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Working Together

Client Success Stories

At Strativis, we don’t just talk strategy—we deliver it. Explore how we've helped organizations transform their people practices, solve complex HR challenges, and unlock leadership potential through tailored solutions. These stories highlight the measurable impact of our fractional HR support, executive coaching, and strategic consulting.​

Zen Stones in Water

From Chaos to Clarity: Building a Scalable People Function from the Ground Up

Building a Scalable People Function from Scratch for a 75-Person Sales Organization

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Client Profile:

A high-growth sales-focused business with 75 employees and no existing HR infrastructure. The company had experienced rapid headcount growth without formal HR processes, resulting in inconsistent performance management, recruitment inefficiencies, and disengaged employees.

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Engagement Duration: 6 months
 

The Challenge​​

The business had no dedicated HR function, fragmented responsibilities across managers, and ad hoc people processes that were no longer fit for purpose. The CEO recognized the need for expert support to design and implement a people strategy that would support scale, reduce turnover, and enhance employee engagement.

 

Our Approach​

We began with a full HR and people function audit, assessing:

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  • Role clarity and organizational structure

  • Individual and team performance

  • Learning and development opportunities

  • Compensation, benefits, and policy effectiveness

  • Recruitment practices and onboarding

  • Employee engagement and workplace culture
     

Over several weeks, I met one-on-one with every employee, creating space to listen openly and without judgment. These conversations offered deep insight into frustrations, aspirations, and areas for improvement. All findings were compiled into a clear, data-driven report, highlighting trends, concerns, and opportunities—presented in an easy-to-digest dashboard format for the CEO and senior team.

 

Key Solutions Delivered​

Organisational Clarity

  • Mapped and clarified job descriptions and responsibilities at every level

  • Introduced a defined career progression framework

  • Adjusted role overlaps and workload distribution based on findings
     

Smarter Recruitment

  • Replaced time-consuming individual interviews with structured group assessments

  • Over-hired by 10% in the sales function to proactively manage early attrition

  • Introduced structured onboarding and a consistent recruitment process, cutting time-to-fill by 40%
     

Policy Modernization

  • Removed outdated and demotivating policies (e.g., requirement for a doctor’s note after 2 days of illness)

  • Introduced holiday bonus incentives and mobile phone reimbursement plans for employees using personal devices for work
     

Compensation & Retention

  • Benchmarked salaries to ensure competitiveness

  • Introduced a simple bonus scheme tied to peak-period work and key performance indicators
     

Training & Development

  • Designed and rolled out bespoke training content to support continuous learning

  • Implemented regular sales training to embed new techniques, leading to increased conversion rates

  • Created a learning journey framework that gave employees clear goals for skill development

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Impact & Results​

  • Time-to-fill reduced by 40% through smarter recruitment

  • 8% increase in quarterly profits within the first three months post-implementation

  • Improved engagement and morale across the company, with anecdotal and survey feedback highlighting greater trust and transparency

  • A sustainable HR infrastructure built from the ground up, enabling future internal ownership

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The Outcome​

This six-month engagement laid the foundation for a scalable, employee-centered HR function aligned with business goals. What started as a reactive need became a proactive, high-impact transformation—with improved processes, empowered employees, and measurable commercial results.

The Leadership Shift: Turning First-Time Managers into Culture-Carrying Leaders

Chess

Empowering New Managers to Become Strategic, Empathetic Leaders

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Client Profile:
A mid-sized technology company with a strong growth trajectory and a wave of first-time managers promoted from within. These leaders had deep technical skills but limited experience managing people, navigating internal influence, or operating at a strategic level.

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Engagement Duration: Ongoing
 

The Challenge

As the company scaled, many individual contributors were promoted into management roles with little formal preparation or leadership training. While technically capable, these new managers struggled to:

  • Make confident, independent decisions

  • Advocate for their teams

  • Communicate effectively across different layers of the business

  • Handle team conflict and feedback constructively

  • Balance operational execution with long-term strategic thinking
     

This created bottlenecks, miscommunication, and risked employee disengagement and turnover within teams that were otherwise high potential.

 

Our Approach

Strativis designed a bespoke manager development program rooted in coaching, real-time application, and long-term impact—not a one-size-fits-all training. The approach was built on the belief that empowering managers is not about telling them how to manage—but showing them how to lead.

