Case Studies
Six real engagements, anonymised. Different company sizes, the same working style: decision-ready results, implemented.
Bonus Redesign Under Co-determination
From formula debate to executive decision
Anonymised case study: identifying details altered or omitted
The situation
A European IT services group of around 700 employees, grown through acquisition, had changed its bonus plan year on year: higher thresholds, steeper payout curves, a new cap. The previous cycle had produced calculation errors, payroll corrections and undelivered bonus statements, and the works council had been engaged too late. Two employee complaints were live. The executive board's decision on the redesign was roughly two weeks away.
What was done
- Reframed the mandate on page one: the formulas were defensible, the operating model around them had failed. The review focused on governance, not curve mathematics.
- Benchmarked the plan against market norms and named exactly two outliers, both governance choices rather than formula faults.
- Tightened the Finance sign-off: a binding freeze date with a no-true-up rule, maker-checker validation of the calculation, named owners per step.
- Mapped the works council's co-determination scope: scheme design and method, not individual payouts, with the grey zone handled inside an agreed process. A prioritised question list was prepared for employment counsel.
- Reviewed the internal Q&A and split it in two: an internal position paper and an employee-facing FAQ that explains rather than defends.
- Built the redesign project plan and RACI: six workstreams, client owners accountable throughout, communications sequenced works council first, then managers, then employees. The two complaints were treated as signals of the governance gaps, not noise, and answered inside the plan.
What the client holds now
A consolidated review memo, short enough for the sponsor to absorb in one sitting, taken directly into the board meeting. Nine executive decisions framed as closed questions with options attached. Counsel-ready legal questions, prioritised by date. And a project plan in which every workstream has a named internal owner: the consultant was deliberately removed from the final RACI, because the client runs its own redesign.
The working effect, described rather than quoted: the executive session stopped being an open debate about bonus mathematics and became nine decisions the board could actually take.
If a bonus cycle has cost trust and the next design decision is close, a short review can reframe it before the meeting. Feel free to reach out.
This case study is anonymised. Details that could identify the client have been altered or omitted; everything described is documented engagement work.
Two Days on a Founder-Built Compensation Grid
A light advisory review, verdict first
Anonymised case study: identifying details altered or omitted
The situation
A Series A climate-tech SaaS company of about 45 people had built something unusual for its stage: a transparent compensation philosophy, a formulaic salary grid, defined levels and documented performance processes. The question was not whether to build a system but whether the one they owned would hold up as they grew, and what the EU Pay Transparency Directive would actually demand of it. Two review days sat inside a five-day advisory engagement.
What was done
- Reviewed documentation only: philosophy, grid, levelling framework, team rubrics, performance process. No individual salary data was touched, keeping a two-day review deliberately out of pay-equity-audit territory.
- Delivered one decision-oriented memo with the verdict in the first paragraph: refinement and future-proofing, not a rebuild. Five genuine strengths were named before a single adjustment, each in keep-and-tighten grammar.
- Made exactly one technical argument: the grid was too linear. The same fixed percentage step applied to every move, so a promotion was financially indistinguishable from an ordinary within-level step. Recommendation: convert fixed salary points into ranges, with rules for range positioning, movement and promotion increases.
- Used the Directive as a design lens, not a compliance project: a do-now versus monitor split, and the explicit calibration that the transposition deadline is the member states' deadline, not the client's internal one.
- Named the gaps as gaps, not as deliverables: each item marked missing carried a minimum viable next step and a pointer to where it should live in the client's own documentation. Nothing was built that had not been bought.
What the client holds now
A verdict they can defend internally, a short list of decisions only they can take, a one-table action guide (what changes, where it lives, minimum next step) and full ownership of the pen. The agreed follow-up: the client revises its own grid first; the remaining engagement days buy a focused review of that revision.
The close of the engagement, in substance rather than in quotes: no second broad memo wanted; just a short review once we have revised the grid ourselves.
If your compensation system already works and what you need is judgment rather than construction, two days is often enough. Happy to compare notes.
This case study is anonymised. Details that could identify the client have been altered or omitted; everything described is documented engagement work.
