What Does People Strategy Encompass? How can SOAR programs support my People Strategy?
People Strategy Basics
Developing a People Strategy is crucial for growing organizations as it provides a structured framework for attracting, developing, and retaining the right talent aligned with the company’s goals and culture. This strategic approach ensures that the workforce is engaged, motivated, and equipped with the necessary skills to drive innovation and growth. By focusing on creating a supportive and dynamic work environment, organizations can enhance employee satisfaction and loyalty, leading to improved productivity and operational efficiency. A well-defined People Strategy also prepares organizations to navigate the challenges of scaling effectively, maintaining a competitive edge in the market, and achieving sustainable success. Through strategic talent management, businesses can unlock their full potential, transforming their human capital into a key asset for achieving long-term objectives.
SOAR can support if you’re wondering:
How can we align our team’s individual purposes with our organization’s overarching mission and goals to boost engagement and performance?
What strategies can we implement to accurately gauge our employees’ satisfaction and identify areas for improvement in our work environment?
How can understanding the behavioral styles of our team members enhance collaboration, productivity, and job satisfaction across our organization?
What tools are available to help us strategically align our talent management practices with our business objectives for more effective growth and scalability?
How can we utilize 360 evaluations to provide comprehensive feedback to our leaders, fostering their development and enhancing leadership effectiveness across the board?
In what ways can executive coaching support our senior leaders in navigating the challenges of rapid organizational growth and change?
Can group coaching sessions help in developing high-potential employees into future leaders, and how does it contribute to building a strong leadership pipeline?
How can organizing staff retreats contribute to improving team dynamics, enhancing creativity, and fostering a stronger, more cohesive organizational culture?
What We Can Help You With
Purpose Mapping
360 Evaluations
Employee Experience
Executive Coaching
Behavioral Insights
Group Coaching
Talent Optimization Tools
Staff Retreats
Our Approach to People Strategy
At SOAR Community Network, we developed a holistic approach to People Strategy, designed to align with your organization’s core mission, vision, and values. Through Purpose Mapping, we ensure each talent initiative supports your primary objectives. We leverage Employee Experience Surveys and Behavioral Insights to craft a tailored Talent Optimization strategy that meets your unique needs and strategic objectives. Our suite of services, including 360 Evaluations, Executive and Group Coaching, and Staff Retreats, is focused on leadership development, boosting employee engagement, and fostering a culture of innovation and teamwork.
Developing compassionate leaders, designing cohesive teams, and fostering collaboration within your organization is pivotal for creating a thriving workplace culture that not only attracts top talent but retains it. Compassionate leadership encourages an environment of trust and empathy, significantly enhancing employee engagement by making team members feel valued and understood. Cohesive teams, built on the foundation of mutual respect and shared goals, lead to higher productivity as members work seamlessly towards common objectives. Fostering collaboration across the organization breaks down silos, encourages diverse thinking, and leads to innovation by combining unique perspectives and skills. Together, these elements create a dynamic and supportive workplace where employees are motivated to excel and innovate, driving your organization towards sustained growth and success.
Purpose Mapping
SOAR Purpose Mapping process is essential for organizations aiming to achieve clarity and alignment within their leadership concerning vision, mission, values, and strategic priorities. This clarity is not just a leadership tool; it’s a North Star compass that guides every level of the organization. It cultivates a sense of belonging and purpose among employees, enhancing engagement by connecting their individual roles to the broader organizational goals.
When team members see how their contributions fit within the grand scheme, it boosts morale, fosters loyalty, and significantly increases retention rates. Moreover, a clear, unified direction encourages productivity by minimizing confusion and aligning efforts towards common objectives. It also serves as a fertile ground for innovation, as employees feel empowered and committed to exploring new ideas and contribute to the organization’s mission.
Employee Experience
Conducting Employee Experience Surveys on a consistent basis is crucial for maintaining a vibrant, productive workplace aligned with leadership’s vision, mission, values, and strategic priorities. These surveys provide a clear lens into the employees’ perceptions and experiences, offering invaluable insights that leadership can use to strengthen the organization’s core.