Key pillars of the program included:

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  • 1:1 leadership coaching for newly appointed managers

  • Workshops on strategic communication, decision-making, and influence

  • Guided reflection on leadership values and personal brand

  • Practical frameworks for delegation, feedback, and navigating conflict

  • Peer learning circles to create trust and community

  • Leadership tools tailored to the company’s culture and pace

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Key Solutions Delivered

Decision-Making & Ownership

Managers were coached to build confidence in their own judgment and think critically—learning how to ask the right questions rather than seek permission. This fostered independence and empowered them to take ownership of outcomes.

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Strategic Communication & Altitude Switching

We taught managers how to adapt their communication style based on audience—whether presenting to senior leadership or coaching a team member. They learned to “switch altitude” effectively: zooming out to see the big picture, and zooming in to address detail when needed.

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Building a Leadership Identity

Through personal coaching and facilitated exercises, managers developed a clearer understanding of their leadership identity—how they wanted to show up, what they wanted to be known for, and how to advocate for their teams without overstepping.

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Creating Psychological Safety & Productive Conflict

We focused on professional vulnerability and trust-building, giving managers the tools to create environments where team members felt safe to speak up, challenge ideas, and contribute fully. This also allowed for productive conflict—channeling tension into progress rather than silence.

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Delegation & Strategic Focus

Managers were taught to delegate with clarity and trust, freeing themselves from reactive work and focusing on planning, team development, and cross-functional leadership—enabling the organization to move faster and more effectively.

 

Impact & Results

  • Zero attrition among teams led by participating managers over a 6-month period

  • Increased team performance and engagement, measured through internal feedback loops and output metrics

  • Managers reported greater confidence, clarity, and connection to their role as leaders

  • Improved cross-functional communication and stakeholder alignment

  • Increased upward mobility as managers began to coach and develop future leaders within their teams

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The Outcome

This engagement helped turn first-time managers into empathetic, strategic, and high-impact leaders. By focusing on coaching, trust, and communication—not just checklists—we created a leadership culture that scales with the business. These managers became more than people leaders—they became culture carriers, helping drive performance, commitment, and momentum across the organization.

Tall Buildings

From Zero to Scalable: Rebuilding Talent Acquisition for a Growing Tech Org

Rebuilding Talent Acquisition from the Ground Up at a Scaling Tech Company

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Client Profile:
A 1,500-person SaaS and data technology company that had eliminated its Talent Acquisition (TA) function during the COVID-19 downturn. With growth rebounding, the business faced urgent hiring needs, particularly in engineering and product, but lacked the internal infrastructure to support it.

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Engagement Duration: Multi-quarter engagement

 

The Challenge

The business had no functioning recruitment team in place. After pausing hiring during the pandemic, demand for new talent surged—especially within engineering, DevOps, and technical product teams. The CTO had been unable to make a single hire in over 4 months, despite multiple open roles and increasing pressure to deliver on key projects. Hiring managers were frustrated, candidate pipelines were non-existent, and recruitment workflows had become inconsistent and unclear. There was no system, no ownership, and no clear targets.

 

Our Approach

Strativis was brought in to rebuild TA from scratch—from strategy and planning through to execution and team design. I began by consulting with the CPO and functional leaders to assess the organization’s current state, future growth projections, and talent gaps.

Together, we developed a strategic hiring plan, grounded in realistic capacity planning and supported by process infrastructure.

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Key steps included:

  • Creating a quarterly hiring target of 12 roles, based on business priorities and resource bandwidth

  • Mapping core talent needs across engineering, data, and product

  • Designing scalable recruitment processes from outreach through onboarding

  • Personally driving hands-on hiring while building out an internal team in parallel

 

Key Solutions Delivered

Strategic Hiring Roadmap

  • Aligned with leadership on quarterly hiring goals by department

  • Prioritized high-impact roles to unlock delivery bottlenecks

  • Introduced simple and scalable reporting tools to track recruitment KPIs
     

Full TA Function Rebuild

  • Built and staffed an internal recruitment team, including recruiters and a coordinator

  • Defined end-to-end hiring workflows, SLAs, and intake templates

  • Introduced best practices for structured interviews, scorecards, and candidate feedback
     