A Compensation Framework, Built Before the Tools
Pay governance, EU pay transparency setup and tool selection
Anonymised case study: identifying details altered or omitted
The situation
A European e-commerce company of roughly 150 to 200 employees, largely remote and employing across many countries partly through an employer-of-record, had no systematic salary structure: ad-hoc market comparisons, inconsistent bonus practice, pay decisions resting on judgment alone. The EU Pay Transparency Directive's transposition deadline was months away, and the company also needed to choose its compensation tooling.
What was done
- Built the governance backbone first, manually and tool-neutral: compensation philosophy, pay governance pack and objective pay criteria, so the foundation never waited on the tool decision.
- Laid the EU PTD groundwork: a plain-language directive guide, a threshold memo mapping headcount per country against reporting duties, and a country law tracker for the transposition patchwork.
- Set the recruiting transparency approach: pay level communicated to candidates before the first interview, salary-history questions removed entirely, pay-secrecy wording stripped from contract templates.
- Ran a structured tool evaluation: requirements matrix, vendor demos, and a recommendation in two shapes, a lean stack and a more robust one, both layered on the incumbent HRIS rather than replacing it.
- Resolved the employer-of-record question with the client's legal lead: remote staff hired through the EOR are designed for as if in scope for pay transparency, validated once national definitions land.
- Delivered the operational layer: recruiter interview guide, manager salary conversation script, pay decision record, information-request log and role evaluation record, plus a salary band implementation guide and location factors.
What the client holds now
A working pay governance foundation that is independent of any vendor. A defensible directive position whichever way national transposition lands. A tool decision built on an evaluated shortlist rather than a sales conversation. And templates its recruiters and managers run themselves.
The sequencing logic, paraphrased: because the governance backbone was built by hand and tool-neutral, nothing stalled while the vendors were being compared.
If pay decisions still rest on gut feel and the Directive is on your risk register, the backbone can be built before the tools. Feel free to reach out.
This case study is anonymised. Details that could identify the client have been altered or omitted; everything described is documented engagement work.
Choosing HR Tools Without Taking the Vendor's Word
A compensation and performance tool evaluation, run on written evidence
Anonymised case study: identifying details altered or omitted
The situation
A European e-commerce company of roughly 150 to 200 employees faced two tool decisions at once: a compensation and pay-transparency platform, and a performance-management platform to weigh against the module inside its incumbent HRIS. Every demo was persuasive, and with the EU Pay Transparency Directive approaching, "the tool will handle compliance" was the tempting assumption in the room.
What was done
- Wrote the requirements catalogue before any demo: country footprint, headcount mix, worker categories, regulatory deadlines and the client's real working cadence, so vendors were tested against the catalogue rather than the catalogue bent to fit the demos.
- Sent every vendor a structured question set and required written answers, each claim labelled: confirmed in demo, vendor claim, roadmap only, or market hearsay. Nothing was marked "yes" from marketing alone.
- Applied evidence discipline to demos: screenshots and recordings logged with what they actually prove. A workflow on screen proves a feature exists, not its configuration rules or country-law completeness.
- Kept one comparison workbook per decision as the single source of truth: a controlled verdict vocabulary per cell, an explicit decision-blocker banner, and per-vendor follow-up lists tracked to resolved or still open, so the workbook doubled as the negotiation record.
- Ran five compensation vendors through this process, with the incumbent HRIS assessed as the base layer, and compared four performance suites against the HRIS's own module. Pricing was normalised to comparable annual totals, implementation and add-ons included.
- Named the honest finding rather than burying it: none of the performance suites delivered a right-to-information workflow, submission-ready pay-gap reporting or an equal-value methodology, and no stack in either comparison removed the manual governance pack of philosophy, policies and legal interpretation.
What the client holds now
Two decision-ready comparisons: lean and robust stack options, the key gaps of every path, the remaining decision blockers named, and a written vendor record to negotiate from. The selection was deliberately not made for the client; the evaluation's job was to make it decidable.
The working effect, described rather than quoted: vendor conversations stopped being demos to sit through and became written answers the client could hold vendors to.
If a tool decision is coming and every demo looks convincing, written evidence discipline can make it decidable. Feel free to reach out.
This case study is anonymised. Details that could identify the client have been altered or omitted; everything described is documented engagement work.
