HR Business Partnering
HR business partnering is designing the org structure, roles and hiring plan around what the business is trying to achieve, rather than around the titles it has accumulated.
Service within Execution OS
How we help with HR Business Partnering
Your HR function, before you're ready to hire one.
Build the hiring plan from the work
Roles sequenced against what the business has to deliver and what it can fund, rather than from a wish list per function.
Design the levels and the bands
A structure for titles, levels and pay that holds as the company grows, set before ad-hoc offers make it impossible.
Make performance a conversation with evidence
Goals tied to the company's numbers and a review cycle that people can prepare for.
Fix what makes people leave
Exit patterns read honestly, because retention is usually cheaper than the hiring plan it makes necessary.
More services within Execution OS
Performance ManagementThe numbers a leadership team actually runs on, and the cadence that makes them act.
Process Standardisation and OptimisationMaking the way work happens repeatable, so it survives the people who invented it.
ERP ImplementationChoosing and landing the system the business will actually use, and the process work that has to happen first.
Your HR function, before you're ready to hire one.
What HR Business Partnering delivers
Set-up sprint
A fixed-scope project that builds the foundations: policies, contracts, onboarding and compliance, written for your stage.
- HR policies and handbook, including POSH
- Offer letters, appointment letters, NDAs and IP assignment
- A repeatable onboarding process
- Statutory registrations
Fractional HR business partner
An ongoing retainer: a dedicated HR business partner for the founders and managers, plus the day-to-day people operations.
- Hiring and onboarding
- Group health and term cover, run with your broker
- Assets, leave and attendance that feed payroll cleanly
- Exits, full and final settlement and handover
On-call advisory
For teams with the basics in place that need senior help with one thing: a hire, a difficult exit or a policy question.
- A senior hire
- A difficult separation
- A policy or conduct question
- Statutory audits and inspections
Your first 90 days with us
- 01
HR health check
Gaps in contracts, policies and compliance, mapped in the first week.
- 02
Foundations in place
Handbook, contracts, onboarding and insurance set up.
- 03
Run it together
Monthly partnering on hiring, people issues, exits and audits.
FAQ
Questions founders ask about HR Business Partnering
What does HR business partnering mean?
Aligning org design, hiring and people processes with what the business is actually trying to achieve, rather than administering employment as a separate function.
Do we need this before we have an HR team?
Often yes. The decisions that are hardest to reverse, levels, bands and the first senior hires, are made before there is an HR function, and they set the structure everything after inherits.
How is this different from recruitment?
Recruitment fills a role. Partnering decides which roles should exist, in what order, at what level and at what cost, which determines whether filling them helps.
What is the most common mistake in early org design?
Hiring a senior person into a function that has no defined work yet. The role is created from a feeling of being behind, and the hire then invents the work, which is rarely the work the business needed.
We already work with SRF on finance. How does this fit?
It runs alongside the finance work you already have with us, so the hiring plan, payroll inputs and the budget come from the same numbers and the same calendar rather than from two advisers who never compare notes.
What happens when we cross 50 people?
We help you hire your first in-house HR lead and hand over every process, template and record we built together, so the new hire inherits a working function rather than starting from scratch.
What our research says about HR Business Partnering
Hiring faster does not mean scaling better. Often, it means the opposite. It means accumulating cost, complexity, and coordination overhead without proportionally adding output.
Is the underlying issue actually solvable by a hire, or is it a process problem disguised as a capacity problem?
What capabilities are we missing, and is the answer to add roles or to redesign existing ones?
A pool that exists only in a cap table or an offer letter has not been validly created, and it is one of the most common gaps found in diligence.
Headcount tells you how big the team is. It doesn't tell you how much HR risk you're carrying.
The people behind HR Business Partnering
HR Business Partnering is run by the studio team: one multidisciplinary team whose pods work in tandem, matched to the sector and the stage the company is in.
Founder's Office & HR pod
Led by Sai Prasanna
Lead - HR Practice. Aligns people strategy with business goals.
See the pod structureWhere we apply HR Business Partnering: the industries this capability serves
What usually runs alongside this
Strategy ConsultingPositioning, functional alignment and the operating discipline that turns a plan into traction, for founders and boards past the validation stage.
ControllershipThe controls, reporting structures and governance systems that make a company's numbers trustworthy.
CFO Tech StackThe technology architecture behind a finance function: accounting, MIS and planning tools that work as one system.
