People Business and Private Equity

Bringing you over 20 years of lessons learnt

At People Business, we have been working with private equity firms since 2004 and as a result we understand your unique characteristics. Over the years we have gained a great deal of experience in developing effective people strategies for PE firms and are able to support you to deliver your desired outcomes.

Our belief is that businesses work best when they have the right organisation structure, flexible working practices, appropriate values, robust performance management and strong employee engagement. We design and run programmes of work to help make that happen.

Why choose People Business?

  • Our advice is always focused on helping you maximise financial returns.

  • We are able to work on a wide range of people management issues, and both large and small projects. We can scale the nature of our activity and resource and, therefore, are able to offer highly cost-effective support to smaller portfolio companies as well as addressing much larger and more challenging projects.

  • We seek to develop long-term relationships so that we can get to understand your organisation and how we can best help you.
  • We identify new opportunities to improve returns and we help you prioritise people initiatives.

  • We combine specialist HR knowledge with specialist change and growth management expertise and an awareness of the implications of the latest operating practices in fast growth companies.

  • We believe that both PE companies themselves and their portfolio companies work best when they have the right organisation structure, flexible working practices, appropriate values and strong employee engagement.

HOW PEOPLE BUSINESS CAN ADD VALUE

Developing people

The quality of an organisation’s employees, and its people strategy is key

Developing the team

Helping to develop both PE and PortCo teams

Developing the firm

Supporting the development of people strategy and culture

Our people

Andrea is the founder of People Business and is an experienced HR professional, organisational development consultant, coach and facilitator. With a background of corporate senior roles and over 25 years of experience, Andrea brings a wealth of expertise and impact to her work with clients.

Andrea believes that enabling people is not a ‘soft option’ simply for those that have the time and resources to do so, but rather it is the most effective way of improving the performance of organisations so that they consistently deliver business objectives. “Inspired people with a clear sense of what must be done can deliver extraordinary results.”

Andrea’s professional strengths are many and varied, but her core skills include:

  • Coaching CEOs and other C-suite members
  • Leadership team and board development
  • Supporting the development of HR leadership and professionals
  • Executive assessment of key individuals and leadership teams
  • Working with private equity (PE) organisations and portfolio companies
  • Reviewing and overhauling people strategies, particularly in portfolio companies to enable growth
  • Advising newly developed organisations to ensure they are starting off with the right people practices and preparing themselves for growth
  • Working with both global companies of 10,000s of employees and smaller ambitious organisations

For over 20 years Andrea has worked extensively within the Private Equity (PE) space carrying out projects with both PE firms and their portfolio companies. She uses her PE knowledge and experience to accelerate the pace of change, implementing practices that work.

She achieves a healthy mix of innovation and pragmatism (with a little humour for good measure) and is always focused on delivering results.

Helping people and organisations to be the best they can be is Graeme’s passion. With over 25 years consultancy experience in leadership and team development, cultural change, organisational development and conflict management, Graeme has worked with clients across many sectors (including finance, medical, pharmaceutical, retail, public and not for profit).

Graeme has been privileged to work around the world and his experience working across Africa, Scandinavia and Europe, Asia and the USA has taught him that it is more useful to look for the similarities that drive people than the cultural differences.

Graeme’s starting point is a profound belief in people and an unfailing sense of possibility in what they can achieve.  “We are all driven by our passions and peculiarities, striving to make a difference, in our own deeply personal and endlessly fascinating ways!”

Graeme holds a BSc (Hons) in Psychology and a Post Graduate Diploma in Ergonomics, and was a registered Member of the Ergonomics Society (M. Erg. S.) for over 20 years. Graeme adds value by helping organisations deliver results in different ways and, in his own words, this is how Graeme describes his core expertise:

  • Individual coaching: ‘When people question their assumptions they can rapidly transform their ways of working. I help people understand the changes that will make the most significant difference and turn the spotlight on moments of success to drive improvement.’
  • Executive team building: ‘The magic happens when teams of leaders support and challenge each other to deliver more than the sum of their parts. I facilitate team development with a focus on clarity of vision, priorities for team development, stakeholder engagement and feedback.’
  • Leadership development: ‘Healthy organisations see everyone as a leader. I help people feel confident, show their passion and take the lead. I bring tools and concepts in a way that makes ‘common sense’ and can be rapidly integrated into day to day tasks. I love to work with groups of all levels of seniority to establish new networks of leadership.’
  • Culture change: ‘As culture is simply “how we do things around here”, I encourage leaders to personally role model the culture they want to see. For example if you want a culture of accountability you need to give freedom to people to take decisions and work it out for themselves.’
  • Conflict management: ‘Introducing new technology, partnerships, or ways of working often creates conflict. As a trained mediator I am skilled at helping people see the common ground and take ownership to achieve a successful outcome in situations of debilitating conflict.’
  • Facilitation and design: ‘I am a highly skilled communicator and facilitator with the ability to engage small groups or moderate large-scale conferences. By involving people in the dialogue, creating thinking time and including activities that challenge people to relate differently – I hold the ‘red thread’ to deliver clarity, ownership and action.’
A passionate advocate for people and organisational development, Daniel has worked in learning and talent for the entirety of his career. With considerable experience in FTSE100 organisations and smaller, PE-backed companies, predominantly his experience is in the healthcare and hospitality industries. He has held both global and national roles – most recently as Head of People and Head of Learning & Development.


This breadth of roles and experience has given Daniel the ability to vary his approach to suit the specific needs of the teams he is working with. Recent experience in a diverse range of sectors has highlighted the critical importance of valuing employees and the dial has definitely shifted; he believes that a robust organisation’s talent strategy no longer focuses solely on the ‘Top 10%’ and that an all-encompassing approach to succession planning is vital.

Through Daniel’s work and study, he has acquired expertise in:

  • Organisational change
  • Leadership and management development & coaching
  • Mediation
  • Development of organisational purpose, values and culture
  • People strategy and vision
  • Succession planning
  • Assessment and psychometrics

Daniel is Occupational Ability and Personality BPS Level A&B; Hogan HPI, HDS and MVPI qualified and most recently, he qualified as an CMC-accredited mediator to supplement his repertoire. Since Daniel has a young family, there isn’t all that much free time for hobbies, but when he can he enjoys cooking and touring on his motorbike.

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