Second Reading

§ People strategy & culture advisory

There's always a first reading. I'm the second.

Most organisations have a gap between the culture they describe and the one their people experience. I measure that gap and close it, with data rather than opinion.

I spent seventeen years at Admiral Group, one of the UK's most admired workplace cultures, starting on the claims floor and moving into the roles that kept that culture working: learning, internal communication, people partnering, organisational design and reward. I left knowing what makes a culture like that perform, and what it takes to protect it as a business grows. Since then I've brought that into commercial law, education and international financial services, and AI now lets me bring more depth and evidence to the work than one person otherwise could.

Arrange a conversation See the approach

How I work

People strategy · Culture & leadership · Performance & reward · Organisational design · AI in people decisions

Every level

I've worked at every level, from the frontline to strategic roles, and I build strong relationships across all of them, because change only works if it works for everyone.

Any setting

Local teams, remote and dispersed teams, and international work across very different cultures, most recently in Nepal and Australia.

AI, with structure

I use AI to raise the quality and reach of the work, with the structure and governance that people decisions demand.

§1. Reading it again

Most organisations mean what they say about their culture. But what people experience can drift from what was intended, usually without anyone noticing. That's the gap I help close.

First reading

We put people first in every decision we make.

Second reading

Under pressure, decisions get made on margin and speed, and the people questions arrive later than anyone intended.

Where I come in

Building people considerations into how decisions are made, so they're there from the start.

First reading

We're embracing AI across the business.

Second reading

People are using it quietly, unsure what's allowed, because nobody has had time to say what it means for their job.

Where I come in

Clear, usable guardrails, and managers confident enough to explain them.

First reading

Our door is always open.

Second reading

Some concerns only surface in exit interviews, because until then it didn't quite feel safe to raise them.

Where I come in

Voice channels people trust, with visible follow-through.

First reading

Our managers are our greatest asset.

Second reading

Many were promoted for being good at the job, and are still working out the new one without much support.

Where I come in

Leadership development shaped by what your managers actually need.

First reading

We reward performance.

Second reading

Over time, pay can end up following tenure more than contribution, and people notice.

Where I come in

A reward framework that recognises the contribution you actually value.

First reading

We trust people to work flexibly.

Second reading

In practice, flexibility can depend on which manager you have.

Where I come in

Principles every manager can apply consistently, and the confidence to do it.

Illustrative examples, not drawn from client engagements.

§2. Method

Three places the distance shows up

Most engagements start in one of these and extend into the wider people strategy around them.

§1

Culture & leadership

Where stated values and lived behaviour diverge, measured with a structured diagnostic, not a renamed engagement survey, and closed through leadership work sequenced to what the data actually shows.

§2

Performance & reward

Whether an incentive or reward framework produces the behaviour it was designed for, or a different one it's quietly producing instead, tested against real decisions, not policy intent.

§3

Ethical AI in people decisions

Where AI is used in hiring, performance, or reward, and whether the governance you've stated matches the decisions actually being made, and the judgement people have been equipped to apply.

Insight

AI adoption is a culture problem

Most organisations are treating AI as a technology rollout.

§3. Proof

Four things this has actually moved

Client · Alaya and Home Loan Experts

−13 → +25

eNPS, eleven months

Tracked on the same question across two instruments: the annual engagement survey, then a Schein-grounded culture baseline.

In-house · Admiral Group

7,500

employees moved to hybrid working

People strategy and governance for a hybrid transition inside a regulated FTSE-100 financial services business, evidenced with a purpose-built data dashboard.

In-house · Admiral Group

+30%

trainer productivity

Redesigned L&D strategy and restructured a seven-person team during a wide-scale FTSE-100 claims function transformation.

Client · Alaya and Home Loan Experts

modules in The Climb, the leadership programme

Sequenced from belief systems and mindset through to psychological safety and AI literacy, built on a multi-level diagnostic spanning performance data, peer feedback, and attrition analysis.

§4. Case study

Building a people function under a CEO mandate

Alaya (Nepal) and Home Loan Experts (Australia), 350-plus staff between them, engaged Second Reading initially to build a people function from scratch. Thirteen months later the mandate had grown into a full transformation portfolio, reporting directly to the CEO.