This iterative feedback loop enhances employee engagement by showing team members that their opinions are valued and acted upon, leading to higher retention rates as employees feel more connected and loyal to the organization. Furthermore, regular feedback fosters a culture of continuous improvement, driving productivity and innovation. By aligning employee experiences with the organization’s strategic direction, leaders can harness the collective energy and creativity of their workforce, propelling the organization towards its goals with a cohesive and motivated team.
Behavioral Insights
Utilizing behavioral assessments to help employees understand their motivational drivers is vital for shaping positive behaviors in the workplace. These assessments offer deep insights into why individuals act and react in certain ways, allowing for tailored coaching and workshops that address specific needs. This understanding reduces miscommunication and enhances interpersonal interactions among team members, leading to greater cohesion and fostering a culture of collaboration.
Aligning these personal insights with leadership’s clear vision, mission, values, and strategic priorities amplifies employee engagement by ensuring everyone is moving in the same direction. It encourages retention by creating a workplace where individuals feel seen and understood, boosts productivity by minimizing friction and enhancing teamwork, and stimulates innovation by leveraging diverse motivations and behaviors towards common goals. In essence, integrating behavioral assessments into the development strategy is a transformative approach that aligns personal growth with organizational success.
Talent Optimization Tools
For HR, Learning and Development, and Employee Engagement leaders, leveraging talent optimization tools is essential to inspiring and motivating employees, hiring the right talent, designing high-performing teams, and accurately diagnosing employee engagement levels. These tools empower leaders to align their strategies with the organization’s vision, mission, values, and strategic priorities, creating a deeply engaging work environment that attracts and retains top talent. By ensuring that every team member’s role is in alignment with the organizational goals, these tools enhance productivity and foster a culture of innovation.
Talent optimization tools enable leaders to assemble teams whose strengths and motivations complement each other, further enhancing cohesion and collaborative success. Ultimately, the strategic application of these tools underpins a thriving workplace where employee engagement is high, turnover is low, and innovation flourishes, propelling the organization towards its objectives.
360 Evaluations
Conducting 360 Evaluations and debrief sessions with an organization’s top-tier leaders is crucial for fostering a culture of continuous improvement and transparency. This comprehensive feedback mechanism provides leaders with a holistic view of their strengths and areas for development, as seen through the eyes of their peers, subordinates, and supervisors. Engaging in this process catalyzes leadership development by highlighting opportunities for growth, enhancing self-awareness, and promoting effective communication styles.
The insights gained from these evaluations and debrief sessions can significantly improve team cohesion, as leaders learn how to better support and inspire their teams. This, in turn, boosts employee engagement and retention, as team members feel more valued and understood. Furthermore, a leadership team committed to personal and professional development sets the tone for a high-performing, innovative workplace where productivity flourishes, and new ideas are continually fostered, driving the organization towards its strategic goals.
Executive Coaching
Implementing Executive Coaching programs for an organization’s top-tier leaders is fundamental to enhancing leadership effectiveness and organizational success. Through personalized coaching, leaders refine their skills, including communication, strategic thinking, and empathy, leading to stronger relationships with direct reports and employees. This personalized development journey not only amplifies leadership competencies but also significantly contributes to a culture of trust and mutual respect, laying the groundwork for improved team cohesion.
As leaders become more adept at inspiring and motivating their teams, employee engagement and retention naturally increase, creating a more vibrant and committed workforce. Enhanced leadership skills foster an environment where productivity and innovation thrive, as teams feel empowered to share ideas and tackle challenges with confidence. Ultimately, Executive Coaching programs are a strategic investment in the organization’s future, cultivating a leadership team capable of guiding their teams toward excellence and innovation.
