Interim Group Chief People Officer — Growth at Scale

Turning the people budget into a set of choices

In most professional services firms the largest cost is people, and the largest source of value is also people, yet the two are usually managed by different parts of the organisation with different numbers. Finance sees salary lines; operations sees utilisation and delivery; human resources sees grades, reward and attrition. Each view is accurate and none of them answers the question a board actually needs answered: if we spend more or less on people here, what capacity do we gain or lose, and what happens to productivity? The Interim Group Chief People Officer is appointed for 12 months, reporting to the Board Chair, to join those views up and to make people cost a series of explicit choices about capacity and productivity rather than a line that simply grows.

The appointment carries executive authority. The officer decides which people decisions the group takes and which are left to local leaders within set limits, and what evidence a request for more people, more reward or more training must bring with it. Existing people commitments can be kept, paused or wound down on that evidence. A proposal that adds cost in one place and quietly moves the risk somewhere else is stopped, and so is any investment silent on its users, its dependencies, or how it might disappoint. The officer decides who leads and how issues are escalated, and brings the Board Chair and the heads of operations to agreement while money is still unspent.

The judgement here is less about analysis than about trade-offs that people feel. A higher reward line in one practice may be the cheapest way to protect capacity; a hiring freeze elsewhere may save money while quietly lowering output by more than it saves. In a family-owned organisation, where continuity of people and of culture often carries particular weight, the people officer has to make those trade-offs visible and defensible without treating every role as a cost to be minimised. Good work in this seat often starts with a decision that is reversible, made on incomplete evidence, then tightened as the numbers improve.

A year of linking cost to capacity

Before the first ninety days are out, people cost should be linked to the group's capacity and productivity choices, with decision thresholds and an accountable owner agreed. Around month nine people investment cases should be judged on evidence of capacity and productivity, and proposals without an owner stopped. By month 12 the group should have a people plan that ties cost to capacity, reviewed by the board and owned by operating leaders rather than by the people function alone.

The officer sought, and four meetings

You have held a seat where the economics of people were hard to read, in an organisation of at least $710 million in revenue and 2,600 people, operating in three or more countries. You have taken a people decision on partial numbers, kept it undoable, and sharpened it as the facts came in. Expect the Board Chair to explore the joint venture, professionalisation and succession work in your history. Reward architecture at level 3 matters more than usual here, since pay is where cost and capacity meet; alongside it the Board Chair expects talent succession at level 4, with capability building and the management of board and stakeholder relationships also at level 3. Once the board has ruled, you still own the outcome, down to closing the people exceptions.

The Board Chair makes the first approach in week one, privately and over video. In week three you spend time with the Risk Committee Chair on a cost-and-capacity problem. In week five a panel of executives covering each function meets you in person, and the directors together see you in the seventh week. Our view on each stage reaches you within four working days.