Barry Flack
Fractional Chief People Officer
Every expensive people problem started as a cheap one somebody ignored.
Every expensive people problem started as a cheap one somebody ignored.
On 1 January 2027 the Employment Rights Act changes the arithmetic.
Unfair dismissal rights at six months, not two years. And no ceiling on what a tribunal can award.
Everyone you hired from July is already inside it. Probation, what your managers write down, and any change to terms all become balance sheet questions rather than HR ones.
Most SMEs haven't put a number on it yet. It's what I'm busiest with right now.
Three problems, mostly. All of them cost money before anyone notices.
Employing people is getting more expensive and more exposed, faster than most SMEs have planned for.
Employment law, national insurance, wage floors, tribunal risk. Handled as a compliance chore it is pure cost. Handled properly it is the best reason you'll get to look again at how the work is organised, who does what, and where the money actually goes. The businesses that come out of this period stronger are the ones that took the second route.
I started in industrial relations at BT and ran employee relations through the BT/AT&T merger. Three decades of watching businesses absorb change — and noticing which ones profit from it.
PE money buys a plan. It doesn't buy the culture or the infrastructure to deliver it.
What a portfolio business needs is the minimum viable version of both — enough structure to take the growth, and none of the corporate weight nobody asked for. Exec pay and LTIPs. The C-suite hires. Org design and the first hundred days. And the honest answer on whether this management team is the one that gets you to exit.
Sent in by Perwyns, HiG Capital, RLH Equity, Synova and Verny — Gousto, Westerwood, Astound Commerce, Blackbird Coffee — to build a path to growth. A respected adviser to the world of PE through the GLG platform.
You bought the tools. Adoption is stuck at 20%. The P&L hasn't moved.
Your vendor can't fix that, because it isn't a tools problem. It's how the work is built and how your managers run it. I bring AI specialists in alongside me and we ship something real — agents, automations, work that actually changes hands — rather than another readiness assessment.
Decades running technology transformations. Adviser to HR technology firms including Beamery, HiBoB, Profinda and Deployed, now Growth Advisor at Form1, and I train frontier AI models at Outlier. I've watched thirty years of technology die on the same rock, and I know why.
“I was unfamiliar with fractional HR until we engaged Barry. Now I'm a convert. He helped me shape my organisation intentionally and set us up for success.”
“A huge thanks to Barry for helping us design and build our Ventures team in Europe from a standing start. We couldn't have done it without him.”
“Barry came to us at a difficult point in our growth and helped me navigate the operating model challenge, and the tough cultural issues that go with it.”
Thirty years in, I know what I'm looking for. I don't need six weeks to find it.
I'm inside the business, talking to your people. Not reading your policies.
You get my read verbally. If there's something urgent, you hear it that week, not in a final report.
The number, the risks ranked, and a plan with names and dates against it. Then we fix things.
No discovery phase. No maturity model. No findings deck.
What the Act costs you, and what to fix first. Board-ready, with owners and dates.
Where the people risk sits in the asset, and the order to deal with it. For deal teams and operating partners.
What is actually happening on the ground, against the business case you signed off.
Two days a week. Six months minimum, 60 days' notice. Usually starts as one of the above.
Two or three companies across a fund, run in parallel. Priced per mandate — no two portfolios look the same.
Need more than two days in a week? Surge days are £1,400, agreed at the outset so it's never a conversation you have mid-crisis. Restructures, TUPE, exec search and tribunal work are scoped and priced on their own.
Ten years fractional. Twenty-four before that.
I ran people functions at BT, Barclays, UBS, Thomson Reuters, Openreach and Primark, and was Group HR Director at Lebara Mobile. I went out on my own in 2016 and haven't looked back. Work has taken me across many cultures, industries and I've helped businesses adapt through the Financial crash, Brexit and the Pandemic.
Enough institutional credibility to hold a boardroom. Enough scar tissue to know what actually works.
I work with UK SMEs of 50–500 people, PE-backed or founder-led. Leaders who have a decision to make and no appetite for padding. If you want someone who'll tell you what he actually thinks, that's the work.
One number, one case from thirty years in, one thing to do about it.
SME People Insights. For leaders, no jargon. If you're not ready to talk, start here.
Thirty minutes. I'll tell you whether you have a problem. If I'm not the right person, I'll say so and point you at someone who is.
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