Six buyers. The same compounding problems.

Around 40% of colleges cancelled courses last year because they couldn't staff them, and roughly half of FE teachers leave within three years against a pay gap of about 15% to schools (IFS via FE Week, 2025). One college's agency staffing bill reached around £900k a year. Meanwhile ESFA and Ofsted data demands keep growing, and curriculum planning runs on blind spots.

• A costed route off agency dependence, sequenced so provision never drops
• Curriculum staffing economics: which courses pay their way at current staffing models
• One version of the workforce numbers across MIS, HR and payroll, ready for ESFA and Ofsted asks

Growth by acquisition means inheriting a new HR system, a new payroll and a new MIS with every school, and trust-wide people decisions end up made on spreadsheets stitched together each term. Multi-academy trust HR consolidation is exactly the join we work in: one workforce model, one data layer, and cross-school comparisons the board can actually trust.

• HR and payroll consolidation designed before the next school lands, not after
• Cross-school workforce comparisons: staffing cost, attrition and agency use per school, measured one way
• Trust-wide people systems sized for trusts, not enterprises

Universities hold more data than any other institution we work with and act on less of it. Workforce cost dominates the accounts but is spread across faculties, professional services and contract types until nobody can see it whole. Professional services transformation keeps being announced; without the joined-up numbers it keeps stalling.

• The whole pay bill made visible: by faculty, function and contract type, on one definition
• Professional services transformation grounded in workload and cost evidence, not benchmarking folklore
• People analytics your own team runs after we leave

Reorganisation is forcing councils to merge HR functions and systems at pace, and 73% cite funding constraints (LGA survey, 2024), so every project must show cashable savings. Ours start by finding the agency and workaround spend that pays for the rest: 48% of public sector organisations run manual workarounds for HR and payroll limitations (Zellis via LocalGov, 2024).

• HR function and system merger plans with the workaround tax costed up front
• A data warehouse pattern proven across local government source systems
• Agency spend and attrition visible to directors in real time

Housing providers run on hard-to-fill frontline roles: trades, repairs, care and housing management, where agency cover is expensive and continuity matters to tenants. Meanwhile consumer regulation demands evidence, and the data it wants sits spread across housing management, repairs, HR and payroll systems that don't join.

• A costed route off agency dependence in trades and care, sequenced so service to tenants never drops
• Live pay and hiring benchmarks for housing roles, already running in the client portal
• One version of the workforce numbers across housing management, repairs, HR and payroll, ready for regulator asks

Departments, agencies and arm's-length bodies hold their people data across shared services, legacy HR platforms and contingent labour frameworks, and the professions they most need (digital, data, commercial) are the hardest to recruit and keep at public sector pay. The workaround tax is the same here as everywhere else in the public sector: 48% of organisations run manual workarounds for HR and payroll limitations (Zellis via LocalGov, 2024).

• Contingent labour and specialist-contractor spend made visible, with a costed route to a sustainable mix
• Workforce planning for hard-to-recruit professions: build, buy or borrow, with the evidence attached
• One definition of headcount and cost across shared services and legacy systems