What is fractional HR leadership?

Fractional HR leadership provides senior HR insight, challenge and guidance while staying close to the day-to-day realities of your business - without the cost of a permanent full-time hire. It's ideal for growing organisations that need more than transactional HR support.

What HR consulting services does Embers HR offer?

Embers HR Consulting offers fractional HR leadership, change management, culture and engagement consulting, employee lifecycle support, executive coaching, and HR mentoring services for UK businesses.

Emma Readman is a Chartered HR and leadership professional with over 10 years' experience, including 7.5 years in senior HR leadership roles at GSK. She is a Henley Business School-educated executive coach and founder of Embers HR Consulting Ltd.

Embers HR Consulting | Fractional HR Leadership & Executive Coaching

Fractional HR Leadership

Senior HR support, without the full-time commitment

Strategic HR leadership embedded within your business, offering senior-level expertise and practical support without the cost of a permanent hire.

There's usually a moment when leaders realise they need more than transactional HR support - but don't yet need, or want, a permanent hire. That's where fractional HR leadership comes in. I work as an extension of your leadership team, offering senior HR insight, challenge and guidance while staying close to the day-to-day realities of your business. What this typically includes: • Acting as your senior HR lead, embedded within the business • Shaping and delivering a people strategy that supports growth, change or investment • Supporting and coaching leaders to build confident, capable, high-performing teams • Providing clear, calm advice on complex or sensitive people matters • Strengthening the foundations - structure, capability, culture and engagement How I work: • Flexible retainers or agreed days per month • Support that scales up or down as your business evolves • Always human-centred, commercially grounded and values-led

Change Management

Clear, human-led support through complex change

Navigate periods of significant change with clarity, structure and a deeply human approach - from restructures to cultural transformation.

Change isn't just about what is changing - it's about how people experience it. I bring hands-on, real-world experience of leading complex organisational change, most recently at GSK, where I supported the closure of two sites and approximately 350 redundancies. This required balancing business urgency with empathy, compliance with compassion, and decisive leadership with human understanding. How I support change programmes: • Turning complex decisions into clear, deliverable change plans • Designing and delivering fair, compliant redundancy processes • Coaching leaders to show up calmly and credibly during uncertainty • Reducing disengagement and change fatigue • Helping organisations emerge from change stronger and more aligned When clients typically engage me: • Organisational restructure or redundancy programmes • Site closures or relocations • Periods of rapid growth or role redesign • Post-merger or post-change stabilisation

Culture & Engagement

Where leadership behaviour becomes everyday experience

Workplace culture isn't created by policies or posters – it's shaped every day by leaders. How they communicate, make decisions, show up under pressure, and develop others has a direct impact on engagement, retention and reputation as an employer.

Becoming an employer of choice doesn't happen through perks alone – it's built through everyday leadership experiences that shape how people feel at work. Data shows that managers account for the majority of the variance in employee engagement, and that organisations with strong leadership capability experience materially lower voluntary turnover. These insights mirror what I've seen throughout my senior leadership career – investment in leaders directly impacts morale, retention and internal progression. My work in this space focuses on helping leaders: • Understand themselves as leaders and how they show up day-to-day • Understand the role they personally play in engagement and retention • Build strong, trusting relationships with their teams • Hold meaningful development and career conversations • Create clarity around expectations, growth and progression • Develop and retain key talent through coaching-led leadership Rather than relying on generic engagement surveys or short-term fixes, I work with organisations to strengthen leadership behaviours that make a real difference to people's day-to-day experience – helping businesses stand out as places where people feel valued, developed and listened to. Support can include: • Leadership capability development and coaching • Team culture and engagement diagnostics • Facilitated leadership and team workshops, bespoke to your business needs • Practical retention and development action plans • Support for building leadership pipelines and future capability This approach supports organisations to retain their best people, develop future leaders and build a reputation as an employer of choice – underpinned by leadership that people trust and want to follow.

Employee Lifecycle Support

Creating moments that matter – from day one to goodbye

I support organisations to design and deliver a strong, consistent employee experience across the entire employee lifecycle (excluding recruitment). From onboarding and development through to engagement, performance, change and exit.

