If you’re wrestling with the challenge of crafting an effective People Strategy, this episode of HR Coffee Time is here to help. Kelly Vincent, Head of People & Culture at a thriving edtech company, shares her insights into building a powerful People Strategy from the ground up.

Kelly’s key insights, tips and learnings from the experience of creating a powerful People Strategy for an SME include:

• Get buy-in from the CEO and senior leadership team.
• Spend time getting to understand the business and the people within it.
• Align the People Strategy with the business strategy.
• Review what is already in place.
• Get all your ideas out of your head and onto paper, so you can focus.
• Prioritise because you’ll have more ideas than you can implement in one year.
• Identify what the outputs will be from your strategy.
• Assess how long it will take you to achieve the goals you’ve set in the People Strategy.
• Identify whether your plans need to involve other departments and find out if they have time to support you.
• Your strategy will be shaped by how much time your ideas will take to implement and the resources that you’ll need.
• Keep a record of you ‘spilled over ideas’ that didn’t make it into this year’s strategy, so you can consider them again in the future.
• Chose KPIs and measures that are suitable for your strategy.
• Carve out dedicated time to work on your strategy – giving yourself regular time slots, instead of trying to write the whole thing in one day can be helpful.
• Kelly chose to have 3 pillars in her People Strategy because this aligned with the overall business strategy that also used 3 pillars.

Useful Links

• Connect with Fay on LinkedIn
• Fay’s website: Bright Sky Career Coaching

Kelly’s Book Recommendation

(Disclosure: the book link is an affiliate link which means that Fay will receive a small commission from Amazon if you make a purchase through it)

• ‘Take Back Your Power: 10 New Rules for Women at Work’, by Deborah Liu 

Other Relevant HR Coffee Time Episodes

• Episode 58: How to feel more confident using data & analytics in your HR role, with Angela Moyle
• Episode 26: How to be strategic in your new HR leadership role
• Episode 61: The 4 pillars that will help you be strategic in your HR role
• Episode 77: How to create an effective DEI strategy, with Metra Rowe

Rate and Review the Podcast

If you found this episode of HR Coffee Time helpful, please rate and review it on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. If you're kind enough to leave a review, let Fay know so she can say thank you. You can always reach her at: fay@brightskycareercoaching.co.uk.

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