Perry Timms
HR and future of work expert
*Fees are a guide only. Exact cost will be dependent on requirements and are subject to change.
About Perry Timms
Perry Timms is an internationally recognised expert in HR, organisational transformation and the future of work, with over three decades of experience in business change and performance and 24 years specialising in HR and Organisation Development.
He is the Founder and Chief Energy Officer of PTHR, established in 2012 with a mission to create better business for a better world. PTHR has been recognised as a Certified B Corporation, a WorldBlu Certified Freedom-Centred Organisation, a RenDanHeYi Certified Global Top 50 Self-Managed Organisation and a Gold-Standard four-day working week organisation.
Perry has been named on HR Magazine’s HR Most Influential Thinkers list six times, reaching the Top 10 on multiple occasions and being ranked Number 1 Most Influential Thinker in HR in 2022. He was subsequently inducted into the HR Most Influential Hall of Fame in 2023. In 2024, he received a Lifetime Achievement Award from WorldBlu for his contribution to self-managed, democratic and freedom-centred systems of work, as well as the People & Culture Association’s Global Culture Icon Award.
An international and two-time TEDx speaker, Perry is also an award-winning writer on the future of work, HR and learning. His books include Transformational HR, which was named one of the Top 100 Business Strategy books of all time; The Energized Workplace, shortlisted for UK Business Book of the Year 2021; and The HR Operating Model, published in 2025.
Alongside his speaking, writing and consultancy work, Perry is a LinkedIn Learning instructor and has held academic roles with Hult International Business School, Ashridge Management School, Cranfield School of Management and Sheffield Hallam University. In 2025, he also took up an Advisory Board role on UCL School of Management’s MSc in Human Centric Management and People Analytics.
Perry’s keynote topics span transformational HR, organisation design and effectiveness, future skills, agile and autonomous working, and self-managed organisations. His work examines how organisations can build greater adaptability, autonomy and sustainable high performance while responding to changing technology, skills requirements and increasingly unpredictable operating environments.
A certified Semco Style Institute expert in self-managed systems of work, Perry has spent more than 20 years studying, designing and operating self-managed, non-hierarchical, responsive and agile systems. His work brings together organisation design, leadership, culture, behaviours and new operating models to explore practical alternatives to traditional ways of working.
His latest thinking includes the Polymorphic Organisation – an operating system for work designed around organisations that can continually adapt and change – examining what this means for jobs, roles, teams, skills, technologies, leadership and mission-led performance.
To book Keynote Speaker Perry Timms contact The Speakers Agency on enquiries@thespeakersagency.com
The Polymorphic Organisation
Perry has researched and curated, compiled and synthesised an entirely new Operating System for work.
Building on his work to reshape the HR Operating Model, this goes beyond that into an organisational form that is change itself – Polymorphic.
Covering alternatives to divisional verticals into spaces where “work lives”; teams that build performance through a form of Legacy/Future oscillation and Organisational Effectiveness Flywheels; into Leadership energies, team constructs, culture, technology and all in between.
A truly radical shift that is much needed as organisations get battered by a convulsive and unpredictable world.
Built from sciences, models, theories and applied operations of the recent past, this really IS the future of work. Right now.
Organisation Design, Development and Effectiveness
Perry has studied, practiced and taught OD/D/E for over 20 years.
Whether there is a full blown transformation, or an HR-only transformation and realignment, the principles are the same:
1. Diagnosis and analysis
2. Dialogic exchanges
3. Design and deployment programmes and
interventions.
OD/D/E are interwoven disciplines but Perry takes a Design-led approach to all. Systems Thinking, Design Thinking and Performance mechanics all feature in humanistic, sustainable and holistic approaches to remodelling how an organisation, functions within it, and the teams and roles that are needed to bring the model to life. All through the mix of unconventional, emerging and traditional models, fused in the context of a specific organisation and its operating ecosystem.
Transforming HR
Having worked in large and smaller scale programmes of change for HR throughout his career, Perry has over 20 years experience in this area.
Reimagining the way HR both enables a high performing organisation and even turbo-charges it towards more future strength and capability. In this case via the HR 3.0 Operating Model covered in the book published in 2025.
Particularly pertinent for HR is how they arrange themselves to meet the challenges being faced, and get ahead of the curve of a more uncertain and turbulent operating environment.
Skills of the Future
Researching not only the People Professional domain, but the workforce more widely, our work in creating talent, workforce planning and operating model changes necessitates a strong sense of the capabilities of now and next.
Future Skills – covered in papers by the World Economic Forum and OECD – are one thing; consulting firms and vendor-led research is another but working with organisations to reveal their skills demands and looking ahead – using foresight and forecasting techniques – encompasses a lot of Futures Thinking and evidence-based projections beyond those huge
think-tanks.
Whatever industry, sector, maturity level and size you are, skills, talent and deploying people more effectively is one of the biggest challenges of our time. Coupled with automation and Artificial Intelligence utilisation, we have a conundrum on our hands like we’ve never seen before.
Agile, Autonomous Self-Managed ways of working
Perry has studied, designed and operated in self-managed, non-hierarchical, responsive and Agile systems of work for 20+ years.
Whether this is in project-oriented working or an entire system of Organisation Design, Leadership, Culture and Behaviours, Perry signature capability is in this arena.
A Semco Style Institute certified expert and with PTHR being one of BCorporation’s Best for the World 2022™ in Governance AND a Certified WorldBlu© Freedom Centred Organisation™ for democratic workplaces, he has the credentials to match the beliefs system.
Introducing Agile and Autonomous working across all sectors and sizes, Perry’s reputation in this area has seen him keynote some of the most progressive world of work’s bigger events across the globe.
Client Feedback
"Really enjoyed the pace, fast enough to keep me engaged in a virtual set up and still left me wanting more. Now I can work through the slides and my back catalogue of Agile resources from my last gig to get more familiar with the process, tools and language. Thank you for the generous afternoon of Agile content."
"Great slides, useful exercises, good company and 2 hours later I feel like I've moved along a bit and that's down to you."
"We needed help from someone who could espouse the benefits of teamwork, collaboration and, above all, calm resilience under pressure. We found the perfect answer with Sophie and Sandy. Hearing how they completed their heroic journey, and their success as a team was inspirational. It showed our team that when things get tough and the challenge is huge, trust and teamwork will overcome."
British Land
