HIGH IMPACT HR

10 STRATEGIES TO TRANSFORM YOUR HR,
DELIVER REAL BUSINESS VALUE,
AND CREATE THE ULTIMATE COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE

"Transform your HR, harness the power of your people

and create a competitive advantage for your organisation"

We’re living through continual disruption. The pace of change is only accelerating - and the HR practices that got us here, won’t drive the organisational progress we now need. HR transformation is no longer a one-off project – it’s constant. And it demands a people-first High Impact HR function who can successfully navigate our disrupted world, and truly enable their people and business.

What HR leaders and functions don't need right now are more HR Transformation frameworks. Because frameworks don't deliver lasting organisational change - people do. What organisations really need are clear, simple, actionable approaches that teams can adopt to drive successful transformation, and start realising the benefits immediately.

Here's how to start. These ten strategies are simple in concept, but incredibly high impact in output. Use them individually to focus in on specific areas, but for maximum impact use them together. And watch the business outcomes start to stack up.

In my upcoming book High Impact HR I share the full approach and tools

behind the principles. It's available for pre-order here.

1. Business Impact Focused - Move Beyond HR Activity to Real Results

Legacy HR was built on activity completion. Working through our list of HR initiatives and ticking the boxes to evidence what we’d delivered. And when the workload is relentless, it’s easy for us to keep going through the motions. But measuring success through completion of activity isn’t a true indicator. Just because we’ve completed a piece of work doesn’t mean it created value. HR professionals and teams running at full capacity doesn’t necessarily mean we’re being effective.

We need to ask: are we solving the right problems? Are we doing the work that truly makes a difference? Are we moving the organisation forward? The reality is: busy isn’t a business outcome, effort doesn’t equal impact and activity isn’t a measure of value. And when we try to do everything, we don’t land anything. We need to make the shift from a focus on completed activities, to measuring success by the business value and return on investment delivered for the organisation. Thats when we realise our true power.

2. Simplification - Reduce HR Complexity to Boost Performance

What's the real financial cost of complexity in your HR function? Legacy processes, duplication and red tape, never ending roadmaps and the forever growing book of work. In HR, complexity doesn’t just create inefficiencies - it reduces our impact. Complexity drives huge waste into our functions, slowing down performance and killing results - holding our organisations back.

Simplification isn’t a project. It’s a mindset - a way of thinking and working. And it's your secret superpower - the game changer that nobody is talking about. Simplification removes waste, unlocks better employee experiences, elevates performance and delivers the best business outcomes. And best of all, it's a best practice approach that's right there at our fingertips.

3. Fix the Root Cause - Solve Your HR Problems Once and For All

Too often in HR, we treat the symptoms instead of the cause. We're under real pressure in the moment so we create workarounds, create an interim fix, or we build a sticking plaster solution. These quick fixes might create short-term relief, but often they unintentionally create new problems as a result. The underlying issue remains, and the same problems resurface again and again, driving waste into our HR and cross functional teams, and frustrating our people.

High Impact HR organisations tackle the real cause. We step back, we dig deeper, and we get curious. We ask the hard questions: what’s driving this? What’s getting in the way? Where is the friction really coming from? By diagnosing the true root of a problem, we can design solutions that remove it for good - preventing wasted effort, improving the employee experience, and delivering lasting business results. This isn’t about doing more, it’s about doing the right things once, and doing them really well. Fix the real problems and free up your function for the value-adding work.

4. Employee Experience - Design Your HR Around What People Need to Thrive

For every organisation, our people are our business. And they’re the most valuable asset that we have. It’s our people who create, deliver, build, solve, support and serve. They’re the enablers of the business strategy. Our people’s experiences are key. If we want our HR function, and our organisations to succeed, we need our people to succeed. When the employee experience is positive, people feel supported, engaged and able to deliver. When it’s not, performance is affected. Friction builds, energy drops, productivity declines. The ripple effects can be huge - affecting engagement, discretionary effort and ultimately business outcomes.

Focusing on our HR processes alone - without considering the employee experience - is counterproductive. Because ineffective processes are one of the biggest barriers for our workforce, and organisational performance. They create friction and drive waste - both for employees navigating these processes, and for the teams managing the fallout. Shifting to an experience lens is a very different way of thinking about our HR activities - and delivers much better results. The best processes are often invisible, they feel seamless. People don’t get stuck, they don’t need help, and they don’t even stop to think about the process - because it works. Make the shift from process to experience and you'll never look back.

5. Cross Functional Collaboration - Break Down Silos to Accelerate Results

We need to remember that as teams, functions and organisations we are greater than the sum of our parts. The silo mentality belongs in the past - if we want to deliver sustainable business results, we need to be bold and operate as one. A culture of true collaboration is critical across the whole organisation. Because, regardless of the business function we might sit within, we all work for the same organisation with the same business strategy and goals. We need to play on the same team.

When you build an organisation that operates as an interactive network, everything changes. Networked organisations think and work differently. They work in true collaboration and break down traditional barriers to optimise diversity of technical expertise, experience and thought – co-creating solutions that simply can’t be conceived in isolation. This approach enables us to design seamless, inspiring, end to end experiences across the entire employee lifecycle. Helping our people to be at their best, maximising our resources, fully enabling our people and realising our potential as an organisation. Build a networked organisation, and watch your business impact take off.

