People & Culture Strategy Template

What Is A People & Culture Strategy?

A People & Culture Strategy serves as the foundation within an organization. It's a carefully crafted plan to guide the organization toward the desired company culture. Think of it as a dynamic roadmap steering the organization toward creating a work environment where everyone can thrive, motivating employees to do their best work every day.

At its core, this strategy reflects the commitment to nurturing an organizational culture that aligns with its core values, mission, and long-term vision. It's like a guiding star, ensuring the organization stays on track to develop a workplace culture that truly represents its identity.

This strategy should provide a high-level view that is clearly aligned with the overall business strategy. At the same time, it should cascade from that big picture to the individual initiatives, metrics, and goals, focusing on each employee's experience.

Having a holistic people strategy that is aligned at all levels of the organization, strengthens employee engagement and enables team members to feel empowered for more effective decision-making, ultimately pushing toward achieving the overarching business goals.

What's Included In This People & Culture Strategy Template?

• 4x People & Culture Focus Areas
• 12x People & Culture Objectives
• 16x People & Culture Projects
• 22x People & Culture KPIs

💡 Pro Tip: After building your template, you can create dashboards for monitoring real-time performance. And the best part? Free access, with no need for a credit card. ✅

Who Is This People & Culture Strategy Template For?

This People & Culture Strategy Template is designed for organizations seeking to enhance their workforce planning, optimize their people management, and create a great employee experience.

👉🏻 Whether you're a small business, a mid-sized company, or a large corporation, this template can be tailored to suit your specific needs and objectives.

It’s an especially valuable resource for:

1. HR Professionals: HR (Human Resources) teams can use this template to structure and implement comprehensive People & Culture Strategies, ensuring alignment with the overall business goals and strategy.
2. Leadership Team: Managers and team leaders can draw insights from this template to enhance their leadership approach, promoting employee engagement and a positive work culture within their teams.
3. Executives and Business Leaders: Senior executives and business leaders can use this template to establish a strategic framework that aligns the entire organization with its culture and long-term goals.
4. Entrepreneurs and Startups: Founders of startups and small businesses can leverage this template to lay the foundations for a healthy workplace culture from the outset.

As you can see, this template can provide value to multiple different stakeholders in your organization. Whether you're an HR professional, a manager, or an executive, there's something in it for everyone involved in the realm of People & Culture.

How Is This People & Culture Strategy Template Relevant To Your Organization?

This template isn't just about processes; it's a reflection of the fundamental People & Culture aspect that's inherent in every organization. It offers a practical approach to not only streamline your hiring processes but also to shape and nurture your company's culture. Plus, it helps define the kind of people you want your organization to be associated with.

How To Use This People & Culture Strategy Template: 5 Easy Steps

Creating your People & Culture Strategy becomes a straightforward process with our template. However, before diving into these five steps, we recommend defining the critical priority metrics you aim to achieve. Typically, you should identify three to four of these metrics, as they will serve as your guiding compass, aligning your strategy perfectly with your ultimate business goals.

These key metrics usually revolve around areas you want to enhance, address, or leverage as part of your business strategy. To pinpoint these priority metrics, a valuable exercise is conducting an internal and external analysis to identify areas for improvement and opportunities. A useful tool for such analysis is the SWOT matrix, where you delve into your organization's strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.

For instance, if your analysis reveals a high employee turnover rate, impacting operations and costs, a key metric to consider could be employee retention rate. By retaining top talent, your organization can maintain a stable and experienced workforce, reducing the need for continuous recruitment and training.

👉🏻 Once you’ve defined your top priority metrics, you can get into the building blocks of your strategy!

1. Define clear examples of your focus areas

Now that you’ve defined your key metrics, think about your focus areas. These are the pillars you’ll prioritize to make sure you address your organization's targets. Begin thinking about what comes to mind for your organization when you think of People & Culture and note down some keywords i.e. people, culture, fair work, retention, loyalty.

Now reflect on these words and ask yourself:

• Am I struggling to address any of these areas?—Your internal analysis should have given you clarity on this.
• Will these areas help me move towards achieving the key metrics we’ve set?

If yes, then these are the areas you should focus on.

Examples of focus areas for the People & Culture strategy could be:

• Talent Acquisition and Recruitment: Streamlining the hiring process, attracting top talent, and ensuring a diverse and inclusive candidate pool.
• Employee Onboarding: Creating a seamless and engaging onboarding experience to help new hires integrate quickly.
• Employee Engagement: Fostering a workplace culture that promotes employee engagement, satisfaction, and a sense of belonging.
• Performance Management: Developing effective performance appraisal systems, goal-setting processes, and feedback mechanisms to drive employee growth.
• Learning and Development: Providing opportunities for professional development and continuous learning to enhance employee capabilities and adaptability.
• Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI): Promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion at all levels of the organization to ensure a representative and equitable workplace.
• Employee Well-being: Implementing initiatives that support physical and mental well-being, work-life balance, and stress management.
• Leadership Development: Nurturing leadership skills and competencies at all levels of the organization to ensure effective and adaptable leadership.
• Compensation and Benefits: Designing competitive and fair compensation packages and benefits to attract and retain top talent.
• Organizational Culture: Defining and fostering a culture that aligns with the organization's values and strategic goals.

