Human resources advisory for employers

Legal expertise where people and performance meet

At Watershed, human resources advisory work sits at the point where law, structure, and performance converge.

We are, first and foremost, a specialist employment law firm. Yet the complexity of our clients’ challenges, and our close relationship with management consultancy Collinson Grant, mean our expertise extends naturally into organisational and reward design.

Our clients do not come to us for generic HR advice. They come when people, structure, and risk intersect, when decisions about pay, performance, or organisational change must withstand scrutiny from both legal and leadership perspectives.

A connected offering through Collinson Grant

Our collaboration with Collinson Grant allows us to operate beyond the limits of traditional employment law. Their management consultants advise boards and HR leaders on strategic transformation, while Watershed provides the legal and practical assurance that makes such change sustainable.

Many of our engagements originate in Collinson Grant’s boardroom work, projects involving restructuring, reward strategy, or cultural renewal, before moving seamlessly into legal implementation.

This connection gives our clients a rare advantage: unified advice that bridges management intent and legal obligation.

Organisational design and performance alignment

We help organisations rethink how they are structured to deliver effectively. Our work includes organisational design, managerial spans and layers analysis, and performance management frameworks that align with operational goals. Each engagement is guided by a clear question: how should responsibility and authority be distributed to achieve accountability and agility?

Our advice combines the precision of legal insight with the practicality of operational design. We ensure that changes to reporting lines, management layers, or role definitions are not only efficient but also compliant with employment law and defensible in consultation settings.

Reward, pay, and evaluation

We support clients in designing and maintaining fair, transparent, and competitive reward systems. Our work covers:

• Reward strategy and pay structures: designing frameworks that recognise performance and align with market realities.
• Salary benchmarking: analysing comparative data to ensure remuneration remains competitive and equitable.
• Job evaluation services: applying structured methodologies to assess roles and underpin pay decisions.
• Salary review processes: ensuring consistency, fairness, and compliance across annual review cycles.

In every case, we treat reward as a strategic instrument rather than an administrative process. Our advice is tailored, defensible, and grounded in real-world application.

A pragmatic, risk-aware approach

Understand how our approach to career development avoids outdated models in favour of meaningful growth and recognition, including statutory directorship.

Life at Watershed

What it’s really like to work here. From hybrid working and flexible hours to how we support autonomy and work-life integration.

Career progression

Our human resources work is not about theoretical models or HR fashion. It is about helping organisations make decisions that are commercially sound, legally robust, and operationally practical. Whether advising on restructuring, revising pay frameworks, or assessing organisational design, we work with a clear understanding of the reputational and legal risks at stake.

This approach ensures that every recommendation can withstand challenge, from staff, unions, regulators, or tribunals. It is this credibility that distinguishes Watershed’s HR capability from conventional consulting.

Complementary, not central but critical

Human resources advisory is not the core of what we do. It is, however, a critical dimension of our overall value. The ability to navigate organisational, cultural, and reward questions alongside complex employment law issues gives our clients continuity and confidence.

At Watershed, we believe structure and reward decisions are inseparable from legal reality. By integrating HR insight with rigorous legal understanding, we help clients design organisations that perform well, treat people fairly, and stand up to scrutiny.