The starting point was a relationship-based culture without the structure to scale: no consistent leadership behaviour, no psychological-safety baseline, and a reward system inconsistent across two employee populations.

The annual engagement survey gave the first read, and its results shaped much of what followed. From those findings came The Compass: a behavioural framework co-created with staff in both countries and issued as a culture handbook. Once it had launched, the annual survey was retired in favour of a Schein-grounded baseline, to establish what people actually perceived now the standard was explicit. Those results fed a large part of The Climb, the nine-module leadership programme, alongside a leadership diagnostic I ran across quarterly performance data, surveys from peers, managers and teams, structured interviews, and leaver analysis. They also set the reference point for redesigned performance metrics, recruitment questions, and pay and performance reviews. Reward was rebuilt across two employee populations, removing the pay inconsistency between them.

None of it ran in isolation. Contracts, governance, and communication had to hold across two countries and three time zones, and a three-channel employee voice scheme was built alongside it, including in a Nepali context where candid upward feedback wasn't yet the cultural default. Part of that was an Employee Consultation Group, which I set up and chaired. I'd seen one work before: at Admiral, its members were the people I interviewed for my MBA research, because they were the ones most used to speaking honestly about the culture.

Eleven months in, eNPS had moved from −13 to +25, on the same question carried across both instruments. The engagement closed with a permanent Head of People & Culture recruited, onboarded, and equipped to keep it running without Second Reading in the room.

He thinks like a designer and executes like a builder, closing gaps rather than just naming them.

Shreya Shrestha, General Manager Outsourcing, Alaya

He cared less about how something looked in a deck and more about whether it would actually change how people led.

Rochak Dahal, Learning and Development, Alaya

Figures and scope as delivered.

§5. About

I'm Dan Kennedy. I spent seventeen years at Admiral Group, finishing at group level in organisational design, reward and culture. It's a company that takes its people seriously, and plenty of people stay there for their whole career. I chose to leave in 2023, on good terms and at a good point in my career, because I wanted to take what I'd learned into other businesses and make a difference there, and to test it somewhere I didn't already know inside out.

Since leaving, I've worked in commercial law and consulted internationally: nearly two decades in all, a decade of it at strategic level in the people function.

I hold a 2020 Executive MBA from Cardiff Business School, Cardiff University. My dissertation examined Admiral Group's culture, analysing survey responses from 5,853 employees alongside interviews with staff. Line managers and team behaviour, not pay, drove engagement. Pay scored lowest in every department, yet it was one of the weakest influences on how people felt about their work. And the company values were everywhere: on the walls, on the lanyards, in the annual report. Of the five people I interviewed, only one could name all four, and they were the trainer whose job was to teach the values.

Second Reading exists because of that gap. The distance between what an organisation says about its culture and what its people actually experience is rarely about money. It's about leadership behaviour, and whether the systems built around it (reward, governance, the AI now embedded in people decisions) reinforce that behaviour or quietly work against it.

Where most culture work goes wrong

Most culture programmes are written for the top of an organisation and delivered to the bottom of it. The people in between get a briefing pack.

That's the wrong way round. My own research showed it: of everything measured, how people felt about senior leadership had the least influence on their engagement, and their direct manager had among the most. Middle managers sit closest to senior leaders and closest to the frontline, which makes them the most important people in any change and usually the least consulted. They're expected to explain it, defend it and field the questions, while working out what it means for their own jobs. If they aren't equipped, and their own concerns aren't taken seriously, the change stalls in the middle and nobody at the top can see why.

So that's where I start. Managers help shape the working groups and make sure the right people are in the room. Frontline staff hear one message, the same one everywhere, in language that sounds like their work rather than a strategy deck. And it's honest about the trade-offs: what gets better, what gets harder, and what isn't known yet. People can tell when they're only being told the good half.

At Alaya, pay for managers and mortgage brokers had become a real source of tension between the two groups. I framed the problem, wrote the decision brief that got the change approved, and then wrote a leader's guide so the managers delivering it could explain it with confidence rather than just announce it.

§6. Get in touch

Start a conversation

Send a few details and I'll come back to you directly.