I want to be straightforward about what Avant People is and what it is not, because those two things matter equally.
It is not a consultancy in the traditional sense. It is not a platform built by someone who has stepped back from the profession to comment on it from a distance. I am still very much in the work. I lead am a Senior People Leader in one of South Yorkshire’s NHS Trusts. I sit on the People Senior Leadership team and also hold a joint Head of EDI Strategy role. I am building and running this alongside all of that, which means everything on this platform is grounded in what is actually happening in organisations right now, not what was happening five years ago, and not what looks good on a slide.
Avant People exists because I noticed a gap. And the gap was not in content. The profession is not short of content.
The gap I was trying to close
What I noticed, across years of practice and through my own development as a Chartered FCIPD, is that there is a difference between knowing that the gap exists and having the resources to do something about it. Most practitioners I know are smart, motivated, and under-resourced. They know the theory. They understand the frameworks. What they often lack is the time, the space, and the practical tools to translate that knowledge into action that actually lands.
I also noticed, particularly in the public sector, that the infrastructure for serious OD and EDI practice is thin. There are brilliant people doing this work. But the tools they are working with often do not match the complexity of what they are trying to do. They are building strategies without robust diagnostic frameworks. They are trying to shift culture with limited ability to measure where culture actually is. They are doing EDI without the legal literacy to protect the people they are trying to serve.
That is what Avant People is designed to address. Not with theoretical content, but with things practitioners can actually use.
What the platform offers
The resources section is where I am putting the most deliberate effort, and it is built around the principle that a practitioner should be able to pick something up and use it today. Not after a training programme. Not once their organisation has signed off a budget. Today.
What is already live:
The Change Readiness Tool is a fifteen-question diagnostic designed for OD practitioners and people leads who want to assess how ready their organisation genuinely is for change, before they invest significant effort in designing an intervention that the system is not ready to absorb. There is a taster version on the site and a fuller version for practitioners who want to use it for sector-level benchmarking.
The EDI Maturity Self-Assessment gives teams and individual practitioners a structured way to assess where their EDI practice actually sits across six themes, from legal compliance through to embedding and accountability. It is designed to be honest rather than comfortable. Most organisations are more compliant than they are inclusive, and this tool helps surface that distinction clearly.
The practitioner self-assessments for OD and EDI are developmental tools grounded in competency frameworks that I built specifically for UK practitioners. They cover four levels of practice, from Foundation through to Expert, across eight competency areas each. They are designed to be used in supervision, in PDPs, in development conversations with line managers, or simply as a private reflective exercise. Both are available as fillable PDFs.
There are also a set of explainers covering OD, organisational design, and EDI: plain-language guides designed for people who are new to these disciplines or who need to explain them clearly to others.
More is coming. A Staff Survey Checklist. A reading list for practitioners building an OD and EDI library. Posts on modern L&D and what it actually takes to shift learning culture in complex organisations.
Why selective consultancy
I work with a small number of organisations and practitioners directly, on mentoring, on OD and EDI practice, and on bespoke development work. It is selective by design, not by accident. I have a demanding full-time role and I am not willing to take on work that I cannot do well. The organisations I work with are purpose-led, either in the public and third sector or in organisations genuinely trying to build more equitable, effective people practices.
If that sounds like your context, you can find out more on the site. If it does not, the free resources are still there and they are genuinely free, with no gating, no email capture, and no upsell.
Who this is for
People professionals who want to sharpen their practice. OD practitioners who are doing serious work and want better tools to do it with. HR leaders who are navigating significant organisational complexity. And frankly, anyone who has sat in a room and thought: there must be a more rigorous way to do this.
Avant People is built for practitioners who want to orientate themselves in effective people practices, that are future-facing, technologically savvy but compassionate and human-centred.
Hashim Din is a Chartered FCIPD and Head of People Experience and Development. He also holds a joint Head of EDI Strategy role. Avant People is his independent thought leadership platform and selective consultancy, existing to support individuals and organisations to navigate the future of the people profession.