People architecture
What you are left withOne page that says who decides what, and who is told afterwards.
The practice
At PRISM, people operations is a practice, not a department: one senior person, engaged by the day, working inside a company at the point where the informal way of doing things stops holding.
A founder at thirty people. A partner who inherited a practice group and no training for it. Two different rooms, one brief — make authority, pay and progress legible enough that nobody in the building has to guess. The work is unglamorous and it is almost always the thing that was postponed.
- FractionalTwo days a week, or one. A practice on call, never a headcount on a chart.
- SeniorThe person in the first call is the person in the room in week six.
- By referralWork arrives from the last piece of work, which is why this page confirms rather than sells.
Two rooms
Two rooms that rarely share a vocabulary.
The founder’s room
You hired forty people with a spreadsheet and nerve.
It worked, which is the awkward part. At PRISM the job is not to replace the instinct that got the company here but to put a floor under it.
- Levelling and bands that survive a board meeting
- First-manager training for engineers promoted in March
- Performance cycles that take days, not quarters
- Employment groundwork for the second country
The partner’s room
Your people function reports to everyone at once.
Firms are governed by consensus and staffed by exception. At PRISM the partnership gets one neutral desk, and a written record that it was used.
- Associate progression, written down and voted on
- Lateral onboarding through the first two hundred days
- Compensation committee support and a defensible review
- Sensitive matters held at arm’s length from the partnership
What the work is for
Nobody should have to guess how their own place works.
Pay, promotion, who decides what and who is told: written down once, in language a person can repeat to someone else without softening it.
The work
Six things, in whatever order the company needs them.
Compensation & equity
What you are left withBands on a single sheet, and the sentences to explain them out loud.
Hiring systems
What you are left withA scorecard the fiftieth interviewer still uses the way the first one did.
Employee relations
What you are left withA written record of a hard month that reads the same a year later.
Policy & compliance
What you are left withA handbook people open on purpose, and the file counsel asks for first.
Standing hours
What you are left withA number to call in the week it goes sideways, held open on the calendar.
Somebody put a structure there on purpose
False colour · sage and coral
Week 0A conversation
Weeks 1–2Listening
Weeks 3–6Building
AfterStanding hours
One person
PRISM is one person, on purpose.
Erin H. Robertson has spent fifteen years inside people functions: a marketplace that tripled in eighteen months, a national firm with a compensation committee, and two companies that did not make it and taught more than the ones that did.
PRISM takes a small number of engagements at a time. That is not scarcity; it is the only way the person you met stays the person doing the work.
- 2011–2016People operations, a marketplace from 40 to 600
- 2016–2021Head of people, a national firm and its compensation committee
- 2021–PRISM — fractional, by referral, two rooms at a time
“They arrived on a Tuesday, and by the following Friday the partnership had compensation bands it had actually voted for.”
A. Marchetti — managing partner
Is PRISM replacing our HR team?
Usually not. PRISM works beside whoever holds people operations today and leaves them stronger than it found them.
How is this different from a consultancy?
A consultancy leaves a deck. PRISM builds the thing and stays long enough to watch it run under load.
What does it cost?
Priced by the day and quoted after the first conversation, month to month after the first term.
Start
Bring the thing you keep postponing.
Thirty minutes, no deck, no obligation. Most people arrive here because someone they trust sent them; say who, and the conversation starts halfway along.
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