Group Coaching
Implementing Group Coaching programs across all leadership levels, including top-tier leaders, middle managers, and emerging leaders, is crucial for fostering a unified leadership culture that is agile, empathetic, and effective. These programs facilitate shared learning experiences, enabling leaders to explore new perspectives, challenge their assumptions, and develop a collective understanding of best practices in leadership and management. By improving leadership competencies in a group setting, organizations see a notable enhancement in the quality of relationships between leaders and their direct reports, leading to a more engaged and motivated workforce.
This collaborative approach to leadership development strengthens team cohesion, as leaders learn to operate with a consistent set of values and strategies, further amplifying employee engagement and retention. Moreover, group coaching encourages a culture of open communication and innovation, where leaders are equipped to nurture creativity, drive productivity, and steer their teams towards achieving organizational goals in a collaborative and dynamic environment.
Staff Retreats & Workshops
Offering recurring staff retreats and workshops is vital for ensuring every employee, regardless of their title, feels professionally developed and valued. These gatherings are more than just team-building events; they are opportunities to enhance interpersonal skills, deepen relationships among team members, and affirm the organization’s commitment to diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging. Such an inclusive approach to professional development enables individuals from all levels of the organization to uncover and polish their leadership competencies in an environment that celebrates and leverages diversity of thought and experience.
The result is a notable improvement in team cohesion and collaboration, as employees learn to work more effectively together, embracing and driving innovation. Furthermore, by actively investing in every employee’s growth, organizations not only boost employee engagement and retention but also set the stage for increased productivity and a culture where innovation is not just welcomed but is a natural outcome of empowered, valued, and connected staff.
We want to hear your workforce and learning and development goals
Let’s explore which SOAR programs align best with your talent related strategy, goals and objectives.
Why Do I Need to Implement my People Strategy?
What is a People Strategy?
A People Strategy is a forward-thinking approach that aligns human resources practices with long-term business goals. It involves identifying, developing, and retaining talent that can drive innovation and growth, while also fostering a workplace culture that supports collaboration and adaptability. By focusing on employee engagement, leadership development, and strategic talent management, a People Strategy ensures that the workforce is not just a support function but a central driver of organizational success and sustainability.
How do I know if SOAR's C3 methodology is right for our organization?
At SOAR Community Network, we understand that choosing the right methodology to enhance your organization's culture and leadership is a pivotal decision. Our C3 Framework—centered on cultivating Compassionate leaders, developing Cohesive teams, and fostering Collaborative cultures—is designed to resonate with organizations seeking a profound transformation towards a more connected and purpose-driven workplace. If your organization values a holistic approach to growth, emphasizing not just the "what" but the "how" of achieving success, and you're ready to embark on a journey to deeply embed these values into every layer of your operations, then our C3 methodology is likely an excellent fit. We encourage a dialogue to explore your unique challenges and aspirations, ensuring that our approach aligns seamlessly with your vision for change and growth.
Do you offer ongoing People Strategy consultation?
Yes, we are committed to offering ongoing talent strategy consultation. Understanding the dynamic nature of talent development and employee experience, we engage with internal business leaders through monthly or quarterly strategy sessions. These sessions are meticulously designed to keep your leadership team aligned with evolving talent needs, ensuring that your organization's talent strategy remains robust, responsive, and results-oriented. By maintaining a regular cadence of strategic discussions, we ensure that your talent development efforts are continuously supported, adapted, and optimized to meet both current and future organizational goals.
Do you work with rapidly growing small to midsize organizations?
Yes, rapidly growing small to midsize organizations represent our primary focus. We recognize the unique challenges and opportunities that rapid growth presents, particularly in terms of employee and talent management. Without proper support and development during these critical phases, businesses may face challenges that hinder their growth trajectory and lead to negative outcomes such as decreased employee engagement, talent retention issues, and misaligned team dynamics. We specialize in crafting strategies that support your growth, by enhancing leadership capabilities, fostering cohesive team environments, and building a collaborative culture.
Our rapidly growing consulting firm needed a flexible executive coaching program with a roster of certified coaches. We needed a program that provided a high-impact to our leaders and required minimal administrative oversight from our lean Learning and Development team. SOAR provide exactly what we needed for our first cohort of executive coaching.
