Planning Your 2027 People Strategy
Here are 5 Places to Start…
Planning for 2027 is already on my mind. If you're a business leader thinking about your people strategy for the year ahead, this post is for you.
As an HR leader, this might be my favourite time of year. It's the moment we stop talking about big goals and dreams and start making them real. Budgets are taking shape, leadership teams are booking strategy sessions, and there's a rare window to step back and ask: do we have the people, skills and culture to get where we're going?
Over the years I've refined my approach to this season, and I come back to the same five steps every single time. Here's where I'd start.
Prefer to watch? I walk through all five steps in this video…
1. Start with the business goals, not the HR wish list
It's tempting to open the planning process with everything HR would like to do: a new performance system, a fresh engagement survey, a leadership program. Those things may well be worth doing, but they shouldn't be the starting point.
The best people strategies are built backward from where the business is headed. Before you write a single HR initiative, get clear on the answers to questions like:
What's growing, and what's shrinking?
What's changing in our market, our products or our operations?
What does leadership need to achieve this year, and by when?
Once you know the destination, your people priorities become much easier to define, and much easier to get funded.
2. Take an honest look at where you are today
You can't plan a route without knowing your starting point. Take a clear-eyed look at:
Turnover: who's leaving, from which teams, and why?
Engagement results: where are scores strong, and where are they slipping?
Hiring trends: how long are roles taking to fill, and where are you struggling to find talent?
What employees are actually saying: in surveys, exit interviews, one-on-ones and the hallway.
Data tells you what's happening. Just as importantly, it opens up conversations that help you focus on what really matters, rather than what feels urgent or what's loudest in the room.
3. Identify your biggest people risks and opportunities
With your business goals and your current reality side by side, the gaps start to show. Common ones include:
Skill gaps that will slow down growth plans
Leadership capability, especially among new or first-time managers
Burnout in teams that have been stretched for too long
Compliance exposure that's been quietly building
Retention risk among your top performers
Keep coming back to your business goals from step one. The question isn't "what could we improve?" It's "what needs to be fixed or supported, from a people perspective, for us to get there?"
And be disciplined. You can't fix everything at once. Name the top three to five priorities that will make the biggest long-term impact, and let the rest wait.
4. Build a realistic roadmap
A plan without timelines, ownership and budget is just a wish list. This is the step that turns good intentions into results.
For each priority:
Lay out the investment and the expected return. Leadership will support people initiatives when they can see what they're getting for them.
Break it into quarterly milestones. Twelve months is a long time; quarters keep momentum and make it easier to course-correct.
Assign clear ownership. Every priority needs a name next to it.
Make sure it's measurable AND realistic. Ambition is great, but a plan your team can't actually deliver will erode trust faster than no plan at all.
5. Decide how you'll measure success (and communicate it!)
Finally, decide what success looks like before you start. Pick a handful of key metrics, not dozens, and check in on them regularly.
Then share your progress with your team. This step is often overlooked, and it's one of the most powerful. People want to be part of the big picture. They want to see how their work contributes to real outcomes for the business. When you communicate clearly and consistently, you bridge the gap between strategy and action, and you build engagement along the way.
