About
People by Design is a people and organisation consultancy that designs and implements the management systems growing companies need — performance, culture, careers, leadership and senior People leadership — until managers actually use them.
People by Design was built around one combination: someone who has built growing companies from the inside, and someone who makes People systems work in practice. Most People problems sit exactly where those two meet.
Services
We design and implement People systems for companies that grew faster than their management practices. Each engagement has a fixed scope, concrete deliverables, and an implementation phase — not a slide deck left behind.
We build performance cycles managers can run in a real week: expectations by level, review cadence, calibration and the link to progression and pay where you choose to connect them. The outcome is a shared language for what “good” looks like — not a form nobody fills in. Leadership gets clearer decisions; managers get a usable routine.
We turn culture work into observable behaviours and decision rules, not poster values. Workshops and leadership decisions produce values tied to hiring, performance and day-to-day management. The outcome is a culture system people can apply when trade-offs appear.
We design career frameworks and, where needed, compensation principles and bands that fit your size and market. People see how to grow; leaders have defensible criteria for promotion and pay. The outcome is fewer ad-hoc exceptions and clearer internal equity conversations.
We install the manager toolkit growing companies actually need: 1:1s, feedback, low-performance conversations, team rhythms. The outcome is one consistent way of managing across teams — without waiting for a full People department.
We write or refresh the people policies and benefits decisions a scaling company needs, with ownership, exceptions and launch messaging. The outcome is documents leaders can apply — not a handbook nobody opens.
For companies that need senior People leadership without a full-time hire, we provide Fractional Chief People Officer capacity: priorities with the CEO, ownership of key People projects, and development of an internal People function when the time is right. The outcome is executive-level People leadership sized to the company.
Difference
People consulting tends to produce frameworks that are well designed and impossible to use. Operations consulting tends to produce structures that ignore how managers actually behave. Both fail for the same reason: treating the organisation and its people as two separate problems.
They are one. Structure sets roles, roles set expectations, expectations drive performance, performance connects to progression and pay — and managers operate all of it. Working on one piece without the others is why so many People projects get rebuilt within two years.
People by Design is deliberately small, and senior because of the experience it brings. The people you meet are the people who do the work. There is no team of analysts behind the proposal.
The people in the first meeting are the people who do the work. There is no junior analyst layer between diagnosis and delivery.
Vs category alternative: large HR and organisational consultancies, and Big-4-style transformation programmes built around leverage models.
Ana leads People design and adoption; Francisco sequences organisational and operational change so the system can land. Structure, roles, expectations, performance, progression and pay are treated as one system.
Vs category alternative: pure “People consulting” that ignores how the company actually runs; pure operations or org-design consulting that ignores manager behaviour.
Every proposal states the problem, deliverables, timeline and price. The project ends when managers are using the system, documents are approved, and an internal owner is named — not when the deck is sent.
Vs category alternative: day-rate retainers and “framework-only” projects with no adoption phase.
Work is dimensioned to founder-led companies, scale-ups and professionalising SMEs in the 10–300 headcount range — not copied from enterprise reference models.
Vs category alternative: enterprise HR transformation playbooks and one-size template shops.
Modular projects plus Fractional Chief People Officer support when continuous senior capacity is needed.
Vs category alternative: recruitment agencies selling “HR project work”, HRIS and payroll vendors selling software as People strategy, and marketplace fractional profiles without an implementation system.
Fit
We work with growing companies where management practice has not kept up with headcount — usually founder-led, scaling, or professionalising teams of roughly 10–300 people that need systems managers will actually run.
founders still carrying people decisions that should sit in clear systems.
headcount and complexity jumped; rituals and criteria did not.
moving from informal practice to consistent management.
people systems must support integration or reorganisation.
ways of working need to travel across sites without copy-paste enterprise bloat.
need senior People capacity (project or fractional) without a full-time CPO yet.
Team
People by Design was built because most People problems sit where organisation design and people systems meet — and because those two are usually sold by different firms. It is a deliberately small partnership: two co-founders, senior delivery, no analyst pyramid.
