PEOPLE
Senior People Partner · Brighton, UK

I turn
people decisions
into revenue.

8+ years working alongside VP and C-suite leaders in fast-growth tech. Not a support function — a commercial operator who reads the P&L, builds trust fast, and makes people strategy inseparable from business strategy.

See my work Download CV
40%
YoY growth delivered for an international business unit
£96K
Legal costs saved by resolving complex ER cases in-house
94%
12-month retention rate — up from 84% through targeted talent work
17
Countries. 100% compliance maintained across every jurisdiction
HR isn't overhead — it's the operating system of a scaling business. I make it run.
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Tobi Ogundunmade Who I Am

A partner who
earns a seat
at the table.

I'm a Senior People Partner with 8+ years as a strategic advisor embedded alongside VP and C-suite leaders — not sitting in a shared service centre answering queries, but in the room where commercial decisions are made.

My career spans FTSE-100 financial services, fast-growth Ed-Tech, digital agencies, and regulated public bodies. What stays constant is my approach: diagnose the business problem first, then apply the people lever that moves it.

I bring genuine commercial instinct. When I ran workforce planning at Smart Technologies, I wasn't just optimising headcount — I was mapping talent to a path from £2M toward £10M revenue. When I resolved 85% of ER cases in-house, I wasn't just closing files — I was protecting £96K in legal spend and coaching managers to handle the next one on their own.

I'm known for building trust quickly at senior levels, operating with founder-level urgency, and delivering impact that outlasts the engagement. I don't just manage people. I help businesses scale through them.

Commercial Empathy
Every people decision is framed by its business outcome — cost, revenue, or retention.
Speed without chaos
I'm a Day-30 impact practitioner. I build credibility fast and deliver without needing 3-month ramp-ups.
Capability, not dependency
I coach managers to handle the next crisis alone. My goal is to make myself less needed over time.
Data-first lens
I speak Finance. Headcount plans, attrition models, compensation benchmarks — always in the language of ROI.
How I Operate

The method behind
the results

Most HR partners react. I diagnose. Before recommending any people solution, I ask: what is the business actually trying to achieve, and what's really blocking it? Nine times out of ten, the symptom isn't the root cause.

I call this "Commercial Empathy" — the ability to hold both the human dimension and the commercial reality simultaneously, and make decisions that honour both.

01

Diagnose before prescribing

When a sales unit was 12% under target, everyone assumed the fix was new hires. I ran the data and found the real issue: retention of high performers and broken incentives. We didn't hire our way out — we reignited what was already there.

02

Partner at the decision level

I'm embedded, not adjacent. At Smart Technologies I sat alongside the VP International Sales on the business unit P&L conversation. At Legal & General I partnered directly on a £450M salary budget. That proximity changes the quality of people decisions.

03

Build capability that outlasts me

Resolving a grievance is a short-term win. Coaching the manager through it — so they handle the next one without me — is a structural improvement. I measure success by how much less I'm needed next year.

Impact in Practice

The work that
speaks louder

These aren't cherry-picked wins. They're representative of the commercial, operational, and human complexity I navigate in every engagement — and the outcomes that result.

Smart Technologies · 17 Countries · $244M+ ARR

From 12% under target to
40% growth trajectory

International business unit facing underperformance. The default assumption: recruit more sales staff. The real diagnosis — and the intervention — were entirely different.

£2M
toward £10M
revenue trajectory
01 — The Reality

Not a headcount problem

A business unit was 12% under its sales target. Leadership wanted to hire. Through data analysis and structured stakeholder interviews, I identified the root cause: retention of high performers had eroded, and the incentive structure was demotivating rather than activating the existing team.

02 — The Intervention

Workforce strategy + reward redesign

Led a targeted AMEA team restructure through workforce planning and talent strategy. Partnered with VP International Sales to redesign the reward mechanism, implement a calibrated performance management cycle, and build a retention plan for top performers — without a major recruitment spend.

03 — The Outcome

Growth without the hire

Business unit shifted from 12% under target to a 40% YoY growth trajectory. Revenue path from £2M toward £10M through people decisions, not headcount inflation. Retention improved from 84% to 94% over 12 months through the same talent interventions.

40%YoY growth trajectory
£96KLegal costs saved in-house
$270KHeadcount budget savings
+30ptsManager confidence scores
100%Compliance across 15 jurisdictions
Steer73 · Digital Transformation Agency · Built from 0

Building a people function
from scratch — and scaling 150%

Joined as the first and only HR hire at a fast-growth digital agency. Reported directly to the COO. Built everything: the function, the framework, the culture — while enabling the business to triple in headcount and quadruple in revenue.

91%
second-year
retention rate
01 — The Starting Point

No function. Fast growth. High stakes.

A 20-person agency growing quickly, no HR infrastructure, and an executive team making people decisions reactively. Time-to-hire was 12 weeks. Attrition was costing the business in consultant downtime and client delivery risk.

02 — The Build

Infrastructure + culture in parallel

Designed and launched compensation strategy from scratch; closed the gender pay gap from 12% to 3% over 18 months. Restructured org from flat to matrix model — facilitating 14 promotions with 90% employee approval. Coached 12 first-time managers on performance, conflict and leadership.

03 — The Scale

From 20 to 50 people. £500K to £2M+.

Hired 20+ employees as standalone recruiter, 85% exceeding performance expectations at six months. Reduced time-to-client-billability from 6 weeks to 2 weeks — improving client billing hours at 3 months by 40% and increasing client satisfaction by 15 percentage points.