Mali and Victor are some of the best in the business. Your relationship starts because they are true professionals, but it grows because of the people they are. It's always the human connection that makes the difference to me, and Mali and Victor epitomize that reality.
The SOAR team put together a wonderful workshop for our Organization on a very short notice. It was amazing how it was tailored to the needs of our team and how useful it was for the personal and professional interactions among our personnel.
The way we all learned about the strengths of each other and the importance of the clear interactions between each other was key to keep having great results at work. Topics such as conflict resolution/ management, empathy, compassion, team types, etc. were addressed and learned on a very dynamic and interesting way. The whole team was very happy with the team-building activity, and we look forward to our next session. Fully recommend Mali for any team-building activity.
SOAR has interacted with my Leadership Team and separately with my full team. They is a focused, engaging, and prepared speakers. They helped encourage dialogue and moved us forward to look at short- and long-term objectives, our Guiding Principles, and what type of team we are, to name a few.
They also worked with me individually on my leadership style. The feedback from my team was very positive. I highly recommend SOAR’s programs to develop yourself as a leader and improve engagement with your senior team and your organization.
APC has 35+ independent and small philanthropic consultancy firms from across the nation as members. As consultants ourselves, many of our members are experienced in facilitating strategic mapping sessions but we needed outside guidance to help us come to a consensus on our association's vision, mission and DEIA commitments.
We engaged SOAR in a mapping process that was delivered virtually, due to COVID, over two days. The approach that SOAR and Mali took to survey all of us in advance, help us clearly understand the process, guide us to have deeper conversations and gather the information and provide it back to us in our debrief, post retreat, really helped us gain the clarity and consensus we were seeking.
From there, we had a much easier time finalizing our association's vision, mission, values and strategic plan.
Such a pleasure to work with Mali Phonpadith – Founder/CEO of the SOAR Community Network. Mali has been engaged with our Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship at the Costello College of Business (George Mason University) – most recently she and her team at SOAR helped us detail out a Strategic Plan for the Center, now focused on Inclusive Entrepreneurship.
The plan SOAR developed was excellent - comprehensive, thoughtful and actionable! Mali, a thoughtful and thought-provoking professional, is a joy to work with. I look forward to a continuing partnership.
SOAR services supported our Ascend.Her Beauty cohort and provided them with business coaching during a pivotal time in the life of their businesses.
Working with the SOAR team has been fantastic! Their work with our clients was excellent and your communication with our team about the work has been very enlightening and helpful. We look forward to final reporting about the cohort.
I was really impressed with the high participation and engagement. I think people got super vulnerable because SOAR really set the tone with sharing your story. And I think that just made people very comfortable to let their guard down and be vulnerable.
And then just the genuine breakthroughs of having additional connections with your teammate outside of your day-to-day core functions. It was real team development. My team realized, “Hey, we’re doing this to get better together.” When I saw people interacting that way, I could see it pushing us forward.
The workshop made me want to focus on my caution areas more, where I’m flexing and how to be a better leader.
It has been a great experience working with the SOAR team. They answered all of our questions in a timely manner and working with them has been very easy, seamless and fun.
It was an excellent program! We will want to continue this work and show our employees that we’re going to invest in their leadership development.
The Association of Philanthropic Counsel engaged SOAR Community Network and Mali Phonpadith in July 2021 to assist with vision, mission, and values, and with operationalizing our goals for diversity, equity, and inclusion.
We selected SOAR from a proposal process, and we are SO glad we did. Mali calmly facilitated two half-day sessions for us, which is particularly remarkable because members of APC are themselves all trained, experienced facilitators in group processes. With Mali’s guidance, we could focus on the content and make significant progress. She has stayed with us as part of our engagement with quarterly check-ins and counsel. This is important for an all-volunteer organization of consultants as we need someone to hold us accountable. Thank you, Mali and SOAR.
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Unlock the potential within your team and transform your organizational culture. Reach out to us to learn how we can help you design, build, and sustain a compassionate, cohesive, and collaborative workplace.