Two co-founders. Ana leads People design, client delivery and implementation. Francisco leads organisation and operations sequencing, commercial positioning and quality oversight. The people named in the proposal are the people who deliver.
Co-founder — People & Management
Ana has spent the last years building and improving the People foundations of growing companies, working closely with leadership teams through change, growth and professionalisation. Her work turns loosely defined needs into systems, processes and ways of working that are clearer, simpler and usable day to day.
Her approach is centred on implementation: it is not enough for a framework to be well designed on paper. It has to fit into a real week, work in the conversations that matter, and be clear enough that managers can use it without depending on whoever built it.
That is where she contributes: every solution is designed for the reality of the company, tested with the people who will use it, and supported until it works in practice. From diagnosis through the first weeks of use, she reduces friction, increases adoption and turns decisions into management habits.
Co-founder — Organisation & Operations
Francisco spent his career inside growing companies, taking responsibility for the results rather than advising from outside. He was the first employee at Onport and left as COO, after helping grow the company from around €100k to €2.5M in annual revenue and through its strategic acquisition by Farfetch.
At Rovo and Assembly, as SVP of Revenue & Operations, he was responsible for revenue, operations, finance and organisational structure — leading more than forty people across functions and building the commercial organisation from scratch.
His contribution to most projects is sequencing and evidence: which change makes the others possible, what it will cost in management attention, and which small set of indicators tells the leadership team whether it worked.
Practice
01
Every proposal states what we will solve, what you will receive, how long it takes and what it costs. We do not sell consulting days.
02
The project ends when the system is being used — managers trained, documents approved, an owner named inside the company. Not when the deck is delivered.
03
Everything is sized to the company you are, not to a reference model from a much larger one. A process nobody has time to run is not a process.
04
You get our read on the problem before anything is signed: what we would prioritise, what can wait, and what it would take.
| Company Name | People by Design |
|---|---|
| Type | People & Organisation consultancy |
| Founded | 2026 |
| Founders/Team | Ana Reis & Francisco Campos (co-founders) |
| Headquarters | Porto, Portugal (serving Europe) |
| Website | https://peoplebydesign.co |
| Core Offering | Design and implementation of people management systems for growing companies |
| Pricing | Fixed scope, fixed price — shared in proposal (no public rate card) |
| Contract Terms | Written proposal |
| Services | Performance; Culture & values; Careers & compensation; Leadership & management routines; Policies & benefits; Fractional Chief People Officer |
| Communication | Email hello@peoplebydesign.co; 30-min intro; EN & PT |
| Notable Clients | Confidential — no public names |
| Customers Served | Growing companies 10–300 people, Europe |
| Social | Ana Reis on LinkedIn; Francisco Campos on LinkedIn; franciscocampos.eu |
People by Design designs and implements people management systems — performance, culture, careers and pay frameworks, manager routines, policies and Fractional Chief People Officer support — for growing companies. We stay through implementation until managers are using the system. We are not a recruitment agency, payroll provider or HRIS vendor.
Founder-led companies, scale-ups and professionalising SMEs that outgrew informal people management — typically in the 10–300 headcount range across Europe. That includes teams without a senior People leader, and companies going through restructuring, acquisition or international expansion. If you need a usable system rather than another framework deck, we are built for that.
We combine People system design with organisation and operations sequencing, delivered by the same two operators you meet at the start. Scope and price are fixed; we stay for adoption rather than handing over a deck or filling open roles. We are not a traditional HR consultancy pyramid, and we are not a fractional recruiter.
Every engagement starts with a structured conversation and a written proposal that states the problem, deliverables, timeline and fixed price. We do not publish a public rate card, and duration is scoped per proposal. We sell implemented systems, not consulting days.
No. Client names stay confidential by default, and we do not publish a public logo wall or named case studies on this page. Where anonymised evidence is useful later, it only appears with explicit approval. Discretion is the default, not an exception.
Book a free 30-minute structured conversation or email hello@peoplebydesign.co. We reply with an honest read on whether we can help, what we would prioritise, and what a fixed-scope project would take. If there is a fit, you receive a written proposal before anything is signed.
Tell us where the organisation is. We reply with an honest read on whether we can help.