HR & People Strategy Consultancy
Most organisations do not lack ambition for their people. What they lack is a written, agreed-upon HR strategy that connects that ambition to the business plan, the budget, and the next three years of hiring, development, and succession.
The shift is happening anyway. Boards now ask people questions they never used to ask. Where are our skills gaps? Who replaces our top five leaders? What will our workforce cost? Why are our best people leaving?
Answering those with an activity list rather than a strategy is what leaves HR reacting instead of leading. Most of those answers also sit in two separate places – what people are delivering now and who could do more next – and the two are rarely read side by side.
Let’s Talk Talent builds a people strategy that is short enough to remember, specific enough to act on, and owned by the leadership team and HR, a strategy in which performance and potential feed into each other rather than running on separate tracks.
Over 30 years of global practitioner experience sits behind every engagement, and in 2025 we were named HR Consultancy of the Year at the Personnel Today Awards.
How Let’s Talk Talent Can Help Your Team
HR & People Strategy Services
Every engagement starts with business context, not with an HR framework. We want to understand the growth plan, the operating model, the commercial pressures and the board’s appetite for change before we look at a single people process. That is what stops a strategy becoming a document nobody opens.
From there, the work is modular. Some organisations need the whole picture built from scratch. Others need one piece done properly: a succession plan, an EVP, an onboarding redesign, and a skills gap analysis. Take a single strand or the full set, delivered through diagnostics, facilitated leadership sessions, interactive workshops and hands-on implementation support. Everything is co-created with your team, so the capability stays in the building when we leave. Our wider HR and organisational development consultancy shows how this pillar connects to the rest.
HR & People Strategy Development
Turning your business plan into a people plan your leaders will back.
An HR strategy is only useful if it names priorities and drops things. We work with you to define three to five people priorities for the planning period, agree what success looks like for each, and map the interventions, owners and milestones underneath. The output is a strategy on a page, supported by a delivery roadmap.
Diagnostics come first. We use stakeholder interviews, employee listening, people data analysis and culture diagnostics to establish where you actually are, rather than where the last engagement survey said you were. That includes a skills gap analysis: the capabilities your plan needs, set honestly against the capabilities you hold today.
We then build the operating rhythm around the strategy. How HR reports on it, how the board reviews it, how it flexes when the commercial plan changes. If learning is central to your priorities, this aligns directly with your L&D strategy, so development spend follows the strategy rather than the loudest request.
People strategy on a page, with priorities, owners and measures
Organisational diagnostics: interviews, focus groups, people data review
HR operating model and HR team capability design
Skills gap analysis and capability mapping against future roles
People analytics: the small set of metrics your board should see quarterly
Best for: newly appointed HR or People Directors writing their first strategy, businesses scaling past 100 people without an HR blueprint, and organisations whose people plan has fallen out of step with a new commercial strategy.
Talent Management, Succession & Workforce Planning
Knowing who you have, who you need, and who is next.
Workforce planning answers a question that is simple to ask and surprisingly hard to evidence. Do you have the right people, in the right roles, with the right skills, at the right time? We help you model demand against your growth plan, compare it with the capabilities you already have, and turn each gap into a build, buy, or borrow decision.
Succession planning is where most organisations are most exposed. We map critical roles rather than simply senior ones, identify successors across ready-now, ready-soon and ready-later horizons, and build the development plans that move people between them. Our strategic succession planning support is built to survive contact with reality, including the awkward truth that some roles have no successor yet.
Underneath both sits talent management. How you identify potential, how you talk about it honestly, and how you develop it. We draw on over 40 assessment tools in which objectivity matters, including Hogan, Saville Wave, KFLA, the GC Index, DISC, Insights, and our own live and online 360-degree feedback programmes.
All of this is usually owned by different people, run on different calendars and never compared. Workforce planning sits with HR and finance, succession with the executive team, and performance management with line managers so the organisation cannot answer the question underneath all of it: are the people delivering today the people who could lead tomorrow?
We build them to be read together. What someone delivers now becomes the evidence behind a succession decision, and the development agreed through your career and capability frameworks shows up in what they deliver next.
Strategic workforce planning and scenario modelling
Critical role mapping and succession bench reviews
Talent identification, potential assessment and calibration sessions
Nine-box and talent review design that managers can actually run
Retention risk analysis for business-critical people
Best for: founder-led businesses with key-person risk, organisations preparing for investment or exit, and HR teams asked by the board to evidence their leadership pipeline.
