People Operations
When the basics are broken, everything costs more. Managers waste time on admin that should take minutes. Leaders have no reliable picture of what is happening. The HR team is buried in clearing backlogs instead of doing the work that matters. I help organisations fix the practical infrastructure that is making work harder than it should be.
The situations that come up
- Onboarding is inconsistent: people arrive without access, clarity or any sense of what they’re walking into.
- Processes exist on paper but nobody follows them, because they’re too complicated or nobody owns them.
- Managers are doing HR administration badly because nobody has shown them what good looks like.
- The HRIS is not trusted, not maintained, or not fit for the way the organisation actually works.
- HR insight and reporting is patchy: leaders can’t see absence trends, headcount accuracy or what is actually costing money.
- The people function has grown organically and nobody has stepped back to look at whether the operating model still makes sense.
What this involves
- Diagnostic reviews: where is the friction and what is driving it?
- End-to-end employee lifecycle: from attraction and onboarding through to offboarding and everything in between
- Process design and simplification so administration is consistent and owned
- Governance frameworks: who owns what, and what does good look like?
- HRIS assessment and improvement, getting to data and insights you can trust
- Manager-facing tools and guidance that are actually usable
- People insight and reporting that gives leaders a clear view of risk, cost and progress
What I bring
I have led People Operations through reset engagements where the function was fragmented, trust in HR data was low, and processes were inconsistently applied. I know what it takes to stabilise the basics and rebuild confidence in the function from the ground up.
A significant part of my career has also been spent in senior HR business partnering, which means I have seen People Operations from both sides. I know what it looks like when it works, what it costs when it does not, and what leadership teams actually need from it.
In one reset engagement, the team achieved a 28-point increase in engagement in year one. That kind of result starts with fixing the infrastructure, not running workshops.
Common questions
What does People Operations actually involve?
People Operations covers the practical infrastructure that makes HR work day-to-day: the end-to-end employee lifecycle from attraction and onboarding through to offboarding, plus the processes, policies, HRIS, people insight and governance that hold it all together. The focus is always on what is usable in practice, not what looks complete in a presentation.
How is People Operations different from HR?
HR covers the full range of people management, from strategy and employee relations to recruitment and learning. People Operations is the engine underneath: the systems, processes and ways of working that make HR function reliably. When it is working well, managers get what they need without chasing, leaders have visibility of what matters, and the HR team can focus on the things that add value rather than clearing backlogs.
How do you approach a People Operations review?
I start with a diagnostic: understanding what is currently in place, where the friction points are and what is driving them. From there I work with the organisation to design improvements that are practical to implement. That usually means simplifying before adding, and making sure changes are grounded in how the organisation actually operates rather than how it should in theory.
What size of organisation do you work with?
Size is less relevant than complexity. I have led People Operations functions across organisations ranging from a few hundred to several thousand employees. The common thread is that the people infrastructure has not kept pace with what the business needs, and friction is starting to show.
Case study
Resetting people operations in a regulated business. A financial services business had a people operations function that had lost its way. Core services were unreliable, governance had long-standing gaps, and the team was stuck in firefighting mode. I simplified processes, clarified ownership and reset the operating rhythm. Continuous improvement was embedded, collaboration rebuilt across teams, and trust restored with the wider business. Within the first year, team engagement increased by 28 points.
Read the full case study →Is your people function making work harder than it should be?
If the friction is showing, whether in manager complaints, unreliable people insight, or an HR team that is always catching up, a short conversation is usually enough to work out where to start.