When a fast-growing scale-up started to see performance plateau, the founders knew they needed to reset their cost base to drive growth with people costs sitting firmly in the spotlight. The challenge: reduce People spend by two-digit % to close the budget gap, without compromising future potential.

Step one was to align with the founders on principles: optimise rather than slash, protect growth-critical capabilities, make one decisive move (not death by a thousand cuts), and involve leaders early to drive buy-in and collective leadership accountability. 

We gathered a clear picture of the current people spend; headcount and budgets;  paired with today’s capacity and capability levels across all functions. We explored options from soft (freeze hiring, promotions, L&D) to hard (redundancies- voluntary and involuntary). Using strategic workforce planning, we identified critical talent and capabilities to “keep, build, borrow, or buy”, and designed hybrid options that balanced cost optimisation and reduction;  always through a talent and growth business lens. 

With a thoughtful plan in place, we moved at pace: transparent adult-to-adult comms, a consistent message map, and well-briefed leaders. An upskilled  People team ensured a fair redundancy process where necessary  including enhanced packages to practical support landing new roles. 

Results:

• Two-digit % cost saving delivered

• 90% retention of key talent

• Only marginal drop in engagement, leadership & company confidence (-<5pp) 

• Leavers and employees who were impacted by the changes felt treated fairly through the process (qualitative feedback)

• People team developed new change & employment relations skills

These moments are never easy – but with the right strategy and integrity, scale-ups can protect growth while doing right by their people.

A high-growth global tech scale-up was loosing momentum in its push to innovate and win in new revenue streams. New-growth team members were operating in siloes, learning was patchy, and short-term performance pressure was crushing the experimentation needed to win in new territories. Talent felt untapped and momentum was fading.

My role was to help reset rhythm, build capability and create the conditions for sustainable growth.

What I did:

• Ran a workshop with the exec team to define the critical skills and behaviours needed to succeed in new growth teams

• Assessed the team against this, revealing significant capability gaps

• Built a 70-20-10 learning programme:
  ↳ 10% targeted training
  ↳ 20% post training program to embed learning and build new growth community
  ↳ 70% on-the-job learning guided and supported by their managers and through regular retros

• Coached the executive team 1:1 and collectively to balance performance with learning orientation and provide psychological safety.

Impact:

• Under-performers exited gracefully

• New-market launches accelerated with sharper “test-learn-scale” J-curves

• Agile and collaborative habits re-established

• Participants rated the programme 4.7/5

• Most importantly, the model is now self-sustaining — execs feel confident to keep embedding capability and learning as expansion continues.

Re-igniting performance in new revenue stream teams