About Us

Our team are experienced HR professionals who have wide ranging experience spanning private, public and not-for-profit sector organisations across the UK and Ireland.

Core Capabilities

Employee Relations

Training & Leadership Development

Organisational Development

Recruitment

Selection and Assessment Design

Process Support / Candidate Management

Interview Selection

Fair Employment Returns

Core Competencies

Strategic Thinking

Legally Compliant Documentation & Report Writing

Process Improvement

Expert Advice

Relationship Building

Commercial Focus & Customer Service

Results Orientation

Training Design, Delivery & Facilitation

Change Management

Data Analytics

Project Management

Judgement and challenge function

Our Vision

Empowering our clients through innovative people-smart solutions.

Our Values

Agile & Responsive

Delivering straight forward solutions aligned to your culture and commercial realities while balancing risk.

Service Excellence

Partnering to empower our clients with the expert knowledge and tools to engage their people across the employee journey.

Authenticity

Bringing integrity, respect and honesty with our friendly approach.

People-Smart

Finding creative people-smart solutions to optimise delivery and results.

Our Team

The team at Allen People Solutions are highly experienced HR specialists with vast experience of working with clients across a number of sectors.

Together at APS we bring over 100 years of experience to your team.

Photograph of Diane Allen

Diane Allen

Principal Consultant

Diane Allen is the owner of Allen People Solutions and is a Chartered Member of the CIPD (MCIPD). She has a Masters in Occupational Psychology and a first-class honours degree in Psychology from the Queen’s University of Belfast. Diane is a senior HR professional with significant experience across the private, public and charitable sectors.

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Photograph of Carrie Murphy

Carrie Murphy

Senior HR Consultant and in-house solicitor

Carrie is a dual-qualified HR Consultant and solicitor (currently non-practising) specialising in employment law. Carrie has completed the Legal Practice Course, and holds a Masters in Industrial Relations and HR Management, a Masters in Legal Practice and Associate CIPD membership.

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Sarah McCann

Senior OD, Learning and Development Consultant

Sarah is a Chartered Occupational Psychologist and Associate Fellow of The British Psychological Society. Sarah holds an MA in Psychology and an MSc in Occupational Psychology and is a registered supervisor for the Qualification in Occupational Psychology (RAPPS).  

Fiona Wilson

Business Support Administrator

Fiona is a highly competent and experienced business support assistant and has experience of providing a range of business support services. She has experience in survey set up, survey co-ordination and compilation of data and research.

Photograph of Ciara McKegney

Ciara McKegney

HR and Employment Law Consultant

Ciara has an MSc and a Bsc (Hons2:1) in Human Resource Management and is an Associate Member of the CIPD. She has experience across the voluntary and community and private sectors.

Photograph of Anna McKee

Anna McKee

HR Consultant

Anna is an associate member of the CIPD and has an Advanced Level Diploma (Level 7) in Human Resources Management.

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Allen People Solutions are here to help your business.

Access to sound and trusted advice, consultancy, templates and resources.

If you are interested in our services or want to find out more about how we can help your business, please get in touch via phone or complete our form and we will give you a call.

Photograph of Diane Allen

Diane Allen

Principal Consultant

Diane Allen is the owner of Allen People Solutions and is a Chartered Member of the CIPD (MCIPD). She has a Masters in Occupational Psychology and a first-class honours degree in Psychology from the Queen’s University of Belfast. Diane is a senior HR professional with significant experience across the private, public and charitable sectors.

Diane has operated as a strategic business partner up to Director Level before entering consultancy. She commenced her career in Nortel Networks, where she led both the growth and downsizing phases of the organisational change, before moving to the National Trust as their NI HR Manager to locally lead the centralisation of the function across the UK. After this Diane developed and led a significant £2 million programme of change within one of the Executive Agencies (Forensic Science Northern Ireland) of the Northern Ireland Office as the Director of HR and Corporate Services. She has extensive experience of recruitment and selection within the private, public and voluntary and community sectors.

