Senior independent HR advisory for founders and owner-managed businesses.
The people decisions that come with building, growing, or transitioning a business — handled at the level they require.
The people decisions in a founder-led or owner-managed business carry a different weight than those in a corporate organisation. There is no HR function to escalate to. The board is often the founder. The sensitivity of what needs to happen is compounded by the fact that the people involved are usually close: a co-founder, a long-standing director, a partner who helped build the business but is no longer capable of running it at the scale it has reached.
Esbee provides senior independent HR advisory to founders and owner-managed businesses at the moments when the people decisions are too high-stakes, too sensitive, or too politically charged to handle without external support.
Talk to us about a situation →What this means
HR advisory for founders and owner-managed businesses is the work of navigating the people decisions that do not fit a standard HR toolkit: co-director exits where equity and relationship history are part of the calculus, senior hires or departures where the impact on the business is existential, the organisational questions that surface when a business outgrows its founding team. The work is advisory in the purest sense — a principal with the experience to understand the full picture, the seniority to engage at founder level, and the independence to say what needs to be said without a commercial interest in a particular outcome.
How the work shows up
Area 1
Sensitive exits and departures
When a co-director, a founding team member, or a long-standing senior employee needs to leave the business, the relationship history, the equity position, and the employment position are all part of the conversation. These situations require someone who can hold the commercial, legal, and relational dimensions simultaneously, and who has the standing to navigate them with both parties. Getting the framing wrong at the start can determine whether the situation resolves cleanly or becomes a dispute.
Complex & High-Stakes HR →Area 2
The organisation question
Businesses that have grown rapidly often reach a point where the people who built the company are not the right people to run the company at the next scale. Diagnosing what needs to change — which roles need to change, which structures are no longer fit for purpose, which capabilities are absent — and sequencing the necessary decisions without destroying what made the business successful is a specific kind of advisory work.
Operating Model Design →Area 3
Leadership team and senior hiring
Getting the leadership population right for the stage the business is at — whether that is a first Finance Director, a COO hire, or restructuring a management team after a change of ownership — requires clarity on what the business needs as well as what it currently has. We help founders think through the leadership question before the hire is made, and advise on the operating model implications of the decision.
Advisory →Area 4
The employment situations no one warned you about
TUPE obligations if you are acquiring another business. An employment tribunal claim from a former employee. A settlement negotiation that has escalated beyond what your solicitor alone can manage. The complex HR situations that arise in businesses that have grown without building a professional HR function are often the most acute, because no one saw them coming and there is no internal capability to handle them.
Complex & High-Stakes HR →Facing a people situation that is too sensitive to handle internally?
Talk to us in confidence →From the casebook
Representative work with founders and owner-managed businesses. Identifying details changed.
Exit of a founding director
A co-founding director whose contribution to the business had declined significantly over 18 months, but whose exit involved a shareholders' agreement, a minority equity stake, and a long-standing relationship with the business's principal client. The employment position was straightforward. The relationship and equity dimensions were not. Esbee advised on the framing and structure of the conversation, managed the process alongside legal advisers, and secured an agreed settlement that preserved the client relationship and the director's dignity while giving the remaining founders the clarity the business needed.
Senior leadership restructuring ahead of a first institutional funding round: operating model review and management team assessment. Content to be provided by Sam.
TUPE and HR compliance support ahead of a first acquisition: people due diligence and integration planning for a founder-owned business. Content to be provided by Sam.
How we engage
The work with founder-led and owner-managed businesses tends to be project-based and situational: a specific problem, a clear deliverable, and a principal involved throughout. There is no junior team working in the background. You engage directly with Sam, which matters when the situation is sensitive and the number of people who can know about it is very small.
Many of the businesses we work with in this segment do not have an internal HR function. We can act as that function for a defined period or on a specific project, or we can work alongside an existing HR manager or Office Manager to bring the seniority the situation requires. The model depends on what the business needs, not on what fits a standard service packaging.
The situations we handle for founders and owner-managed businesses are almost always confidential — often to the management team, always to external parties. We treat that as a standard operating condition, not an exception to our usual approach.
The practice is led by Sam Bramhall.
Sam Bramhall is the Principal Consultant at Esbee, with two decades of board-level strategic HR and organisational advisory across telecoms, fintech, professional services, technology, and PE-backed businesses. Engagements are principal-led: you work directly with Sam throughout, not with a junior team managing upward.
About Sam and the firm →Frequently asked questions
- What makes HR advisory in a founder-led business different from corporate HR?
- The structure of the problem is different. In a corporate organisation, there is a separation between the business, the employees, and the people making HR decisions. In a founder-led or owner-managed business, those distinctions often collapse. The person making the employment decision may also be the shareholder, the client relationship holder, and the person who hired the individual 10 years ago. That changes the nature of the advice required. It needs to account for the equity position, the relationship history, and the business continuity question — not just the employment law analysis.
- Can you help with a co-founder or co-director exit?
- Yes. Co-founder and co-director exits are among the most complex employment situations precisely because the employment relationship sits alongside a shareholder agreement, a client relationship, and often a personal history that makes the conversation very difficult to have without external support. Esbee works on these situations from the initial framing of the conversation through to agreed settlement, and we work alongside legal advisers where the equity or shareholders' agreement requires it.
- Do you work with businesses that have no internal HR function?
- Yes, and the majority of the founder and owner-managed businesses we work with do not have a professional HR function. We can act as that function for a defined period or on a specific project, or we can work alongside an existing HR manager or Office Manager who handles the day-to-day and bring the seniority the situation requires. The model depends on what the business needs and how the engagement is most useful.
- At what point in a business transition or ownership change should we engage you?
- As early as the conversation is possible. Business transitions — whether that is a generational change in a family business, a first institutional investment, or a partial exit — almost always surface people questions that were already present but unaddressed. The earlier we are in the conversation, the more choices remain open. Once a transaction is announced or a decision is public, the sequencing options narrow considerably.
- Can you advise on the people side of an acquisition we are planning?
- Yes. For smaller acquisitions, the people due diligence is often not given the same attention as the financial and legal diligence, and it is where the surprises tend to come from. We can run a people-focused review of the target business, advise on TUPE obligations, assess the management team, and help plan the integration. The same work applies if you are the target: understanding your own HR position before a buyer's advisers review it removes uncertainty and cost from the process.
- How does engagement pricing work for a smaller business?
- Project-based for defined-scope work: a specific exit situation, a people diligence exercise, an operating model review. Day-rate or short retainer for situations that are ongoing or where the scope is genuinely not predictable in advance. We agree the commercial structure upfront and do not move it once work is underway. We do not have a minimum engagement size, and we do not apply corporate advisory fee structures to businesses where that would not make sense.
Where this work sits in the practice
What we do
Complex & High-Stakes HR
Senior exits, tribunal support, and interim HR leadership for situations where the stakes extend beyond the immediate employment matter.
What we do
Advisory
Strategic HR and organisational advisory across the full scope of the practice.
Advisory
Operating Model Design
Structure, spans and layers, decision rights, and capability mapping for businesses where the operating model needs to change.
Who we work with
Scaling Tech & Fintech
The operating model and people questions that arise between Series B and scale, when structure, capability, and culture are the constraint on growth.
Who we work with
Private Equity
PE firms and portfolio companies across the deal cycle, the hold period, and exit preparation.
Last reviewed: May 2026
Talk to us about a situation
Whether it is a sensitive exit, a leadership question, or a complex HR situation you are not sure how to approach, we are happy to have an initial conversation.
Get in touch