When PwC’s government consulting arm broke away overnight to become Scyne, the people team faced a challenge unlike any other in Australian professional services
Roughly 1,000 employees and 100 partners were transferred overnight from one of the world's most recognised consulting brands into a newly formed, private equity-backed startup.
The challenge was not just structural – it was deeply human. For Matt Berry, head of people partnering and operations at Scyne, navigating that transition required something that no policy document could prescribe: the ability to sit with uncertainty, listen without an agenda, and help people decide whether they were genuinely on board for the journey ahead.
Scyne finalised its separation from PwC on 8 November 2023 and began operating as a fully independent business with its own governance and ownership, following the tax leaks scandal that led the federal government to sever ties with PwC's public sector arm.
Private equity group Allegro Funds acquired the business, and the new firm was established as a government-specialist consultancy, focused exclusively on what Berry calls the "public purpose" – serving government agencies, health, education and social insurance bodies.
Berry, who spent his career as a senior business partner at PwC before making the deliberate choice to cross over to Scyne, is one of the rare exceptions in a workforce that had little say in the transfer.
"99.9% of the people were transferred over," he said. "I couldn't even list you one other person that opted in. It was such a great unknown. But I am one to navigate with uncertainty. I always say in job interviews, if this place is humming, it's not for me."
Listening first, building second
When a company is stood up overnight with over 1,000 people – ranging from recent graduates who had barely finished their onboarding to 25-year veterans with deep emotional ties to the PwC brand – the first instinct for many HR leaders might be to move quickly to communication strategies and cultural programs. Berry's approach was the opposite.
"The first thing is we need to listen and find out and respect and truly understand what people are going through," he explained,
"We had a range of people that may have been three months at PwC and all of a sudden tapped on the shoulder saying, you're no longer part of this. And people who have been with PwC for 20, 25 years – are they on board with all the media and the press and the controversy being put into a new company, or are they bringing some big feelings that we need to help them navigate through?"
For Berry, the key was helping people understand what Scyne was – not just what it had inherited.
"It's about articulating who we are, how we got here, and then what we want to be," he said.
"We're masters of our own destiny now and celebrating this opportunity, but also bringing people into how they, as individual employees, can help us make the best of it."
The agility advantage
One of the most significant and underestimated benefits of leaving a global firm behind was the ability to move quickly and change direction when something wasn't working.
At PwC, as at most large organisations, processes are mandated from above: the software, the templates, the rating scales, the feedback forms. At Scyne, those decisions belong to the people team.
Berry gave the always-on feedback mechanism as an example of this, which was introduced at Scyne, but the initial version went too far.
"We went too far in one direction and created a form that was overly onerous, very data heavy – taking 20 to 30 minutes to complete," he said.
"Then came back: this is way too much. The pendulum has finally landed where it should be, where you've got multiple options on the level of detail relative to an assignment."
That willingness to iterate is what Berry calls "excellence, not perfection".
"Get it 80 to 90% there and then let's get it out there and tweak as we go," he said. "In a larger organisation you're mandated – the processes, the templates, the software. We have the flexibility to get to the end of a period and ask: what worked, what didn't, is that what our people want?"
Turnover, trust and the road back
Scyne is now far smaller than when it launched, with around 800 staff. Berry acknowledged the early attrition was real.
"Turnover for the first 12 months was quite high," he said. "Whether you had a choice or not, it took people a while to figure out if this was right for them. There was an element of frustration about not having work to do – these are highly engaged people who want to deliver value.”
The company’s difficulty in quickly getting back onto government panels – the contracts and tenders that sustain a public sector consultancy – left some staff in a holding pattern.
Without meaningful work to deploy their skills, even the most loyal employees struggled to stay engaged. It is, Berry said, a lesson in how fundamental work itself is to engagement. Recognition programs and wellbeing initiatives matter, but they cannot substitute for purposeful, challenging assignments.
Now, with Scyne profitable and working on significant government and social infrastructure projects, those conversations have become possible again.
"We can now have meaningful, tangible conversations with each employee about where they want to go and what their career progression looks like – because the opportunities to actually deploy their skills is something we can actually do," Berry said.
The seat HR earned, not inherited
For HR professionals watching from the outside, Scyne's story offers a compelling case for what the people function can achieve when it is embedded at the highest level from day one.
Berry credits the firm's culture-setting phase with giving HR a genuine voice at the leadership table – not as an enabling function managing compliance, but as a strategic partner shaping how the organisation behaves, rewards, and holds itself accountable.
"Getting senior leadership alignment on culture and values – how that's displayed, rewarded and addressed if not being adhered to – can be an HR function to provide that clarity," added Berry.
"That drives engagement for two factors: those high performers who are all in 110%, and those who may not be aligned, so we can have those conversations that are extremely respectful about whether this is the right place for them at this point in time."
Scyne Advisory's CEO is John Ball, who previously came from Google, and Berry describes him as deeply invested in the people agenda.
"He came in with the seat at the table as a non-negotiable," Berry said. "He is so invested in our CPO and our people team – we call him a quasi-HR team member."
It is a dynamic that many HR leaders are still working to establish elsewhere. At Scyne, it was never a question of earning that seat. It was built into the firm's foundations from the very first day.
