Specialist HR for building high-trust, high-performance workplaces

Experience. Independence. Judgement.

What We Do

HRD on demand

Senior HR leadership when you need it, without the overhead of a full-time hire. We embed as your HR Director, providing strategic guidance, board-level input, and hands-on support, tailored to your organisation.

Strategic HR Leadership
Retained & flexible arrangements

Building high-performance cultures

We help organisations understand what's really driving performance and what's holding it back - then work alongside you to put it right.

Culture audit & diagnostics
Action plans & implementation

Organisational change

Restructures, transfers and acquisitions carry real legal and human complexity. Our experts guide you through the process, protecting your organisation and your people.

TUPE transfers
Restructures

Addressing concerns

When serious concerns arise, you need a trusted, independent hand. We conduct thorough investigations and provide clear, objective advice on next steps.

Independent workplace investigations
Recommendations and remedial advice

Resolving conflict

Workplace conflict rarely resolves itself. Our accredited mediators create conditions for honest dialogue and lasting resolution quickly, without resorting to formal process.

Mediation
Negotiated agreements/exits

Developing people & leaders

Equipping managers and leaders with the skills to bring out the best in their teams. Tailored coaching and practical, engaging training to suit your needs.

Leadership coaching
Training

About ODW

Founded in 2025, ODW is the product of an almost 15-year working partnership that began when a freshly promoted Head of HR at one of London's most venerable institutions (Lisa) and an Associate at one of the city's preeminent employment law firms (James) tackled a particularly knotty issue together.

Since then, together and separately, as senior executives, professional advisers and business founders, we have worked with employers and employees across a diverse range of sectors — from education to hospitality, from charities to FTSE100 companies — helping organisations understand, shape and strengthen the cultures that define them.

In the process, we have developed a shared vision of what good HR looks like (pragmatic, empathetic and rigorous) and a firm belief that high-trust workplaces deliver high performance, and that low trust is at the root of most workplace issues.

Whether you are investing in building a high-performance culture, navigating complex change, or handling a sensitive case: the trust your people place in you is one of your most precious assets. Building it, protecting it, and restoring it when it's lost is what we do.

Meet Our Founders

Lisa O'Daly

LLB, MSc Human Resource Management

Lisa is an award-winning HR Director and charity trustee with 20 years' experience building high-trust cultures, navigating organisational change and resolving complex people issues for leading organisations across the charity, biotech, professional education and think tank sectors.

As Managing Director of Professional Services at Chatham House, Lisa led HR and operations for Europe's leading think tank. Her work there included pioneering a 'pro-independence' investigation policy, a principle she continues to apply as an independent investigator for some of the UK's most prominent employers.

As an accredited mediator, Lisa takes an empathy-first approach to resolving workplace issues, supporting people through even the most challenging situations with clarity and care.

This combination of senior executive leadership and 'hands on' experience has taught her a simple truth: every problem is a people problem.

James Webster

BA (Non-Practising Solicitor)

James brings a rare combination of employment law, HR and entrepreneurial experience to ODW's clients. He trained at PwC and Eversheds Sutherland before qualifying as a solicitor in 2010 at leading employment firm Lewis Silkin. There, he advised some of Europe's most prominent businesses, charities and senior executives and spent a year embedded in M&S's legal and HR leadership team, advising on their most sensitive ER cases.

After leaving the law, James worked as an HR consultant for various market-leading organisations (such as Chatham House and the Hon. Soc. of the Middle Temple) and founded a business producing leadership focused digital content for startups, VC funds, charities and think-tanks in the UK, US and Europe.

This background means James has engaged in employee relations and culture building from every angle (as an employer, professional adviser to employees and employers, investigator, and in-house HR) across a wide range of sectors (from finance to charity, from hospitality to deep tech).

This experience informs a simple guiding principle of James's work: compliance is important, but trust matters more.