The employee lifecycle isn't just an HR framework – it's the lived experience of your people. Each stage shapes how employees feel, perform and decide whether to stay, grow or leave. I work with leaders and teams to strengthen every stage of the lifecycle after recruitment, ensuring your people practices are intentional, consistent and aligned to the kind of organisation you want to build. Onboarding & Integration: • Designing onboarding experiences that help new starters feel confident, connected and productive quickly • Clarifying expectations, company values, early performance goals and cultural norms • Supporting managers to set people up for success from day one Learning, Development & Growth: • Creating development pathways that balance business needs with individual aspiration and retention of key talent • Supporting leadership development, capability building and internal progression • Embedding a coaching and feedback culture that encourages growth Performance & Engagement: • Simplifying performance management so it feels meaningful, not bureaucratic • Building strong feedback loops, objective-setting and accountability • Addressing engagement, motivation and discretionary effort Wellbeing, Inclusion & Employee Relations: • Creating fair, consistent and values-led people practices • Supporting leaders with employee relations issues confidently and compassionately • Helping organisations move from reactive HR to proactive people management Change, Transition & Exits: • Supporting teams through organisational change, restructure or growth • Managing exits with clarity, dignity and care – protecting both people and employer brand • Using insights from leavers to improve retention and culture This isn't about adding unnecessary process. It's about putting the right structure in place so your people feel supported and your leaders can lead well. Support can be delivered through: • Fractional HR leadership • Project-based lifecycle improvements • Leadership coaching and manager capability building • Policy, framework and people-practice design Everything is tailored – no off-the-shelf solutions, no tick-box HR.

Coaching & Mentoring

Developing leaders. Strengthening HR capability.

I provide executive coaching and professional mentoring to support leaders and HR teams to grow in confidence, capability and impact. As a Henley-educated executive coach, I work in partnership with leaders to increase self-awareness, clarity and purposeful action.

Strong organisations are built on self-aware leaders and capable people professionals. My coaching and mentoring offers are distinct, clearly contracted and ethically grounded – designed to support sustainable growth at both an individual and organisational level. Executive Coaching (Henley / ICF aligned): I am a Henley Business School–educated executive coach, trained in evidence-based coaching approaches aligned to ICF core competencies. Coaching is a thought-provoking, developmental partnership that supports leaders to explore their thinking, assumptions and behaviours – and to translate insight into purposeful action. Through coaching, leaders are supported to: • Increase self-awareness and emotional intelligence • Clarify goals, values and leadership intent • Strengthen strategic thinking and decision-making • Navigate complexity, ambiguity and change • Shift unhelpful patterns and embed sustainable behavioural change My coaching approach: • Is client-led, with the agenda owned by the coachee • Uses powerful questioning, reflection and appropriate challenge • Focuses on awareness before action • Builds accountability and learning between sessions All coaching is confidential, ethically grounded, clearly contracted with purpose, outcomes and boundaries, and tailored to the individual role and organisational context. HR Mentoring (capability-focused): My mentoring offer is designed specifically for in-house HR professionals and teams I may be working alongside. I am a huge believer that mentoring should be standard practice as part of talent management – I personally have had huge benefit from mentoring, both as a mentor and mentee. Mentoring is experience-led and practical, focused on accelerating capability, confidence and professional judgement – particularly for HR practitioners stepping into broader or more strategic roles. Typical mentoring focus areas include: • Building commercial acumen and organisational awareness • Navigating complex employee relations with confidence • Strengthening influence and credibility with senior leaders • Translating HR theory into proportionate, practical solutions • Developing confidence to operate at a more strategic level Mentoring draws directly on my experience as a senior HR leader and consultant, offering insight, perspective and challenge, practical guidance grounded in real organisational contexts, a trusted sounding board for complex decisions, and support to strengthen confidence and professional identity. How this support is delivered: Coaching and mentoring can be delivered as standalone engagements, as part of a fractional HR leadership arrangement, individual or small group sessions, and short-term or longer-term development support. All support is carefully contracted and tailored – aligned to your people, your organisation and the outcomes that matter most.

Senior HR leadership, without the full-time commitment.

Consultancy Services

Fractional HR Leadership

Change Management

Culture & Engagement

Employee Lifecycle Support

Coaching & Mentoring

Emma Readman

My Approach

Why Embers?

What Clients Say

Memberships & Accreditations

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