💡Pro Tip: Opt for 3-4 focus areas; exceeding this number may dilute your focus and effectiveness.

2. Think about the objectives that could fall under that focus area

Once you've identified the focus areas within your People & Culture strategy, the next step is to define clear and actionable objectives that align with each of them. Objectives provide a roadmap for achieving your strategic goals and help measure progress.

Consider what you intend to achieve within each specific focus area. These objectives should adhere to the SMART criteria—being Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound—ensuring they are well-defined and purposeful.

Examples of objectives for some of the focus areas mentioned previously could be:

Talent Acquisition and Recruitment

• Elevate the organization's employer brand recognition
• Improve talent management by developing a talent pool of potential candidates for key roles
• Provide ongoing training and development opportunities to enhance the recruitment team’s expertise

Performance Management

• Improve key employee performance metrics
• Promote a culture of high-performance
• Clarify career paths for advancement

💡Pro Tip: Don’t define any KPIs and actions/projects yet! Keep your objectives rather high-level in this step, we’ll get into these elements later.

3. Set yourself measurable targets (KPIs) to tackle the objective

A KPI is a key performance indicator that is measurable and evaluates the success rate of an organization in relation to the objective it has set. With reference to the People & Culture strategy template, organizations can use KPIs as a way to track whether their key business goals are on track, behind, ahead, or have been achieved.

For the focus area of Employee Engagement, examples of KPIs could be:

• Increase employee feedback participation rate to 80%
• Improve engagement survey scores by 10 points
• Enhance employee retention rate by 5%

Examples of KPIs for the focus area of Talent Acquisition and Recruitment could be:

• Reduce average time to fill job vacancy to 7 days
• Increase offer acceptance rate to 90%
• Achieve a candidate diversity index of 40%

💡How to Write KPIs? To assist you, we've prepared an article that will guide you through the process of creating Key Performance Indicators (KPIs).

4. Implement related projects to achieve the KPIs

This is the stage in your strategic planning process where you begin to outline the specific actions necessary to achieve your objectives. This is where your projects come into play. It's crucial that these projects are closely aligned with achieving the KPIs.

Examples of projects for the People & Culture Strategy Template could be:

• Create a mentoring program pairing first-time managers with company leadership
• Develop and launch an organization-wide program to raise awareness about mental health
• Analyze data from exit interviews to identify common trends and areas for improvement
• Organize workshops and coaching sessions to help employees unlock their full potential
• Revise the performance review process to make it more effective and meaningful

💡Pro Tip: Keep in mind, your projects should be aligned with your KPIs and objectives. Pursue only those projects that actively contribute to their achievement.

5. Use Cascade Strategy Execution Platform to see faster results from your strategy

In the pursuit of a dynamic and impactful People & Culture Strategy, the right tools can make all the difference. Enter Cascade Strategy Execution Platform, a powerful ally for swift and efficient strategy execution.

Cascade empowers your organization to translate strategy into action with precision and effectiveness. Here's how it can drive faster results within your People & Culture Strategy:

• Strategic Alignment: With Cascade’s Alignment Maps feature, you’ll ensure that your People & Culture initiatives are fully aligned with your organization's broader strategic objectives. It offers a systematic approach to ensure that every element of your strategy contributes to your overarching goals.

• Real-time Insights: Cascade’s Dashboards & Reports provide access to real-time data and analytics in a visual format. This means you can monitor the progress of your People & Culture initiatives in real time, allowing for quick course corrections and optimizations as needed.

• Collaborative Execution: Embrace the platform's collaborative capabilities, including the Team Updates feature, which enables team members to easily update their initiatives within the platform. Whether you're working on talent acquisition, employee engagement, or any other aspect of your strategy, Cascade provides a centralized space for seamless collaboration and communication.
• Seamless Integrations: Cascade's integrations allow you to seamlessly connect with other tools and systems, streamlining your People & Culture efforts and ensuring data flows smoothly across your organization's tech stack.

👉🏻 Use this People & Culture Strategy template and launch your strategy in Cascade; it's $0 forever.

Discover other related templates:

• HR Strategy Template
• Talent Management Plan Template
• Talent Acquisition Strategy Template
• Employee Engagement Strategy Template
• New Employee Onboarding Strategy Template

FAQs

What’s the difference between an HR strategy and a People & Culture strategy?

An HR (Human Resources) strategy primarily deals with the administrative and operational aspects of HR functions like recruitment and compliance. In contrast, a People & Culture strategy takes a broader approach, focusing on cultivating a positive workplace culture, employee engagement, leadership development, and creating an inspiring work environment. While HR strategies address specific HR tasks, People & Culture strategies aim to shape the overall organizational culture and enhance the employee experience to drive organizational success.