For people who never planned to lead, hire, or manage.

Cut-out portrait of a founder over a lilac-to-orange panel — Fig. 00 — Room A

Cut-out portrait of a firm partner over a lilac-to-orange panel — Fig. 00 — Room A

At PRISM the people function gets built once and built properly — by one senior operator who has done it before, for founders holding a company together and partners holding a firm together.

Placeholder City and remote Seven spreads, two editions

01 — This issue prints in two editions

Two rooms that look nothing alike and need almost exactly the same thing: someone senior who can say what happens next, and then go and build it. Pick the room you are living in — it re-sets four spreads below.

Room A — For founders

Hiring faster than the handbook

Placeholder — headcount doubled, the first managers were promoted on a Friday, and three states now have opinions about how the company pays people.

Onboarding that keeps up with the offer letters going out.
Pay bands and equity that survive the next diligence.
Multi-state exposure nobody has looked at yet.
Engineers who became managers with no training at all.

Room A

Twelve to ninety
in four quartersPlaceholder figure — the size at which a company stops improvising.

Torn paper panels in lilac, orange, cream and black

Plate 02 — Torn panels

02 — The work

Six ways to bring
in a people function

Six plates, scoped and priced before anything begins. Drag the sheet sideways, or turn the page below.

01 / 06

Fractional HR leadership

Placeholder — an embedded, part-time people lead inside the leadership team: in the meetings, on the hard calls, accountable for the same numbers everyone else is.

Retained2–4 days a month

Compliance & policy

Placeholder — the handbook, classification and jurisdiction work nobody wants to own, written so a regulator and a new hire can both read it.

Project4–6 weeks

Compensation design

Placeholder — bands, levels and an equity philosophy that hold up in a board meeting and in a one-to-one with a disappointed senior engineer.

Project6–8 weeks

Hiring systems

Placeholder — structured interviews, scorecards and an onboarding week that still works when four people start on the same Monday.

ProjectOngoing option

Performance & review

Placeholder — review cycles managers can run without a consultant in the room, and feedback that lands before it becomes an exit.

RetainedCycle by cycle

Sensitive matters

Placeholder — investigations, exits and restructures handled quietly, in step with counsel, with the written record kept properly from day one.

AdvisoryAs needed

At PRISM, scope is written down before the first invoice. Nothing here is sold by the hour, and nothing here is sold twice.

03 — The method. Every engagement ends; that is the design

Diagnose. Build.
Then hand it over.

Read the room

Placeholder — interviews with the people who actually run things, a look at every document that governs employment, and one honest written picture of where the risk and the friction really sit. No survey platform, no forty-slide deck.

Weeks 1–2, written diagnostic

Build the spine

Placeholder — the smallest set of policies, systems and rituals that will hold the organisation together at twice its size. Built with the team, in the tools they already have, in the order that removes the most pain first.

Weeks 3–8, handbook and manager kit

Hand it over

Placeholder — managers trained on the thing that was built, decisions documented so the reasoning survives the people, and a clear line for the quarter after PRISM steps back. The measure of the work is what runs without it.

Ongoing, then a decision log and a door that closes

04 — In their words

Placeholder quote — the first week PRISM was here, three arguments we had been having for a year simply stopped.

Placeholder NameCo-founder, Placeholder Labs

Placeholder quote — our partners disagree about almost everything, and all of them signed the same compensation model.

Placeholder NameManaging Partner, Placeholder & Co.

Placeholder quote — the handover was the point. Six months on, our own managers are running it without calling anyone.

Placeholder NameChief of Staff, Placeholder Group

05 — The practice

Erin H. Robertson,
on her own

Erin H. Robertson, duotone portrait — Fig. 05 — The practice lead

Placeholder — two decades inside fast companies and professional-services firms, mostly in the years when they stopped being small. The through-line: the people problems of a Series B and the people problems of a growing partnership are the same problem wearing different clothes.

At PRISM the work is deliberately small in scope and senior in seniority. One person takes the brief, does the work, and is in the room when it is explained. There is no bench, no account manager, and nothing built that the organisation will not genuinely maintain.

Placeholder senior people role, growth-stage technology2011–2018
Placeholder people lead, professional services2018–2023
Placeholder certification in employment practiceSince 20XX
Placeholder guest lecture on first-time managersAnnual
Two engagements at a time. No more.A decision, not a constraint

06 — Questions, printed in full

How does a fractional engagement actually work?

Placeholder — a fixed number of days a month, the same days each month, anchored to the leadership team's calendar. Between them, PRISM is reachable the way an internal head of people would be.

Placeholder — a fixed number of days a month, scheduled around the partners' meeting and the review calendar. Between them, PRISM is reachable the way an internal director of talent would be.

What does it cost?

Placeholder — a monthly retainer with the scope written down, or a fixed price per project. No hourly billing, no surprises, and the number is said out loud on the first call.

iii

Does PRISM replace our employment counsel?

Placeholder — no. PRISM builds the practice; counsel gives the legal advice. Most engagements involve working alongside the firm you already use, and PRISM will say clearly when a question belongs to them.

How quickly can the work start?

Placeholder — usually within a few weeks, occasionally sooner for a sensitive matter. What is needed before day one is small: access to documents, and thirty minutes with each of four or five people.

What happens when it ends?

Placeholder — the handover is planned from the start: documentation, manager training, and a short advisory tail if it helps. Ending well is part of the brief, not an afterthought.

Who is actually doing the work?

Placeholder — Erin, and only Erin. If an engagement needs a specialist PRISM does not have, you will be told on the call, and introduced to one who does.

hello@prismplaceholder.com

07 — Start here

Placeholder — thirty minutes, one conversation, and a straight answer about whether PRISM is the right thing for the company right now. If it is not, you will leave with the name of who is. Placeholder — thirty minutes, one conversation, and a straight answer about whether PRISM is the right thing for the firm right now. If it is not, you will leave with the name of who is.

Book the consult Back to the cover

Telephone+1 (000) 000-0000

CoveragePlaceholder City and remote across placeholder regions

ResponsePlaceholder turnaround, usually the same day

AvailabilityTwo engagements at a time, no more

ColophonSet in Bodoni Moda and Space Grotesk. Printed in lilac, orange, cream and black.