Frameworks that actually get used.
Eleven HR, L&D and people leaders on what changed after building capability, competency, skills and job architecture with Ben. No bloat. No theatre.
We recently partnered with Ben to lead the technical project delivery of a key initiative within our global workforce strategy, developing and mapping a skills taxonomy aligned to our enterprise-wide job and capability architecture.
Ben's innovative and collaborative approach transformed a complex challenge into a clear, manageable solution for our 35,000+ workforce.
By leveraging a GenAI engine, he saved 5.5 months of effort, delivering results in weeks. His expertise and the dynamic partnership drove meaningful outcomes while meeting the evolving needs of our workforce.
Clarity, not consultant-speak.
“Upon my request for guidance, Ben delivered a competency framework from our existing job descriptions, 54 competencies across 15 domains with five proficiency levels each.
He made the whole thing easy: clear about what he needed from me, quick to turn things around, and happy to walk me through my queries. He has an excellent depth of knowledge. And he shares that knowledge in a supportive way, without even a hint of condescension. The framework has held up well in practice, and I would be pleased to work with him again.”
“Mapping capabilities to our talent strategy and business goals felt overwhelming.
Ben helped break it down into a logical framework, ensuring we had the right capabilities mapped to roles in place. The impact has been fantastic—this will lead to clearer career paths and stronger retention.”
“We’re in the process of building our capability framework at NW, and Ben has been instrumental in guiding us from the start.
He’s provided valuable insights on structuring it within our Performance Learning Management System and has been a constant source of support. His passion for helping businesses maximise their framework is evident, and he’s always there when we need him.”
“We brought Ben in to build a competency framework from scratch, working almost entirely off our existing job descriptions, a harder starting point than it sounds.
He delivered 53 domains covering the whole organization, in language our people recognized as their own work, with very little demand on my team's time. That held up as the project grew: he extended the same framework to it rather than starting over, and worked through the inevitable snags, duplicate competencies, new job profiles that needed reconciling, without turning them into a whole back-and-forth. He's also willing to redirect you. A couple of times I pushed for something that would have weakened the structure, and instead of just doing it, he explained why and offered a better option. I'd engage him again without hesitation.”
Teams that wanted skills to mean something.
Built to last past the workshop.
“Ben has supported us through developing our capability framework and rolling it out across the hotel.
He is exceptionally easy to work with. Calm, practical, and completely without the consultant polish that usually gets in the way. He knows his subject inside out and shares it openly, so my team has learned a great deal along the way rather than becoming dependent on him. When implementation planning threw up problems he was quick to help solve them instead of pointing back at the plan. I would happily recommend him.”
“Working with Ben has been such a positive experience.
He is incredibly knowledgeable, detailed, and organized, and has done an excellent job keeping a complex project moving forward. He built our job architecture and capability library from our existing job descriptions and feedback across the business, while also helping guide the review process and keep us on track. What I appreciate most is how well he listens. He takes our feedback, understands what we are trying to accomplish, and translates it into clear, practical language that our teams can easily understand. He is also very open to being challenged and making adjustments, which has made the process collaborative and helped create stronger buy-in across our organization.”
“Ben supported us to build capability frameworks for each business function, aligned to our strategy and sitting properly underneath the core framework we already had.
That alignment was the difficult part and it is where his knowledge earned its keep. He understood how a core framework and function frameworks need to relate to each other structurally, and he made sure ours did rather than producing a set of documents that happened to sit in the same folder. He was also realistic with us about what the frameworks could carry and what needed to be solved elsewhere.”
“I first came across Ben when he facilitated AHRI's Developing a Capability Framework course.
He later supported HNC to review and audit our existing capability framework. He is genuinely knowledgeable about capability and competency design and generous with his sharing of information.
Ben gave us a recommendations report we could act on immediately. He was easy to work with from the first conversation, understood the capacity we had to work with on the project, and didn't try to sell us a rebuild we didn't need. I would very happily work with Ben again in the future.”
The details that mattered.
“When we began developing our capability library, we quickly saw the risk of duplication and inconsistency across the business.
Ben helped us step back and bring structure to the process. He collaborated with us to design an organisation-wide capability framework that was both practical in scale and effective in application.
What really stood out was the balance between deep expertise and innovative use of generative AI to refine the framework content once our research was complete. The result is a capability framework that feels tailored, consistent, and sustainable; something we simply wouldn’t have achieved on our own.”
“Ben has supported me throughout the development of McNab's capability framework, providing advice and expertise as we have worked through the design, structure and practical application of the framework.
What I really appreciate about Ben is that he works with you. He is very generous with his knowledge, and will also challenge you when he thinks something isn't going to work or could be done differently. He has always kept us focused on making the framework practical, fit for purpose and useful to the business, rather than adding complexity for the sake of it.
He has supported me not only with the design of the framework, but also the change management that comes with it.
His advice has genuinely influenced the way we have approached the framework, and I have a high level of confidence in both his knowledge and his ability to apply it in practice.
I have learnt a lot through working with Ben, and I've valued having someone I can bounce ideas off, test my thinking with and ask for advice when I need it. He has been a genuine pleasure to work with.”
Want a framework people actually use? Let’s talk.
You are accountable for getting this right. I have spent fourteen years building capability architecture that holds up.