From Firefighting to Futureproofing: How HR Can Drive Strategic Change
The Challenge: Balancing the Operational with the Strategic
I get it. I’ve been there. Over 15 years in strategic HR, through the financial recession of 2007, navigating restructures, leadership changes, organisational downsizing, mergers, and even administration. The demands on HR are relentless, and it often feels like you’re putting out fires rather than driving the bigger strategic goals.
Getting the budget and buy-in for long-term HR initiatives can feel impossible when you’re in the midst of restructures, talent shortages, and crisis management. But understanding how your existing staff feel and what they need is critical—not just for retention, but for productivity and business success. When HR has real-time engagement data, we’re not second-guessing what our people want; we have the evidence to shape people and L&D plans that actually work.
This is our mission—to move HR from firefighting to embedding leader-led, thriving workforces.
The Engagement Maturity Model
At Inpulse, we’ve developed an Engagement Maturity Model to help organisations understand where they stand and how to progress towards a thriving, high-performing culture.
- Undefined: No clear engagement strategy.
- Foundational: Recognised as important but inconsistent, HR-driven.
- Growing: Managers begin to take ownership, though inconsistently.
- Transforming: Embedded in business strategy, leaders proactively shaping culture.
- Thriving: Fully leader-led, data-driven, and evolving continuously.
Thriving in Practice: An Agile Engagement Strategy
At the highest level of engagement maturity, organisations adopt an agile engagement strategy. This means engagement isn’t a set initiative—it evolves continuously, adapting to the needs of the workforce. It’s not a HR-owned initiative but a core business priority.
Communication becomes a two-way process, with collaboration embedded into the organisation’s culture. Survey and people data aren’t just HR’s responsibility; they are treated as key business metrics. HR evolves from a collection of separate functions into a unified, strategic force. By streamlining processes, utilising data, prioritising employee experience, and aligning with business objectives, HR becomes a key driver of organisational success.
Managers take the lead in engagement efforts, but the real shift happens when everyone feels a sense of ownership and accountability for fostering a positive culture. When senior leaders genuinely champion engagement, it shifts from a HR initiative to a core part of how the organisation operates.
The landscape that businesses are operating in has already changed significantly and it will continue to do so in the years to come, HR need to play a strategic role in shaping the future of the business and how it operates, but this requires leaders and managers to own the day-to-day engagement of their team.
Moving from HR-Led to Leader-Led
HR often finds itself shouldering the weight of engagement, performance management, and wellbeing. But when HR owns these areas outright, it lets leaders off the hook. The goal? Equip managers and leaders to take accountability for their people strategies while HR drives long-term impact.
So how does HR make this shift?
1. Influence Senior Leaders to Prioritise People Strategy
Strategic HR isn’t just about launching initiatives—it’s about ensuring leadership teams see people strategy as a business priority. Research from McKinsey (2023) shows that companies where senior leaders actively engage in people management outperform their competitors by 25% in profitability.
HR must use data to tell compelling stories that connect people outcomes with business success. Engagement trends, retention risks, and leadership effectiveness should be positioned as core business metrics, not just HR concerns.
2. Develop Leadership Capability, Not Just Processes
I have been there—head down refining policies and processes to align with changes within the business or employment law to ensure we are legally compliant. But HR’s impact isn’t in refining policies—it’s in developing leaders who shape culture and drive performance.
The best HR teams act as mentors and strategic advisors, coaching leaders to take ownership of engagement and team dynamics, build psychological safety within their teams, and embed a people-first mindset into decision-making.
At Inpulse, we work with HR leaders to create tailored mentoring programmes that build leadership capability, ensuring people strategy is a company-wide responsibility.
3. Use Data to Drive Action, Not Just Reporting
HR collects vast amounts of data, but if this data isn’t driving change, it’s just noise. Insights must translate into clear, actionable priorities for leaders.
Instead of HR owning action plans, shift the responsibility to leadership teams. Present engagement trends in a way that drives action, equipping managers with the tools and confidence to implement change.
When HR steps into the role of enabler rather than fixer, organisations move towards a more sustainable and effective approach to people management.
Ready to Shift from Firefighting to Strategic Impact?
At Inpulse, we help HR teams influence senior leaders, build leadership accountability, and transform their people strategy from reactive to proactive.
📅 Book a call today to explore how we can support your HR team:
📧 Email Michelle Page at michelle.page@inpulse.com
