acquire new skills, complete training courses, engage in mentoring partnerships, and move laterally and vertically throughout your organization, you’ll know your people strategy has been successful.

Reach this point by providing a work environment with rich employee development opportunities at every level of your org chart. You should:

• Provide a variety of training formats that complement rather than detract from your employees’ daily work—for example, gamification, microlearning, podcasts, an email series, or pop quizzes
• Encourage employees to embrace innovation and continuous improvement—for example, technology companies can run hackathons to spur creative problem-solving
• Recognize and reward employees for their contributions to fostering a culture of continuous learning—for example, you might offer gift cards to employees who complete a new certification course

Challenges that might arise when designing and implementing a people strategy

Designing any new business framework can be challenging, and you may encounter some common obstacles as you design and implement yours. Here’s how to overcome them:

Resistance to change

Stakeholders and employees stuck in their ways may be reluctant to move away from the current “way we do things around here.”

Resistance to change usually stems from fear—specifically, fear of the unknown and fear that the new people strategy may require them to take on extra work.

Inadequate resources

Your new people-first approach requires ample resources to move you from the current position you outlined in step one to the desired outcome you highlighted in step two.

You’ll need a proper budget, time, and personnel allocation to support a successful transition.

Insufficient data and metrics

When designing and implementing a people strategy, numbers, feedback, and insights are essential. Without them, you’re guessing or making assumptions about what motivates your employees.

That’s why the planning stage of your people strategy process is integral to its success. If you don’t have enough meaningful data before implementation, it’s time to go back a step and gather some proper intel.

Cultural misalignment

A mismatch between your people strategy and company culture will prevent your HR teams from progressing. For example, if your talent acquisition pillar is focused on hiring candidates with green skills, but your company doesn’t prioritize sustainability, this could create tension and confusion.

Poor communication

Frequent communication is an essential ingredient in any successful people strategy. In practice, this means “nobody told me” is a cry you should never hear as you roll out your new people strategy.

Ineffective leadership support

When leaders do a great job, their employees will believe in them, follow their example, and embrace the initiatives they support. However, if leadership buy-in is absent, getting your people strategy off the ground can be difficult.

Employee skepticism

You’ve communicated clearly about your strategy, piloted it with at least one team, and made changes based on initial feedback. Yet, some of your employees still need to be convinced about the process and how it will benefit them.

Align, engage, grow: Implement an effective people strategy with Deel

Deel’s platform offers multiple features to streamline your people strategy, unify your employee experiences, and drive your data-driven decision-making:

• Employee onboarding: Set your new hires up for success from day one, with all the tools and connections they need to ramp up quickly and become productive
• Performance reviews: Motivate your employees to achieve their best using our comprehensive performance management system
• Connection programs: Boost team morale and engagement by offering mechanisms to support healthy peer relationships
• Learning management: Enable your workers to acquire new skills and competencies with our customizable learning paths
• Career progression frameworks: Uncover new career opportunities by showing employees how they can advance from their current to their desired future role
• HRIS: Manage HR and compliance across 150+ countries with built-in reporting capabilities—for free
• EOR: Hire employees globally with payroll, tax, and compliance solutions built into the same, all-in-one platform
• Global payroll: Consolidate and streamline your international payroll operations to ensure accurate, on-time payments for your distributed teams

Book a demo to see how our solutions will help you streamline your people strategy.