When People Operations Cannot Wait for a Successor
Swiss people operations, kept running through a staffing gap
Anonymised case study: identifying details altered or omitted
The situation
The Swiss entity of a European IT services group, around 80 employees across two legal entities, lost the person who ran its local people operations. The processes existed, but they had lived largely in one person's head, and a successor was not in place. Payroll deadlines, permit renewals and departing employees do not pause while a role is refilled.
What was done
- Stepped in as interim continuity cover: took ownership of the recurring payroll and administration cycle plus the day-to-day questions that do not wait, from terminations and salary changes to managers asking what the process actually is.
- Ran the full administrative cycle end to end: new-hire onboarding, work and cross-border permits, contract changes and mutations, monthly coordination with the external payroll provider, sickness and accident cases with their effects on notice periods, reference letters and certificates, and offboarding with its exit paperwork.
- Systematised the operating disciplines while running them: clear storage rules across the two legal entities, a payroll evidence trail in which payroll-relevant documents never live only in the HRIS and future-dated changes are logged early, and an inbox triage rule that splits provider-owned from People-Ops-owned work.
- Documented processes along the way, so that what had lived in one person's head became written, repeatable practice rather than institutional memory at risk of walking out the door a second time.
- Kept the state honest: an open-questions backlog names what remained unresolved instead of pretending completeness, and legally sensitive areas (permits, reference-letter obligations, sickness protections) were flagged for validation against current official guidance rather than frozen as the eternal rule.
What the client holds now
People operations that never stopped running: payroll went out, permits were renewed, leavers got their paperwork, and managers got answers. Behind that, a clean handover-ready state - processes systematised and written down as they were run, plus a named backlog of open questions for whoever takes the work on next. Nothing about the interim was built to create dependence; the point of continuity cover is that the function survives the gap and the handover after it.
The working logic, in substance rather than in quotes: the goal was never to become the Swiss HR department, it was to keep one running until it could be handed back.
If a staffing gap has left people operations running on memory, interim cover that systematises as it goes can bridge it. Feel free to reach out.
This case study is anonymised. Details that could identify the client have been altered or omitted; everything described is documented engagement work.
Two Streams, One Calendar: A Performance and Salary Review Cycle
From the leadership proposal to the conversations that land the outcome
Anonymised case study: identifying details altered or omitted
The situation
A European developer-tooling scale-up of around 400 employees had outgrown its review process. Two full review cycles a year, each running roughly ten weeks, were draining the organisation; peer feedback volume had become a workload complaint; and in one cycle, salary communications landed mid-cycle and contaminated the performance conversations. The cycle needed to be run as one coordinated process, and matured while it ran.
What was done
- Built the proposal the leadership team actually decided on: insights from the last cycle, a one-sentence problem statement, recommendations flagged for exec decision, two dated timeline options with pros and cons. The deck's job was to force decisions, not to document process.
- Got the architecture decisions signed off before manager enablement started: one full annual cycle with lighter touchpoints through the year, no forced distribution, simple qualitative merit guidelines, capped peer-feedback requests, eligibility defined as a formula rather than a list.
- Ran the performance stream and the salary stream as separate streams on one calendar: one project plan with a full RACI, one comms plan, one data pipeline, with decisions recorded in the plan row where they were taken, so the plan doubled as the decision log.
- Prepared calibrations properly: sessions mapped early, ratings collected beforehand, and working data in the room - rating distributions, self-versus-manager overlap - so calibration effectiveness could be shown, not asserted.
- Tied the merit logic to the pay structure: budget construction through exec sign-off, salary-range clean-up before the merit calculation, planner worksheets and guardrails managers could actually apply.
- Sequenced the communications for both audiences, from kick-off through a close-out survey to a "you said, we changed" follow-up. Delivery ran through a quality gate: every letter checked by two people, managers trained on delivering rating and pay in one conversation.
What the client holds now
A review cycle that runs as one calendar instead of two colliding projects, an architecture the leadership team explicitly chose, and a plan-plus-RACI that doubles as the decision record. The work spanned successive annual cycles: the retrospective of one full cycle fed the redesign proposal, and the following year's cycle was planned and run on the decisions it produced.
The design principle, in substance rather than in quotes: people tolerate a disappointing outcome if the process was fair - so build the fairness into the process, not the messaging.
If your review cycle has grown heavier than the value it delivers, this is a solvable design problem. Feel free to reach out.
This case study is anonymised. Details that could identify the client have been altered or omitted; everything described is documented engagement work.