We recently brought together our portfolio people leaders for a webinar exploring how to make human capital a genuine driver of value creation. Hosted by Inflexion's Talent Assistant Director, Imy Harrison, the session focused on embedding people strategy into the Value Creation Plan rather than treating it as a parallel workstream.
Dan Jackson, Mercer's UK and European Private Equity M&A Leader, and Caroline Hudson, Chief People Officer at Inflexion portfolio company Rosemont Pharmaceuticals, joined to share their frameworks and practical experience. Key takeaways included:
Anchoring people strategy in the business plan
- Start with the investment thesis: Begin with the business objectives — revenue growth, margin expansion, acquisition-led growth — and work backwards to identify the people topics that will enable delivery. Human capital planning is most effective when it is directly linked to what the business is trying to achieve.
- Plan across the investment horizon: Map organisational capabilities across year one, years two to three, and year five to create a people roadmap that moves in step with the value creation plan.
Turning organisational design into actionable insight
- Use data to find fragility early: Tools such as salary roll-ups, performance-rating analysis, spans of control reviews and age demographic views can reveal concentrations of risk, succession gaps and misaligned structures before they become costly problems.
- Focus retention on skills, not just individuals: Map critical capabilities against operational relevance and business value to identify gaps and prioritise where retention efforts should be directed.
Executing at scale
- Create a golden thread: Align recruitment, performance management, succession planning and culture to build leadership depth and consistency as the business grows.
- Standardise for speed: A plug-and-play approach to acquisition integration — with consistent frameworks across reward, systems and governance — allows new businesses to be absorbed quickly and reduces the risk of issues surfacing at exit.
Thank you to our speakers for a practical and thought-provoking discussion.
