Background

PeopleStrong is transitioning from an HR shared services company to an HR technology product company. But, its communication failed to inspire and mobilise efforts towards this direction. Investors saw and valued it as a services firm, not a product company. Those employees, that still supported shared services, wondered about their future and those involved with the technology side wondered how serious the company was about a new direction. Customers too had similar confusion: who was PeopleStrong, really?

To strongly reaffirm its present and future as a ‘tech-first’ company, and to instil confidence and rally support from its internal stakeholders, we were asked to rewrite their mission-vision document for 2023 in tune with this envisioned future.

Strategy

We re-looked at the goals and strategies of the product and shared services business units through a common lens of ‘technology’, unified under one document.

The HR space was alive with conversation on the changing ‘world of work’ with its new practices, demographics, talent, mostly-technology driven. PeopleStrong’s products were helping bring about this change, and we wished to own this conversation.

Exercise

To keep the exercise honest and meaningful, we worked with the team over several workshops to create a ‘picture of success’. The rest of the exercise meant defining the toolbox of ideas that would take the company there: shared agreement on PeopleStrong’s purpose, mission, values, behaviours and vision. The strategy document specifies these.

Its purpose was making ‘work’ more meaningful, joyful, made possible through its products that are built on the principles of collaboration, transparency, and simplicity. Its mission: to ‘redesign worklife for tomorrow’.

Most important, a product-centred vocabulary stressing data, experience, collaboration, systems was introduced, and goals in the areas of product, user experience, data, intellectual property, was key to incubate a ‘tech’ centered culture at PeopleStrong.

Creative Expression

Expressing a strong stance towards a single direction needed a spirited show of commitment. The fact that the mission vision document could only be accessed through a QR code ensured that simply displaying the QR code, wherever the mission-vision document was needed, it would reinforce in the minds of the viewers that they were dealing with a tech company. The document emphasises a positive outlook towards a tech future of work. A letter from 2025, written by an employee of the future acts as a window into the future of ‘work’(a completely digitalised state of operations) for stakeholders to be inspired.

The document begins with the slogan ‘writing the new code of work’. ‘Code’ hints at technology as well as a behavioural code of conduct, as befits a thought leader, stirring up people’s energy.

Impact

The new strategy document led to a reorganisation of PeopleStrong’s brand architecture. Business units with a services core, like the HR recruitment business, no longer lead with the ‘PeopleStrong’ tag and was rebranded, while its technology businesses were tied to it more tightly. ‘PeopleStrong’ rechristened themselves as PeopleStrong Technologies Pvt. Ltd, a product company, making work products for the new future.