6. Design With Your People - Co-Create HR Solutions That Actually Work

Designing your products and services without including your employees - the people who are going to use them is a mistake. Because what often happens in reality is that we unconsciously line up problems for the future. But unless you have a holistic view of your HR landscape you might not even realise - you’ll just be dealing with the fallout. You’ll be fixing the symptoms of the problem - not the root cause.

Effective HR solutions don’t just come from expert design. They come from shared design. When we bring our people into our world - to be part of the creation process, together we can shape solutions that are not only streamlined, they're effective, compliant, and easy to use which results in strong adoption. This approach stops waste before it starts and delivers efficiencies, as well as providing a much better employee experience. This positively impacts engagement levels, productivity and business outcomes. Co-creation isn’t a nice-to-have - it’s an essential business strategy. When we design with our people, not for them, this helps to identify blind spots, remove friction and design much better solutions that are not only effective and compliant – but intuitive and human – processes that your people will actually use.

7. Data & Insight Driven - Use Evidence to Guide HR Decisions

Legacy HR was often built on perception or assumption. We shaped activity around what we thought our people and business needed, what our leadership team wanted, what we’d always done, or even what other organisations were doing. We relied on the experience and instinct of our HR practitioners - and sometimes that worked. But instinct isn’t insight, and without evidence, we’re working blind.

Being data driven isn’t about dashboards. It’s about clarity, action and outcomes. And if we want to stay ahead, make better decisions and drive real business outcomes, we have to be guided by data. But this approach isn’t about the data alone - it’s about taking a holistic view. It’s a way of thinking, working and leading that demands curiosity, evidence and action. It’s about moving from reactive to proactive and ultimately to predictive. And when we get this right data becomes a business differentiator. Build strong foundations with your data architecture, and use your information, insights, and the voice of your people to drive your path to sustainable organisational success.

8. Technology is the Enabler - Make Your HR Tech Work Harder for Your People

HR Technology carries a huge weight of expectation across our functions and organisations. Too often, we hope that the latest solution – packed with features and promises, will fix the biggest problems in our organisations. But even the most advanced technology is still only one part of the equation. And we cannot expect technology alone to resolve our challenges without putting in the groundwork - we need to take a holistic view. The problem is, so often we expect our tech to be the complete solution - and in doing so, we overlook the human work that makes transformation stick. We invest in the tool, but forget the thinking, clarity, and foundation-building that’s required to make it successful and sustainable.

So, before rolling out the next AI platform, or layering in another software tool, take a step back. Get really clear on the reality it’s about to inherit. Because technology amplifies whatever it’s plugged into. If your foundations aren’t strong, things won’t get better - they’ll just break faster. But if your people practices are human-centred and purpose driven, that strength can scale. To unlock the true power of technology, we have to do the real work first: simplify complexity, design around people, align with purpose and lead with inclusion. That's when the real magic happens.

9. Inspiring Change - Lead Change That People Want to Be Part Of

If we want to deliver real value to our people and business, we have to evolve, adapt, and grow. And that means change - often big, uncomfortable, and challenging. Because without it, our organisations fall behind. And we can guarantee that if we don’t deliver, our competitors will.

But change fatigue and change resistance is real. We can’t avoid it. We need our people to be onboard. And if we try to power through it by enforcing change, without laying the right foundations and taking a people centred approach, the changes we’re trying to make won’t land. They won’t embed. Our people will challenge us, fight us, or ignore us.

How we help our people and organisations change is what differentiates HR transformation that that sticks, from transformation that stalls. We need to change together. To evolve. Create an environment where the change we want to make is so compelling, our people want in. They want to be part of it. We need to give them the freedom to help create the change with us, design it with them not for them. Help people connect to the purpose of the change, understand the benefits to the organisation, to them as individuals, as leaders, and as teams. Inspiring change instead of trying to enforce change. This approach builds readiness, resilience and lasting organisational change.

10. Enable the Business Strategy - Align HR to Organisational Success

How do we define business value? It’s the contribution our work makes to the performance, efficiency, and competitiveness of the organisation. It’s not a finance metric, it’s a mindset. And it starts with us. And when we lead through this lens - the financial results follow.

Leading through a lens of business value is about how we think, how we work and how we communicate. And it changes everything. It gives us permission to leave legacy ways of operating behind and move forward in a more intentional, commercially focused way. When we start leading in this way it creates a ripple effect through our teams, our function and our organisation. It’s one of the most powerful shifts that we can make. And we have to build this mindset in our own function first.

Building a value-first HR function means being bold, and it starts from within. It begins with clarity. Understanding the business strategy and knowing where the organisation is heading. Shaping your HR strategy, priorities and activities to enable that vision. Every programme, every project, every action - aligned to the business and people outcomes that matter. This alignment shifts everything. It transforms how we think, how we work, and the results we can achieve. It becomes a differentiator. It helps us make the shift from a support function to a true enabler of organisational success.

These ten strategies are simple, but incredibly impactful. They work well individually, but together they create a truly connected HR function, who drive organisational success. Are you ready to harness the power of High Impact HR - transformation that delivers?

Discover all 12 principles behind High Impact HR.

The High Impact HR approach has been recognised by leading HR awards and industry bodies for it's real-world results. Explore the latest recognition here.

For a deeper dive plus the tools and mindset to make High Impact HR a reality in your organisation,

you can find my upcoming book here.

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