HR Services – HR Scale Up

Brill Power

Formed in 2016, as a spin-out company from the University of Oxford, Brill Power develop cutting-edge battery management technology, which has revolutionised battery performance to increase the lifetime of lithium-ion battery packs. Their combination of novel hardware and intelligent software solutions change the way multi-cell batteries operate, improving performance, reliability, maintenance, and lifetime.  

Brill Power continues to be based in Oxford, UK growing from four founders to a team of 30 people. Their latest growth is being accelerated by securing a successful $10.5m Series A investment round from Legal & General Capital and Barclays Sustainable Impact Capital in June 2022. This funding will support Brill Power‘s mission to improve performance and reduce costs of stationary and motive power batteries as a sustainable technology for society. 

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Earlier in 2022, SYLO | Beyond HR were appointed as Brill Power’s dedicated HR partner with the brief to work closely with them to ensure they had compliant HR foundations/building blocks in place to support their existing team and sustainable growth.  This was essential and critical in demonstrating HR compliance to potential investors and key requirement to achieve series A funding. 

Our ‘HR scale up’ retainer package was the perfect match for Brill Power’s needs; focused on embedding current and consistent HR policies and practices along with a dedicated HR Business Partner to support and drive key people practices as the business grows. 

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Acting as their strategic partner, we have worked with Carolyn Hicks (CFO/COO) and her fellow Co-Founders to develop tailored policies and processes that fit with their desired culture and way of working.  It was evident from an early stage that ‘people’ truly are at the heart of their business and their values. 

Following an initial Audit exercise to understand the current state of play, an action plan was made and is underway, which includes the creation of a comprehensive and bespoke collection of contracts and policies, an employee handbook plus the development of effective onboarding and offboarding processes. This work has included all the foundations needed to support global expansion, so values, culture and compliance requirements are all met regardless of where the team is based.  

This is being achieved through working collaboratively; a regular monthly review meeting really helps to drive and track activity.  This work kicked off simultaneously with Brill Power’s Series A investment due diligence process, which enabled investor feedback and requirements to be incorporated into key documents. 

With solid HR foundations in place, our focus turns to supporting Brill Power to develop and build their people and management capability to support future growth and create an environment where people can thrive.