You know your people function is not working, but not which part to fix first. That distinction is the whole game.
Turnover is high, but is it because you hire the wrong people, onboard them badly, never manage their performance, underpay them, or run the whole thing on no foundation? Those five feel identical from the inside, a general sense that people are a problem, and they need completely different work. Fix the wrong stage and you waste months. This diagnostic separates the five stages of the employee lifecycle, scores each one honestly, finds the one holding back the others, and hands you a sequenced plan, so you fix the upstream cause rather than the loudest symptom.
This is a sorting instrument, not a fix. It will not improve your hiring or your retention. It tells you which stage to work on and in what order. It takes about forty five to sixty minutes, honest answers, and a real sense of your recent hires, your turnover, and how, or whether, performance and pay are handled today. It ends with a written, dated plan.
If the real problem is that you do not yet know which roles the business actually needs, because the strategy itself is unclear, hiring well for the wrong role is still a bad hire. Sort the strategy first, then come back here.
Strategic planning and clarity →You cannot diagnose a people function you have not laid on the table. Before scoring anything, describe plainly how you hire, how new people get up to speed, how performance is handled, how pay is set and how you keep people, and what HR foundation exists. Note your turnover and where your recent hires landed. The most revealing line is where your people costs and your people pain actually concentrate.
Open the HR and People Baseline Snapshot →Now turn the snapshot into a score for each of the five stages, so the work becomes measurable instead of a vague unease. Answer each statement the way it really is, not the way you wish it were. When you have answered all ten, your finding will name the single stage where your people function breaks first.
The five stages follow the employee lifecycle, and an upstream weakness caps everything below it. You cannot retain what you hired badly, or manage what you never onboarded. Your binding constraint is the lowest-scoring stage that sits highest in that lifecycle order, with one exception: an acute compliance gap in the foundation is a risk you address immediately, whatever else is going on.
Open the People Constraint Map →Turn the finding into a plan. Address any acute compliance gap first. Then start with the guide for your binding constraint, and add every other stage that scored below capable, in lifecycle order, dropping any already strong. Set a target for each and name whether it is a Team move or a Systems move. Do not run more than two guides at once.
Open the Prioritized HR Action Plan →A plan turns into motion the moment the first action has a date and an owner. People work is easy to defer behind operational fires, so name the first guide, the first concrete action, the date, and what "started" will actually look like. Come back at reassessment to record how far each stage has moved.
Continue in the Prioritized HR Action Plan →You can name your single binding people constraint in one plain sentence. You have a sequenced plan, not a vague sense that you have people problems. And you have a dated first action with an owner, with any acute compliance gap flagged for immediate action.
If the real gap turns out to be developing your leaders specifically, that is leadership development. If it is broad culture and engagement rather than the people mechanics, that is culture and team health. The diagnostic will tell you when the honest answer lives in another pathway.