Employee Experience, EVP & Onboarding Strategy
Making the promise you make to candidates true on day 90.
Your employee value proposition is the deal you offer people: what they give, what they get, and what makes working with you different from working somewhere else. We build EVPs from evidence, using employee interviews, exit insight and competitor benchmarking, so the words you publish are ones your own people recognise. Our employee value proposition consultancy outlines how that work is carried out. Employee experience then joins the dots across the whole journey. Attraction, onboarding, the first year, progression, and eventually exit. We map the moments that matter, identify where the experience breaks down, and redesign those points rather than trying to boil the ocean.
Onboarding is usually the highest-return fix. A new starter forms a lasting impression of you in their first fortnight, and most onboarding still consists of an IT ticket and a welcome lunch. We design structured onboarding that covers role clarity, relationships, culture, and early wins, built for hybrid and fully remote teams as well as office-based teams.
Performance sits close to all of this, which is why it now has its own home: our performance management consultancy pillar covers framework design, continuous check-ins and manager capability, supported by our long-standing performance management strategy service.
- EVP research, definition and rollout, including manager messaging
- Employee journey mapping and moments-that-matter analysis
- Onboarding and pre-boarding design for hybrid, remote and global teams
- Engagement and listening strategy: what to ask, how often, what to do next
- Employee experience measurement and reporting
Best for: organisations losing new starters within their first year, employer brands that no longer match reality, and businesses competing for scarce skills against much larger names.
What is HR Strategy?
HR strategy is a long-term, prioritised plan that sets out how an organisation will attract, develop, deploy and retain the people it needs to achieve its business goals. It states what the organisation will focus on over a defined period, usually one to three years, and what it will deliberately leave alone.
A good HR strategy covers a defined set of areas: workforce planning, talent management and succession, learning and capability, reward and recognition, employee experience and EVP, performance, culture, and the HR operating model itself. Each area carries named priorities, an owner, a measure of success and a realistic timeline. Many organisations call the same document a people strategy, using more human language for exactly the same thing.
An HR strategy is not an HR plan. An HR plan is a list of activities and deadlines for the year ahead. An HR strategy is the reasoning that decides which activities earn a place on that list. Nor is it generic business strategy with people language bolted on. Business strategy sets the commercial direction; HR strategy sets out the workforce, capability and culture required to deliver it, and is worthless if it cannot be traced back to that direction.
In practice, HR strategy is built through diagnosis, prioritisation and design. You establish where you are using evidence, agree the few things that will make the biggest difference, then design the interventions, governance and measures that make progress visible to the board.
Why HR Strategy Matters to Your Business
Growth you can actually staff
Workforce planning tells you what your growth plan costs in people and whether the skills to deliver it exist yet.
Lower cost of losing people
Retention improves when career paths, reward and everyday experience are designed deliberately rather than left to individual managers.
Faster, better people decisions
A clear strategy and a small set of people metrics let leaders decide on hiring, restructuring and investment without guesswork.
Key-person risk reduced
Succession planning gives you named, developing successors for critical roles instead of a scramble when someone resigns.
Skills gaps closed before they bite
Skills gap analysis shows which capabilities you are missing for the next phase, so development spend lands where it counts.
Change that sticks
Organisations with an agreed people strategy absorb restructures, mergers and new operating models with far less disruption.
How Let’s Talk Talent Approaches HR Strategy
1 – Discover. We meet your leadership team, your HR team and a cross-section of employees to understand the business plan, the pressures and the ambition behind the brief.
2 – Diagnose. We test the current state with evidence: people data, engagement and exit insight, stakeholder interviews, focus groups, culture diagnostics and assessment data where relevant.
3 – Design. We co-create the strategy with you in facilitated working sessions, agreeing priorities, interventions, owners, measures and a sequenced roadmap.
4 – Deliver & Embed. We work alongside your team to implement, build HR and manager capability through workshops and coaching, and review progress at agreed intervals.
5 – Typical timescales: focused pieces such as EVP development, onboarding design or a succession framework usually run 6 to 12 weeks. A full HR strategy covering several pillars typically takes 3 to 6 months. Large-scale transformation with embedded implementation support runs 12 months or more.
Who this is for: HR Directors, People Directors and Chief People Officers who need a strategy their board will approve. Founders and CEOs of scaling businesses building people infrastructure for the first time. And HR teams of one who carry the responsibility for people strategy without the bandwidth to write it alone.
