If your people strategy lives in a slide deck, it’s not working.
At EmpowerHR 2025 Europe, David Perring, chief insights officer at Fosway Group, led a candid discussion alongside Ciprian Arhire, global head of people programmes and analytics at Entain Group, and Dr. Michelle Penelope King, former director of inclusion at Netflix. Together, they outlined how HR can trade transactions for transformation and become the engine behind organizational resilience and growth.
Their message was clear: A people strategy won’t succeed just because it looks polished on paper or mirrors what other companies are doing. It’s about enabling the people closest to the work — especially managers — to create the kind of environment where performance can thrive.
“The worst thing someone can tell me is that the culture I’m working in is just like every other organization they’ve ever worked in,” Michelle shared.
That means understanding what performance really looks like, building value-driven cultures, and designing leadership support systems fit for today’s teams. When HR leads in these areas, strategy stops being a document and starts driving real growth.
Define high performance clearly and holistically
If you want to properly execute your people strategy, you need to define your HR strategy. And that starts with clarity around what high performance really means.
For Michelle, the problem is that many organizations still rely on outdated definitions. Performance is often reduced to numbers: profitability, productivity, output. But those metrics miss the dynamics that matter most, such as remote collaboration, diverse workplaces, and the growing influence of AI and automation.
“High performance is really balancing both what we do in terms of profitability and productivity, and how we do it in this new world of work,” Michelle says.
That how is critical. When teams can navigate differences, surface blockers early, and adapt quickly, they’re better equipped to deliver results. But most managers haven’t been trained to lead in that kind of environment.
And many leaders, Michlle points out, either don’t know that’s their role or assume they’re doing better than they are, making meaningful change harder to unlock.
To build real momentum, HR must define what “good” looks like. Not just in outcomes, but in the daily behaviors and team dynamics that support them. Then equip managers with the tools, language, and feedback loops to lead in alignment.
Organizations should also be bold enough to lean into what makes them different. “Not every organization can be a Netflix or an IBM … and they shouldn’t be,” Ciprian says. “They should be their unique … organizations with the different challenges and different opportunities that they have.”
Michelle echoed that idea. “You want to be able to know just by the first sentence that that is the organization’s HR strategy,” she says. “It should differentiate the culture in such a way it’s really hard to replicate.”
Because performance is a shared experience, built from the inside out.
Personalize your approach to match diverse needs
Executing a people strategy today means moving beyond one-size-fits-all solutions. With a wide range of roles, skills, work styles, and aspirations across the workforce, HR must meet employees where they are and design experiences that reflect who they are.
Ciprian recommends adopting a persona-based approach to do just that. “You’re looking at the organization as an HR professional, so through the lenses of personas… different groups of people and their needs and wants and pain points and what brings them into work,” he says.
By building around real employee segments, not generic averages, HR teams can design initiatives that speak to what truly motivates different groups, whether that’s growth opportunities, flexibility, or meaningful work. This shift supports agility, too.
“We’re seeing more evolving strategies, or more long-term principles, than short-term strategies,” Ciprian adds. “So building more adaptability, rather than stability… I think that’s where we’re heading with people strategies.”
That mindset — test, learn, adapt — helps HR stay close to the business and the people powering it. Rapid prototyping and regular feedback loops keep strategy relevant as expectations evolve.
And personalization starts with listening. As David puts it, “If leaders are asking you, ‘Hey, what are my people thinking?’ we’ve got bigger problems.” The goal is to equip managers to have open conversations regularly and to use what they hear to shape strategy.
This kind of personalization also drives deeper engagement. Employees now expect the same curated experiences at work that they get as consumers. And when people feel seen, they show up with more energy, clarity, and connection.
Empower managers to execute effectively
Even the strongest HR strategy won’t land without strong execution. And that execution lives with managers. They translate strategy into everyday behaviors, culture, and decisions. But too often, they’re left without the context or tools to deliver on what the business needs from them.
David underscores just how central managers are. “Are we providing the right information to managers to enable them to make better decisions?” he asks. That’s the bar HR should be setting — not just building systems, but making those systems useful in the moments that matter.
Michelle backs this up with the numbers. “About 46% of an employee’s experience of inclusion … is directly attributable to the behaviors of their line leader,” she notes. If inclusion, engagement, and performance all flow through managers, then enabling them is no longer optional. It’s essential.
That enablement must stay human. As Ciprian says, “We should never replace what should be human interaction and human conversations with just machine data.” Technology should inform judgment, not replace it.
To execute people strategy effectively, HR must build around people, not just process. That means defining performance clearly, personalizing experiences with intention, and empowering managers to lead with both context and confidence.
Because strategy only succeeds when people are equipped to bring it to life.
Make strategy real — from vision to execution
People strategy can’t live in theory. It has to show up in conversations, in culture, and in the way people lead every day. That means designing for the way work actually happens and empowering the people who make it happen.
To hear the full conversation and go deeper on how to define, personalize, and operationalize your HR strategy, watch the full Empower HR 2025 Europe panel discussion.
Make your people strategy a powerful reality
