About
RESULTS, NOT RHETORICMeet Mary Peros and find out what real problems she solved and what changed once she fixed them.
Meet Mary Peros
Discover the expertise driving Peros Consulting’s success in fractional HR leadership.
mary peros
Founder & CEO
I’ve held the Chief People Officer seat inside growing companies and PE-backed portfolios — the person leadership calls before a hard comp decision, a difficult exit, or a deal that needs people diligence done right. I’ve seen what a people function looks like when it keeps pace with growth, and I’ve seen the cost when it doesn’t: bad hires at the executive level, comp structures that trigger turnover, restructurings that damage trust faster than they solve the problem they were meant to fix.
why?
Peros Consulting exists because most companies between 50 and 500 employees are in an awkward middle: too complex to run without senior people leadership, not yet at the size (or budget) that justifies a full-time CPO. I bring exactly that senior judgment, structured around what your business actually needs right now.
credentials & sector experience
- SHRM-SCP (Senior Certified Professional)
- MCIPD (Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development)
- MA, Strategic Human Resource Management
Sector experience
Financial Services · Manufacturing · Retail · SaaS · Non-Profit · Global Organizations
Fractional and interim CPO roles spanning early growth stage through significant scale — meaning I’ve seen what breaks at each stage of headcount growth and what needs to be in place before it does, not just how to react once it has.
Case Studies
Discover how practical executive HR leadership has strengthened businesses, reduced risk, improved management,
and supported confident organizational growth.
Building a Compensation Structure From Scratch
Family-owned group of 13 companies, across finance, manufacturing, real estate, and engineering
The problem
A family-owned group had grown into 13 different businesses, but had no consistent way to pay the people running them. Company presidents and functional leaders were paid on a case-by-case basis, with no benchmarking, no structure, and no plan for how to price a role when a new leader was hired. None of this had existed before — the family had never needed it until now.
What I did
Benchmarked pay and bonuses for presidents and functional leaders against the market
Built a pay and bonus structure they could apply consistently across all 13 companies
Created a grading and competency framework, so roles could be leveled and compared fairly
Gave them a clear process for hiring and pricing new company presidents
Because compensation structure was new territory for the whole family, I documented the reasoning behind every recommendation — not just the what, but the why — so they could keep managing it well after I left
The result
The group went from ad hoc, inconsistent pay decisions to a defensible, repeatable structure — with the internal knowledge to run it themselves going forward.
Building a Communications Framework From Scratch
Mid-sized company, planning a shift from flat profit-share to performance-based bonuses
The problem
The company was planning a major change to how bonuses were calculated — moving from an equal payout for everyone to a model based on company, team, and individual performance. Half the workforce had joined in the last few years and had never known anything else, so how the change was communicated mattered as much as the change itself. The problem was, no one on the team had ever run a change of this kind before. There was no process for figuring out who needed to hear what, when, or how.
What I did
- Set clear communication objectives so every message — from the executive announcement to team meetings — served the same goal: understanding and trust, not just information
- Mapped every audience, from the leadership team to individual employees, with the specific message, concerns, and channel each one needed
- Built out the full business case in plain language: why the plan was changing, how it would work, and what it meant for pay going forward
- Identified the risks early — perceptions of favoritism, unfairness between high performers and collaborative teams — so leaders could address them head-on instead of getting caught off guard
- Gave managers the talking points and training to explain the change to their own teams with confidence
The result
The company ultimately decided not to move ahead with the bonus change. But the process gave them something they didn’t have before: a working framework for planning and running internal communications on any major change. What started as a project to launch one plan became the foundation for how they’ll handle change communication going forward.
Diagnosing Culture Issues Before They Become Retention Problems
Fast-growing software company, small team
The problem
The company was growing quickly, and the growing pains were showing up in employee survey results — specifically around communication, leadership, and trust. Employees felt communication was inconsistent and often contradictory, leadership felt distant and hard to access, and a number of people felt undervalued, with real concerns about workload, promotion criteria, and pay. Left alone, this combination — poor communication plus low trust — was the kind of thing that quietly drives up turnover long before leadership sees it coming. The leadership team knew something was wrong but didn’t have a way to find out what, specifically, why, or whether their underlying HR practices were part of the problem.
What I did
- Reviewed existing survey and pulse data with leadership to separate real signal from noise before proposing anything
- Ran a full HR audit alongside the culture work — policies, compliance, recruitment, compensation, performance management, and employee relations — to check whether the structural foundations were contributing to the issues employees were reporting
- Designed and facilitated focus groups across the whole company, creating a safe, confidential space for employees to speak candidly about communication, leadership, and trust
- Built a comprehensive culture survey grounded in a recognized organizational culture framework, to capture a clear, structured picture of where the culture stood versus where leadership wanted it to be
- Prepared leadership for the process with talking points and discussion questions, so they could engage openly rather than defensively
- Synthesized the audit findings, survey data, and focus group themes into a clear root-cause analysis and set of actionable recommendations
The result
Leadership moved from a vague sense that “something’s wrong” to a clear, evidence-based understanding of exactly what was driving disengagement. They came away with real confidence — not just a report, but a working understanding of how culture is actually shaped, and specific, practical actions they could take around communication and leadership to move things forward.