You’ve built a smart new HR process, maybe it’s a new performance review framework, a leadership programme, or a new HRIS. It aligns to your strategy. It’s employee-centred. It’s exactly what the business needs.

But… leadership still needs convincing.

Here’s how to secure buy-in that’s more than a signature, and turn your leaders into champions, not blockers.

Reframe the “HR case” as a business case

HR language can sound soft to a commercial audience. So instead of saying:

“This new tool boosts engagement and culture alignment”

Try:

“This process reduces turnover costs, strengthens manager performance, and gives us real-time data we can report on.”

Map every feature to a metric, think retention, productivity, risk, efficiency, time-to-value.

Anchor it in what’s already on the exec agenda

Is the business scaling? Managing change? Trying to drive growth or stabilise culture?

Position your HR process as a tool to deliver those outcomes, not a side project.

“To support our next growth phase, this will help managers deliver faster, more consistent onboarding.”

“To reduce flight risk, we’re launching a lightweight performance cycle focused on clarity and retention.”

Show the cost of doing nothing

No urgency, no attention. Show what’s broken, what it’s costing the business, and what will happen if nothing changes.

Use hard numbers where you can, even rough estimates help:

• Time wasted on manual processes

• % of leavers without a performance review

• Missed insights due to lack of data

Bring visuals, not just vision

Busy leaders don’t have time for deep dives, so summarise your case in five slides or fewer:

• Problem

• Opportunity

• Solution

• Impact

• Ask

Add an optional appendix if needed, but lead with punch.

Prep for Q&A, and objections

They’ll want to know:

• What will this cost (money, time, people)?

• What’s the return, and how will we measure it?

• How do we know it’ll work?

Answer confidently, and flag the risks of not doing it.

Thesmia.ai makes it easier

With Thesmia, you can generate:

• Strategic prompts to build your case

• Leadership-ready decks and talking points

• ROI language, visuals, and objection handling

• Comms to cascade the “why” across your org

Just type a /  in the prompt library to get started.