Is Your HR Ready for the Company You Are Becoming?

We started with 15 interviews: 5 with the HR leadership team and 10 with the business, from the CEO to the heads of business units. The same guide covered organisation, people, process and technology, so what HR said about itself could be laid against what its internal clients needed from it. Around the interviews, we read the firm’s growth plan, its HR strategy, its employer offer, its turnover data and its competitive positioning.

Then the scan. 13 HR capabilities, grouped in 5 layers from HR strategy to the operating model, were each scored on a 4-level maturity scale, from basic to leading, and set against published distributions of how other organisations score. HR staffing was benchmarked too, as HR people per 100 employees, today and at 3 times the size. The pattern was clear: HR lagged on 4 of the 5 layers, and its talent processes did not yet connect to each other.

Each capability then got 2 positions: where it stands, and where a firm 3 times bigger needs it by 2025, for most one level up. That target drew on how large consulting firms run HR at scale, from more than 15 years inside the Big 4. The maturity models made the gap visible and turned the discussion to what closing it takes and how long, since one level usually takes 1 to 3 years. Priorities followed existing pain points, business impact and the growth plan. The roadmap set 13 short-term actions for the first 6 months, a 36-month path, and workforce planning staged from headcount, to skills, to scenarios.

The findings went to the CEO in 2 reviews, then to the whole HR team in a 2-day workshop, where live polls tested whether the priorities resonated before they were adopted. 5 work packages came out for the following year: a people strategy, a skills-based classification of talent, and frameworks for performance, careers and leadership. An HR scorecard of about 36 indicators gave the function its first common way to track progress.