FAQs About HR Strategy
How does LTT’s HR & People Consultancy service work?
We begin by understanding your business context, challenges, and ambitions through discovery conversations with key stakeholders. From there, we diagnose your current state using assessments, data analysis, and interviews. We then co-create a tailored strategy roadmap with clear priorities, practical interventions, and measurable outcomes. Throughout delivery, we work alongside your team to implement frameworks, build capability, and embed sustainable change.
How long does a typical HR & People Strategy project take?
Project timelines vary based on scope and complexity. Focused interventions, such as EVP development or onboarding design, typically take 6-12 weeks.
Comprehensive HR strategy projects covering multiple pillars usually run for 3-6 months. Large-scale transformation programmes with ongoing implementation support can extend to 12 months or longer.
Let’s Talk Talent establish clear milestones and adapt our approach to match your organisation’s pace and capacity for change.
How can Let’s Talk Talent support our company’s HR strategy?
Let’s Talk Talent brings specialist expertise across the full spectrum of people strategy, from organisational design and workforce planning to culture transformation and analytics.
The Let’s Talk Talent approach combines evidence-based frameworks with practical experience, delivering measurable results for UK organisations.
Let’s Talk Talent works as an extension of your team, whether you need strategic guidance, hands-on implementation support, or capability building. Our solutions are tailored to your sector, scale, and stage of growth, ensuring they’re relevant and useful for real-world needs.
Do you offer workshops or training as part of the HR & People Strategy service?
Let’s Talk Talent workshops and learning and development programmes complement our strategic consultancy. We design and deliver targeted sessions that build capability in your HR team and line managers, ensuring they can sustain and evolve the frameworks we implement together. These might include leadership development, change management, coaching, or technical HR expertise, depending on your needs.
What makes Let’s Talk Talent’s approach to HR Strategy different?
Let’s Talk Talent focuses on practical, measurable outcomes rather than theoretical frameworks. Our bespoke HR consultancy combines deep expertise with an understanding and collaborative approach that respects your organisational context. We don’t deliver cookie-cutter solutions. Instead, we co-create strategies that work for your specific challenges, culture, and ambitions. Our clients value our ability to translate complex people challenges into clear action plans, and our commitment to building internal capability alongside external support.
How are solutions tailored for hybrid/remote teams?
Let’s Talk Talent design HR strategies and interventions that work effectively across distributed, hybrid, and in-person environments. This includes digital-first onboarding experiences, virtual leadership development, remote-friendly performance frameworks, and EVPs that speak to flexible working expectations. Our approach recognises that modern workforce planning must account for geographic flexibility, and we help organisations build cultures of connection and accountability, regardless of where people work.
Is ongoing support or coaching available after the project?
Let’s Talk Talent offers flexible ongoing support to ensure your HR strategy delivers sustained impact. This might include monthly check-ins, quarterly reviews, access to our team for ad hoc guidance, or ongoing coaching for HR leaders and line managers. Many clients benefit from phased partnerships where we deliver intensive strategy development initially, then provide lighter-touch support as you embed change. We tailor our involvement to match your needs and internal capability.
Ready to Futureproof Your HR Strategy?
If you’re ready to build a people strategy that drives growth, engagement, and competitive advantage, we can help.
Get in touch to discuss how our strategy support can transform your business.
Case Studies
Building the foundations for growth: organisational diagnostics at a specialist underwriters: a full diagnostic that gave the leadership team a genuine evidence base for their people priorities before they invested a penny.
Designing a future-ready operating model for the UK’s largest health research organisation structure, roles and ways of working redesigned around where the organisation was heading, not where it had been.
Transformative organisational design to enable future growth: a redesign that removed duplication and gave people clearer accountability and clearer career routes.
More client work sits in our case study library.
People & Team Development Resources
We publish practical guidance for HR leaders, people directors and team managers who have to make development work with real budgets and real diaries. Start with these.
EVP examples that work real employee value propositions pulled apart, with what makes them credible rather than aspirational.
How to ensure your onboarding experience is exceptional: a practical structure for the first 90 days, including hybrid and remote starters.
Why company succession planning could save your business: the risk of an unmapped leadership bench, and how to start mapping one.
10 questions every leader should be asking about talent: a boardroom-ready set of prompts for your next people strategy conversation.
Everything else lives in our learning and insight hub.