Execution & Delivery

  • Took full accountability for technical hiring during the rebuild period

  • Personally sourced, screened, and closed high-quality candidates for priority roles

  • Embedded hiring manager coaching to create confidence and alignment across functions
     

Impact & Results

  • 12 hires successfully made in the first quarter of engagement—hitting the commitment goal

  • Hiring targets met consistently every quarter through the full engagement

  • Internal TA team fully staffed and trained, with all processes documented and owned

  • Reduced time-to-fill and improved hiring manager satisfaction across engineering and product

  • Onboarding was streamlined, improving new hire retention and ramp-up
     

The Outcome

This engagement transformed a post-COVID talent vacuum into a strategic, high-performing TA engine. What started as a crisis of capability became a repeatable model for growth—with hiring targets consistently met and a confident internal team in place to own the future.

By combining strategic planning with hands-on delivery, Strativis ensured that hiring never became a blocker to innovation or momentum.

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Mission Critical: How Strativis Reinforced a Global Cybersecurity Team

Astronaut in Space

Case Study: Transforming Cybersecurity Hiring for a Global Tech Organization

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Client Profile:
A global technology company with over 5,000 employees, rapidly scaling its cybersecurity function to support increased digital risk and regulatory demands. Despite making a significant investment in headcount, the business lacked a clear hiring strategy and was struggling to fill critical roles.

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Engagement Duration: 3 months
 

The Challenge

When Strativis was engaged, the organization had 33 open cybersecurity requisitions, many of which had been open for 90 days or more. Hiring managers were frustrated, under pressure, and facing increasing risk exposure due to vacant roles. Internal recruitment resources were stretched, and there was no defined hiring strategy for cyber talent. The vacancies spanned security engineering, governance, threat intelligence, and risk functions—each with unique and hard-to-source profiles. Stakeholders were losing confidence, and delivery timelines were slipping.

 

Our Approach

I partnered closely with the Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) and their leadership team to gain a deep understanding of the function’s goals, operating model, and team dynamics. Rather than take a transactional approach, I worked to build trust quickly and position myself as an extension of their leadership team.

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Key steps included:

  • Conducting in-depth role scoping with each hiring manager to define true needs—not just job titles

  • Creating custom candidate profiles for each discipline

  • Auditing the job descriptions, branding, and hiring process to remove blockers

  • Developing a streamlined sourcing and screening strategy, with a strong focus on direct sourcing, referrals, and passive candidate engagement

  • Implementing weekly check-ins with the CISO and team leads to maintain transparency, track progress, and adjust quickly
     

 

Key Solutions Delivered

Strategic Role Alignment

  • Partnered with each team lead to align on skills, experience, and must-haves

  • Developed a tailored recruitment roadmap to prioritise hires by urgency and impact

  • Introduced hiring scorecards to help reduce bias and speed up decision-making
     

Hands-On Talent Sourcing

  • Personally sourced, screened, and engaged high-quality candidates through targeted outreach and industry networks

  • Leveraged passive talent pipelines and niche platforms to access hard-to-reach cyber professionals

  • Managed candidate engagement end-to-end, ensuring a consistent and high-touch experience

Hiring Process Optimization

  • Introduced structured interview guides and feedback loops

  • Improved recruiter–hiring manager collaboration and reduced unnecessary steps

  • Helped reduce interview dropouts by simplifying the process and improving candidate experience

 

Impact & Results

  • Reduced open cybersecurity roles from 33 to just 4 in 12 weeks

  • Time-to-hire improved by over 50%

  • Boosted stakeholder confidence and improved hiring manager satisfaction significantly

  • Candidates reported a marked improvement in candidate experience, with faster turnaround and better communication

  • Helped the CISO and executive leadership regain control of a critical function

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The Outcome

What started as a high-stakes, high-friction hiring crisis became a structured, high-impact turnaround. With a calm, methodical approach and hands-on delivery, Strativis shifted the function from reactive firefighting to confident momentum. Through genuine partnership, targeted sourcing, and practical delivery, the cybersecurity team was able to scale quickly—and without compromising on quality. The CISO now has the talent foundation needed to protect the business and execute on long-term security strategy.

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