91%2nd-year retention
£165KSaved in replacement costs
67%Faster time-to-billability
+40ptsManager capability scores
+45%Underrepresented hires
Legal & General · FTSE 100 · 10,000 employees

Transforming people analytics across 8 subsidiaries

Led compensation harmonisation, HRIS transformation (Oracle HCM + SmartRecruiter), and a people analytics programme that lifted senior leadership's data-driven decision rate from 40% to 90%. Partnered on a £450M salary budget and managed an ATS/HCM migration of 10,000 records at 97% accuracy.

£180K Benefits savings p.a.
97% Data migration accuracy
-35% Manual processing time
Sawyer & Co / Fine & Country · Estate Agency

Mitigating £120K+ in tribunal exposure in 7 months

Built the HR function from scratch for a 50+ employee estate agency group. Overhauled employment policies to ensure UK employment law compliance, designed a 90-day onboarding programme, and improved sales hire retention from 70% to 91% — eliminating a significant legal risk exposure along the way.

£120K+ Tribunal risk mitigated
70→91% Sales hire retention
Background

Eight years
of breadth and depth

From FTSE-100 to 20-person startups. From regulated aviation to fast-growth Ed-Tech. From building HR functions from zero to leading transformation at enterprise scale. Each engagement has added a new layer of commercial, operational and human complexity.

Mar 2026 – Present
People Consultant (Contract)
Civil Aviation Authority, UK
Embedded HR consultancy in the UK's aviation regulatory body — complex ER, leadership coaching, and organisational change in a mission-critical, regulated environment.
Sep 2024 – Sep 2025
People Partner – International (Contract)
Smart Technologies, UK/Canada
Strategic People Partner for 200+ employees across 17 countries. Partnered directly with VP International Sales. Led the work that moved a business unit from 12% under target to 40% YoY growth trajectory.
Nov 2022 – Jan 2024
Group HR Manager (Contract)
Legal & General, Hove
Senior HR generalist across 10,000 APAC/EMEA employees at FTSE100 financial services. Led HRIS/ATS implementation, compensation harmonisation, people analytics build, and post-acquisition integration across 8 subsidiaries.
Oct 2019 – Aug 2022
HR Manager / Operations Associate
Steer73, London
Built entire people function from scratch. Enabled 150% headcount growth and revenue growth from £500K to £2M+. 91% second-year retention. Reported directly to COO.
2016 – 2019
Earlier Career
Ipsos Mori · Sawyer & Co / Fine & Country · Dunmade Associates
Progressed from L&D Administrator to HRBP across international accounting, global market research, and estate agency — developing the foundations in ER, policy, payroll, and people operations that underpin all subsequent work.
Apr – Nov 2024
Head of People (Voluntary)
Y4Y (formerly Teenage Helpline)
Led a 6-person People team at a youth mental health charity. Improved volunteer retention by 35% through enhanced management frameworks and DE&I initiatives.
Technical Stack

The systems
behind the strategy

Hands-on proficiency across the full spectrum of modern People technology — from HCM to analytics to global employment infrastructure.

HRIS / HCM
SageHR BambooHR Bob Oracle MyHR SAP SuccessFactors Dayforce Resourcelink
ATS
SmartRecruiter Workable Greenhouse TeamTailor
Global EOR
Deel Remote Velocity Global Oyster Safeguard Omnipresent
Productivity
Comptryx PayScale Notion G Suite Jira ServiceNow Monday.com Power Automate Power BI Excel (Advanced) Claude GPT AI Chatbot Design & Implementation Workflow Automation
The Unseen Differentiators

What you won't find
on a standard CV

01

Day-30 credibility framework

I don't take 6 months to ramp. I have a tested approach to landing in a new business, identifying quick wins in the first 30 days, and building C-suite trust before the probation review. In contract roles, this isn't a nice-to-have — it's the whole game.

02

Finance fluency, not just HR metrics

I've partnered on a £450M salary budget, modelled cost-save scenarios that produced $270K in savings, and negotiated EOR rates saving $45K annually. I translate every people decision into the financial language that makes leadership actually act.

03

Global complexity is my comfort zone

17 countries. 12 established entities. 5 EOR arrangements. DACH works councils. Entity launches in India, Mexico and Saudi Arabia. 100% compliance maintained. I've built and scaled international people infrastructure across diverse jurisdictions without a mis-step.

04

The coaching multiplier

Coaching 30+ managers rated 4.6/5. 85% reporting improved confidence. 30-point improvement in manager capability scores. But the real metric: how many didn't need to escalate the next time. That's what I'm building toward.

05

ER that doesn't cost you the relationship

I resolved 85% of complex ER cases — disciplinaries, grievances, redundancies, PIPs, mutual separations — without external legal support. £96K in legal costs saved. But more importantly: the manager relationship and the team culture stayed intact.

06

Builder in scaling environments

I've built HR functions from zero at Steer73, Sawyer & Co, and Smart Technologies' new entity launches. I know the difference between a policy that's right for 20 people and one that breaks at 200 — and I build for where you're going, not where you are.

Let's work together

Ready to
scale?

If you need a People Partner who operates with founder-level urgency, reads the P&L, and builds the infrastructure your next stage of growth actually needs — let's talk.

Book a call Send an email
Or drop me a line directly: contact@workwithtobi.com