Is your people strategy future-fit? Why sustainable people management starts with measurement, not assumptions

Keywords: Psychology, People Strategy, Sustainability, Coaching

Date: 5 June 2025, Dr Anna-Rosa le Roux, WorkLife Digital

Have you noticed a slow fade in your organisation?

The signs can be subtle at first  -  a missed deadline here, a muted Zoom camera there. But left unaddressed, they become cultural patterns that undermine performance, wellbeing and long-term success.

In today’s environment, traditional people management approaches fall short. If you're not actively measuring the right things - and building the psychological infrastructure that helps people thrive, your organisation is reacting, not leading.

Signs of organisational disengagement

Here are what the early signs of a disengaged and unsustainable culture looks like:

• • • Employees do the bare minimum to meet job requirements ("quiet quitting") and avoid tasks that require extra effort or collaboration.

    • Poor follow through on responsibilities or commitments

    • On a team level you notice constant complaints about small things that are not really relating to the business. 

    • Teams are withdrawing from interactions and turns of their cameras

    • A tell tale sign are increased absenteeism, objectively measured by sick days, late arrivals or early departures

    • Managers are withholding feedback, cancels management meetings or avoid discussing issues to resolve conflict within or across departments

    • There is a general opaqueness in communication and no relatable strategy or strategic objectives in your organisation 

    • A shift from we to they when people talk about the organisation

If this feels familiar, it’s time to ask a critical question: Is your current people management budget well spent?

Is your budget driving the right outcomes?

1. Strategic alignment 

• • • Are you investing in the right priorities?

    • Does the budget support your business strategy (e.g. growth, innovation, transformation)?

    • Do you know and solve the current pain points (e.g. high turnover, low engagement, quiet quitting, underperformance) or recycling outdated, legacy initiatives? 

    • Do you truly understand what is holding your people back and are your investments closing the gaps?

In short: Are you spending your people budget where it will most effectively drive execution of your strategy?

2. Measurable impact 

Are you getting results?

1. • • Are your people metrics improving? (engagement, retention, performance)

     • Can you show a ROI, not just spend, but impact?

In short: Are you collecting meaningful feedback (qualitative + quantitative) and using that data to learn, adapt and improve?

3. Perceived value

Do your leaders and employees believe in the value of your initiatives?

• • • Are people initiatives perceived as HR "tick-boxes" or genuine enablers of performance and wellbeing?

    • Is there a disconnect between what you fund and what people want/need? For example: you invest in coaching, but people ask for career clarity or better feedback from leaders)

In short: Are your initiatives aligned with employee voice and perceived as relevant, timely, and supportive?

What can you do now?

1. Measure the strategic drivers of engagement

People management is a science. Decades of research in psychology, organisational behaviour and leadership have identified the core drivers of engagement and wellbeing. These aren’t abstract concepts  -  they’re measurable, manageable and deeply linked to business performance.

At a time when retention, resilience and culture are make-or-break issues, organisations need more than generic surveys. Most pulse surveys only scratch the surface. They tell you what, but not why. You need diagnostics that pinpoint the real levers of engagement: psychological safety, meaningful work, quality of leadership, belonging and connectedness and more.

Ask yourself:

• • • Are we listening early through tools like stay interviews?

    • Do we know the resilience capacity of our people?

    • Do we understand why people leave - or why they stay?

When you measure what matters, you can make confident, data-informed decisions: You can target interventions more precisely, de-risk transformation initiatives and retain and grow critical talent - and build the sustainable people systems the future demands!

2. Measure the wellbeing of people 

Sustainable people management starts with the wellbeing of your people, and it’s not just the right thing to do, and it makes business sense!

1. 1. 1. Harvard Business Review found that companies with high wellbeing scores see 3x higher ROIs from employee initiatives.

      2. Gallup shows that thriving employees have 66% better recovery from stress, leading to fewer mistakes and higher innovation.

      3. McKinsey estimates poor mental health costs employers $1 trillion in productivity loss globally.

Human behaviour at work is driven by a need for autonomy and agency, purpose and mastery, connection and belonging, psychological safety and trust. If these are ignored, even the best strategies won’t stick. But when you measure and manage them, you lay the foundation for real, lasting performance.

To measure and actively listen to people through evidence-based wellbeing surveys that are rooted in psychology and performance science can give insights that truly connect engagement, energy and resilience to business outcomes.

Implement interventions that stick -  Build the psychology of people

Wellbeing isn’t built through perks. It’s built through psychological infrastructure that supports performance, resilience and growth over time. One of the best ways to build the psychological infrastructure? Professional coaching. People don't change through information alone - they change through insight, reflection and accountability. 

Coaching:

• • Engages the inner world of leaders and employees: values, beliefs, identity, self-talk and patterns of thought and behaviour. 

  • Helps individuals to uncover blind-spots, shift mindsets and build internal capacity

  • Bridges the gap between strategy and execution

Professional coaching addresses the human behind the roles when it has become so easy to focus on kpis, strategy and delivering goals. Psychological needs (such as self-efficacy, meaning and identity at work, psychological safety) underpin performance. Coaches help people reconnect with purpose, energy and resilience -  which directly translates into sustainable performance.

Coaching is not about adding more content. It is about helping people to apply what they already know. Coaching helps people to integrate new mindsets and habits into their real-world lives and bridges the gap between strategy and execution.

Coaching isn't a benefit, it's a strategy for building the psychological infrastructure of a thriving organisation, one mindset at a time. 

In closing

To navigate complexity, attract and retain top talent and drive innovation and impact, organisations need to build people-systems that are resilient by design. The future of work needs sustainable people systems 

This means:

• • • Measuring what matters

    • Understanding the psychology of work

    • Designing with, not just for  your people

Our goal is to help you craft the culture, capabilities and conditions that allow people to thrive  -  not just today, but long into the future.

WorkLife Digital is a global mental-wellbeing consultancy driven by the mission to improve the sustainability of businesses. Our psychological wellbeing tool, Worklife Quotient (WL-Q), is modelled on cutting-edge scientific research and provides organisation-wide measurement and intelligence on the mental wellbeing levels and psychological resilience of staff. WL-Q also assesses the impact of organisational practices (i.e. people and culture, leadership styles, organisational purpose and values, social impact) that have a direct influence on staff wellbeing and provides strategic recommendations on addressing risks and promoting strengths.

For more information, get in touch at anna-rosa@worklife.digital

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