Turning workforce insight into real organisational movement is harder than collecting the data itself. PraxisPQ’s prioritisation engine closes that gap, translating complex signals into the next three actions leaders can fund, defend, and deliver
The hardest part of people intelligence is not collecting data. It is turning that data into the next three moves you can fund and deliver. Many public bodies and charities receive long reports that catalogue issues, then stall because no one can agree what to do first. Budgets are tight, political capital is finite, and leaders must defend every spend to finance, audit, and the board. In that environment, a long wish list becomes a waiting list. What is needed is a short, defensible action map that converts analysis into movement.
This blockage helps the illusion of inclusion persist. Policies are polished, and statements are sincere, yet outcomes barely move. The same groups hold power, the same people progress, and the same barriers remain. Activity is mistaken for change. Real inclusion, and real workforce improvement more broadly, looks less like a campaign and more like good engineering, with clear baselines, measurable progress, and shared accountability.
PraxisPQ was built for that reality. It is Soteria’s people intelligence platform that connects perception with system behaviour and turns both into funded action. At its heart sits the prioritisation engine, a method that takes disaggregated responses and translates them into three system-level actions for a defined cohort, for example, Grade 7 staff in one region or clinical teams in a specific trust. The engine is simple to use, clear to explain, and rigorous under the bonnet, which matters when you must brief a working group on Tuesday and face scrutiny from finance on Thursday.
What are the diagnostic measures?
PraxisPQ captures how work feels and functions across five factors that shape movement in any organisation: Power, Pay, Progression, Retention, and Trust. Together, they describe who gets opportunities, how fairly people are rewarded, who stays, who leaves, and whether people believe leaders will do what they say. The instrument uses evidence-based items on a five-point scale to capture both sentiment and signals of system behaviour. It is short enough to complete quickly, yet rich enough to show patterns by cohort and by theme.
Privacy sits at the core. Responses are anonymised by construction. Insights are only shown when a minimum response threshold is met for a cohort, so managers see patterns but never raw entries. Admin users can view organisation-level trends and cohort comparisons, yet cannot drill down to any identifiable set. These safeguards build trust and make results usable with unions, staff networks, and public audiences.
Three steps from insight to action
Diagnose
A 30-day diagnostic creates a one-page dashboard that shows the five factors for each cohort. The display is plain and practical. It shows current position, any trend where history exists, and a short narrative of what the pattern implies. This keeps everyone on the same page from the first meeting.
Prioritise
The engine examines how the five factors move together. It looks for leverage points, the few actions that will shift the whole system rather than nudge one score. Each potential action is scored on expected impact, delivery effort, risk, and equity effect. Weightings can be tuned to local priorities, for example, a stronger weight on equity impact where a legal duty applies, or a stronger weight on delivery effort during a tight financial quarter. The output is a ranked list, then the top three actions for that cohort.
Action map
The engine produces a concise three- point action map. Each action includes the rationale, the expected effect on the five factors, the owner, the time frame, and the evidence required for sign-off. It also notes dependencies, for example, a policy decision in HR or a data change in IT. The map reads like a directive that can pass through governance and move to delivery. It is not a suggestion list. It is a ready-to- fund plan with a short chain of custody.
Why three actions
Three is a design choice grounded in capacity. Most teams can carry three pieces of meaningful work at once without losing focus. More than that, and momentum fragments. Fewer than three, and the plan becomes brittle.
By concentrating resources on the highest leverage moves, leaders can show movement within a quarter, then refresh the map with the next round of data.
A practical example
Consider a local authority where women at Grade 7 report lower trust and slower progression, and where retention is weakest in one service area. The engine may identify three actions, such as a transparent promotion panel process with published criteria, a sponsorship scheme for Grade 7 women led by senior mentors, and a retention conversation protocol with an early warning trigger at month nine. The rationale would show the links across Power, Progression, and Retention, the expected effect on Trust, and the forecast reduction in exit risk. Owners are named, the time box is three months, and evidence for sign-off is explicit, for example, panel composition data, sponsorship matches, and a completed set of retention conversations with measured outcomes.
Evidence, governance, and funding
The action map is designed to travel. It can be shared with the internal working group, appended to a finance paper, and summarised for the board. Because each action contains a clear rationale and an expected measurable effect, funding can be aligned to movement rather than activity. The audit trail is explicit. You can show what was chosen, why it was chosen, and what happened next. This reduces the friction that often meets cultural work, which can be seen as soft or undefined. With PraxisPQ, the link from findings to funding to delivery is visible and testable.
Measurement and learning
PraxisPQ supports pulse checks during delivery and review after actions land. This means you can track short-term signals, such as an improvement in perceived fairness of process, and medium-term outcomes, such as an increase in progression rates for the target cohort. The dashboard keeps both levels in view so leaders do not declare victory on sentiment while outcomes remain flat, or dismiss sentiment when outcomes are inching forward, but trust is being lost. Learning is part of the design. Actions that produce movement can be scaled. Actions that stall can be redesigned or stopped.
Fit for the public sector
Public bodies must meet legal duties, manage public money, and protect public trust. The engine respects those duties. It is privacy-centric, threshold- aware, and cohort-based. It creates actions that can be owned across HR, operations, and finance. It links to existing governance gates, so approvals are not a separate theatre. It is also fast. Most organisations complete the first cycle in days, not months, which is essential when pressure is high and patience is low.
Risks and mitigations
Capacity may be light, data quality may vary, and fatigue may set in. The three-point map keeps focus, and the audit trail prevents drift. Where data is thin, the engine uses conservative thresholds and flags the need for better capture rather than inventing precision. Where capacity is tight, the ranking can favour low effort, high impact moves to buy headroom for larger changes.
Results and next steps
PraxisPQ turns perception and system signals into a small number of funded moves that matter. It helps leaders show movement on the five factors that shape a healthy workforce, it builds confidence by protecting privacy and making the logic visible, and it creates a rhythm of diagnose, prioritise, act, and learn.
See the prioritisation engine at work
Book a short walkthrough, and we will show you a sample cohort, the scoring model, and an example three-point action map ready for finance and the board. Then run a small pilot in one function or site and measure movement within the campaign window.
Contact us alpha@praxispq.com hello@soteriabusiness.com
This work is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International.
