What Your Employees Really Need — And How To Find Out

Let’s be honest: most People teams don’t really know what their employees need.

We think we do. We take a few requests. Maybe run an annual survey. Glance at engagement scores. Nod along in a stakeholder meeting. Then we jump straight into solution mode.

More resilience workshops. Another culture initiative. A performance enablement toolkit.

It looks proactive. But it’s reactive. It’s surface-level, and it often misses the mark. To build people strategies that actually land, you need to go deeper. You have to uncover your employees’ real challenges, blockers, goals and contexts.

In this blog, we’re going to explain how you can find out what your employees actually need — with no guesses or assumptions in sight. So let’s get stuck in…

THE STATUS QUO: WHERE WE’RE GOING WRONG

Most approaches to understanding employee needs sound good in theory — but fall short in practice.

• Annual engagement surveys? They’re often too generic, too late, or too filtered to give you real direction.

• Exit interviews? Useful, but by then the damage is done.

• HRIS dashboards? Great for spotting trends, but they rarely explain the why behind the numbers.

And when leaders are left to interpret what people care about, they often project their own assumptions rather than surfacing the full picture. The result is a patchwork of partial truths — data points that look like insight but lack depth, context, or real-time relevance.

And when you're working with half-truths, your strategy suffers. You launch resilience programmes when burnout wasn’t the issue. You design onboarding journeys that tick off checklists — but miss the real friction points for newbies. You invest in manager training that tackles the wrong behaviour. What you're really building is a people function based on guesswork — one that feels disconnected, uninformed, and underwhelming. That’s how you lose credibility. That’s how you lose engagement. And that’s exactly what the People Impact Loop™ is designed to fix.

WHY REAL RESEARCH MATTERS

When you take the time to truly understand your people — not just as roles or data points, but as humans navigating complex work lives — everything starts to shift. You stop building initiatives that tick boxes and start designing experiences that actually resonate. Personalisation stops being a buzzword and becomes a lived reality. Employees see themselves in what you’ve created, and that simple shift — from generic to specific — builds immediate trust.

You also start solving the right problems. Forget performative perks or flashy programmes — now you’re tackling the root causes that impact motivation, performance, and retention. Your priorities start to align with the business, because they’re grounded in the same outcomes. And when your work starts moving real metrics, not just participation rates, it gets noticed. By your leaders and employees. Because relevance drives engagement — and engagement drives change.

GATHERING EMPLOYEE & BUSINESS INSIGHTS

The first phase of the People Impact Loop™ is Employee & Business Insights — and for good reason. Insights are the backbone of impactful People Functions. And it’s not just about collecting data. It’s about understanding people in context.

Here’s how to get started:

1. RUN FOCUS GROUPS LIKE A DISCOVERY INTERVIEW

Gather together a group of your employees. Make sure they’re representative of your audience and speak to them. Don’t just ask what they want. Ask about blockers, daily frustrations, and critical moments. For example:

“What’s the hardest part of your role right now?”
“Where do you feel unsupported?”
“What do you wish leaders knew about your role?”

This isn't tick-box feedback. You're uncovering unspoken truths that dashboards miss.

2. MAP THE EMPLOYEE LIFECYCLE

Look at key touch points: onboarding, team changes, promotion readiness, burnout risk, career moments. Go deep and get into the details — what are your people doing on a daily basis? Then ask: what support, resource, or message does someone need to thrive here? This helps you design experiences in the flow of work — not bolted on.

3. INTERVIEW BUSINESS LEADERS, NOT JUST HR

HR hears the requests and complaints — but the business feels the friction. So speak with functional leaders across the organisation and ask:

“Where are teams losing time or motivation?”
“What behaviours would drive better results?”

Now you’re designing with purpose — not just following processes.

4. SEGMENT YOUR PEOPLE LIKE A PRODUCT TEAM

Not all employees want the same things — or need support the same way. Create personas that reflect who your employees are as human beings (not just their job title or role!) And then design journeys that meet them where they are — and give them what they need!

THE OUTCOME? PEOPLE STRATEGIES THAT WORK

When you stop relying on instinct and start investigating what your people truly need, the quality of your work transforms. Your initiatives become sharper — not just better designed, but more directly tied to performance outcomes. Your internal campaigns cut through the noise because they’re speaking to real problems. And the experiences you create? They actually move the needle. Not because they’re flashy — but because they’re built on relevance.

But perhaps the most important shift is one of perception: trust. When your people start to see that your initiatives aren’t just reactive or HR-driven by default, but thoughtful, evidence-based and impactful, they engage differently. They believe in the value of what you're doing — and so do your stakeholders. You go from being seen as a support function to being recognised as a strategic driver. That’s the impact clear employee and business insights can have.

FIND OUT WHAT YOUR PEOPLE REALLY NEED

Understanding what your people actually need isn’t a luxury — it’s the foundation of a People function that performs. When you start with insight, every decision becomes sharper. You stop building initiatives that hope to land and start delivering ones that actually make a difference. Relevance improves. Engagement rises. Impact follows.

Not sure where to begin? That’s exactly what the People Impact Loop™ Diagnostic is for. In just 3 minutes, it will show you where your current strategy is strong — and where your loop might be broken. No fluff. Just clarity, insight, and your next step.