Designed for Growing Businesses

WorkTheory partners with founders, boards and leadership teams to design high-performing, future-ready organisations by aligning people strategies and systems with business strategies to scale with clarity and confidence. We help SMEs with between 20 and 500 staff by designing intelligent systems that strengthen culture, engagement and future-proof your workforce. When your people systems are designed well, everything else works!

Growth creates complexity, and as your business expands, informal ways of managing people stop working.

  • Risk increases
  • Culture becomes harder to protect
  • Leadership capacity stretches, and gaps appear

You know your organisation needs a stronger people strategy. If you’re not ready for a full-time Chief People Officer, WorkTheory exists to close that gap

'We don't arrive with the answer, we arrive with the right questions and the experience to know what to do with what we find' 

- WorkTheory Co.

About WorkTheory

WorkTheory Co. is a founder-led executive people strategy advisory firm supporting growing New Zealand organisations navigating complexity, governance risk and workforce transformation.

We partner with founders, CEOs and small boards who require executive-level people leadership but are not yet ready to build a full internal executive function.

Our work sits at the intersection of:

  • Executive People Leadership
  • Governance & Responsible AI adoption
  • Workforce Design & Intelligent Systems

We operate with commercial discipline, governance awareness and a long-term view of sustainable growth. WorkTheory is designed to provide strategic clarity

Principal Consultant, Speaker & People Strategist

WorkTheory was established by Phillipa Gimmillaro, a former Chief People Officer with executive leadership experience across complex, multi-site service organisations.

Her background includes:

  • Leading organisational transformation and operating model redesign

  • Providing board-level governance and compliance oversight

  • Designing workforce inclusion and pipeline strategy

  • Aligning culture, brand and leadership accountability

  • Integrating responsible AI thinking into people systems

  • Working with leaders in the public and private sectors

This experience informs the fractional executive advisory delivered through WorkTheory Co. 

Phillipa’s leadership has been recognised nationally for advancing equity, inclusion and sustainable workforce design. She holds professional workplace inclusion accreditation and has undertaken postgraduate study exploring responsible AI for business and workforce governance.

Phillipa's testimonials 

"Phillipa believes that a diverse and inclusive workplace brings out the best in our people, enabling us to provide superior products and services to the communities we serve.

Phillipa recently designed a new initiative to support Māori rangatahi and Pacific youth not in paid employment, education or training (NEET). It’s an initiative which will further strengthen our objectives"

Sudesh Jhunjhnuwala ONZM

Founder/CEO Sudima Hotels & Hind Management

"A regular contributor to the New Zealand Disability Employers’ Network, Phillipa has played a pivotal role in driving initiatives that champion employment and workplace inclusion, her efforts have transcended local boundaries, influencing practices and policies on an international scale"

Phil Turner

Chief Executive, NZDEN

"Phillipa's not afraid to tackle challenging topics, she has that rare ability to make everyone in the room feel like their perspective matters, while challenging us to think more deeply about how we can do better. She’s pushed me to examine my own assumptions and blind spots."

Iftikhar Hussain

Country Manager, Sudima Hotels

Design thinking principles

We listen and understand first. We design inclusively. We deliver commercially

WorkTheory uses the Double Diamond design method developed by the UK Design Council to approach clients' people problems. This ensures we identify the right challenges and design the right solution. Using the discipline of exploring a problem fully changes everything. What presents as a performance issue often has structural roots. What appears to be a retention problem is often a design issue. Inclusion is not a lens we apply selectively; it is foundational to how we enter every engagement. As AI reshapes the way work is structured, this matters even more. Operating fractionally allows executive depth without the overhead so organisations get the rigour of a seasoned CPO and the flexibility their growth stage needs. 

 

WorkTheory Co. design methodology 

Good design means better outcomes.

Our 3-pillar promise: We listen. We design inclusively. We deliver with a commercial lens, we value your trust, and we know strategy works best when it’s built with people, not just for them.

WorkTheory's 4D methodology - Discover, Define, Design, Deliver is how we operate

1. Discover

Listen widely - Understand the real shape of the problem before naming it.

2. Define

Clarify what matters most - Name the challenge with precision and honesty.

3. Design inclusively

Co-create solutions - Then test with those closest to the work.

4. Deliver commercially

Implement with care - We build capability with a commercial lens, without ongoing dependency.

WorkTheory 4D methodology, the EX-thread integration, and the synthesis presented here are WorkTheory Co. proprietary IP.