Personio, the provider of an all-in-one HR software solution for SMEs, has appointed Ross Seychell as Chief People Officer. Starting in November 2020, the former Transferwise CPO will be tasked with driving Personio’s people strategy and employee experience to support organisational and business growth across Europe. Seychell will play a pivotal role in executing Personio’s company and product strategy from an HR perspective, to support Personio in becoming the leading European HR platform for SMEs.

While primarily based in London, in one of Personio’s four European offices, Seychell will spend half of his time at the Munich headquarters where the majority of the company’s HR team is located.

Seychell brings more than twenty years of experience in developing and implementing people strategies that add value to fast growing global businesses. Before joining Personio, he spent over two years as CPO at Transferwise, where he supported company growth and long-term business strategy while overseeing the fintech’s growth from 800 to 2,400 employees. Transferwise’s valuation more than tripled to over $5bn during Seychell’s time in the business.

Hanno Renner, co-founder and CEO of Personio, said: “HR is the backbone of any business, but in an HR-focused company like ours, the Chief People Officer is especially important. Personio is currently growing by over 30 new colleagues each month, which makes the people function even more important to support this growth from an organisational perspective. That’s why I’m very happy that Ross is joining the Personio team on our journey to becoming Europe’s leading HR platform for SMEs. Not only is he a great fit for our culture and core values, he’s also extremely experienced in quickly scaling international teams in thriving businesses. At Personio he'll be integral in defining our business and product strategy in a way that maximises customer value and thereby continues to drive our rapid growth.”

Ross Seychell: “Being an HR professional, I know first hand how challenging it is for HR teams to create value in parallel with the demands of day to day operational workload. Having the right technology allows these teams to focus more of their time with employees and delivering people strategies. Personio is the only tool I know of that is so clearly dedicated to the needs of its customers – namely small and medium-sized enterprises – so when Hanno asked me to join the team, it was a very easy decision to make. I’m really excited to be part of this extremely talented team of people in a company that’s dedicated to driving excellence in people operations and strategy.”

The third high-profile executive to join Personio’s leadership team in just eight months, Seychell’s appointment follows the arrival of Geraldine MacCarthy from Dropbox as CRO and Birgit Haderer from Zalando as CFO earlier this year. Besides these new joiners, the company’s executive team also includes two original founders, Hanno Renner (CEO) and Roman Schumacher (Chief Product Officer), as well as Jonas Rieke (COO) who helped build the company from the beginning, as well as Sebastian Enderlein (VP Engineering) who joined Personio last year after twelve years in Silicon Valley at Uber and Salesforce.