Her expertise extends across Organisational Change, Recruitment and Selection, Performance Management, Employee Relations / Generalist HR, Leadership and Coaching. Diane is an approved EFQM assessor, trained in delivering in ACT (Acceptance and Commitment Training) and is licensed to use the TEIQue.

Photograph of Carrie Murphy

Carrie Murphy

Senior HR Consultant and in-house solicitor

Carrie is a dual-qualified HR Consultant and solicitor (currently non-practising) specialising in employment law. Carrie has completed the Legal Practice Course, and holds a Masters in Industrial Relations and HR Management, a Masters in Legal Practice and Associate CIPD membership.

Carrie previously has a number of years’ experience as an employment law solicitor in private practice, handling a caseload of non-contentious and contentious issues, including representation at Employment Tribunals and Industrial and Fair Employment Tribunals in both England and Northern Ireland. In addition, Carrie is an experienced Senior HR Consultant providing specialist advice across various industries to both private and public sector organisations in GB and NI.

Carrie’s experience has spanned the full circle of the employment journey. Her specialisms and keen interests include industrial and employee relations, employment law (GB and NI), equal opportunities, staff planning and strategy and policy review and development.

Sarah McCann

Senior OD, Learning and Development Consultant

Sarah is a Chartered Occupational Psychologist and Associate Fellow of The British Psychological Society. Sarah holds an MA in Psychology and an MSc in Occupational Psychology and is a registered supervisor for the Qualification in Occupational Psychology (RAPPS).  

Sarah gained extensive experience as an Occupational Psychologist within a large-scale public service organisation before entering consultancy.  Sarah is an experienced professional who delivers high quality evidence-based services to support organisational objectives; delivered personally, and as part of a collaborative team.

Sarah’s experience extends to working across all levels of an organisation to build and maintain strong stakeholder relationships and provide flexible solutions to deliver sustainable organisational outcomes.  Her keen interests include training design and delivery, organisational change, wellbeing at work, and psychological assessment at work.  Sarah is also a Certified DiSC Practitioner and has extensive experience administering Everything DiSC® and facilitating feedback sessions.

Photograph of Ciara McKegney

Ciara McKegney

HR and Employment Law Consultant

Ciara has an MSc and a Bsc (Hons2:1) in Human Resource Management and is an Associate Member of the CIPD. She has experience across the voluntary and community and private sectors.

Ciara is a HR professional with experience across the private, public and charitable sectors. She commenced her career in CEM Systems (American Dynamics), where she implemented a time and attendance system for 200 staff. She moved to Capita and built her experience providing recruitment services to all levels in the public sector. She moved to Inspire Wellbeing where she was a HR Officer for a number of departments within the organisation. She was involved in the integration of new employees and companies joining the group through mergers and TUPE transfers. She was part of the team who won CIPD HR Team of the year 2015, CIPD Best Change Management Initiative 2017 and involved in gaining IIP Investors in People Gold Standard and Wellbeing Good Practice awards 2017. She is experienced in high volume Recruitment and Selection, Performance Management and Employee Relations/Generalist HR.

Photograph of Anna McKee

Anna McKee

HR Consultant

Anna is member of the CIPD and has an Advanced Level Diploma (Level 7) in Human Resources Management.

Prior to relocating to Northern Ireland, Anna worked for an independent HR consultancy delivering training, creating HR blogs and associated HR consultancy assignments. Prior to this, Anna worked for Virgin Media as an Employee Relations and People Policy Specialist and previously as a Senior HR and Operations Associate for a Global Investment Advisory firm.

Parmjit Johal​

Senior HR Consultant

Parmjit is a Human Resources professional with over 10 years’ HR experience mainly within the private sector as well as public sector and has a Bachelor of Laws (LLB). 

Parmjit has operated as HR Business Partner before entering consultancy. She is experienced in all aspects of the employment lifecycle, specialisms include: Industrial & Employee Relations, Workforce Planning & Resourcing, Talent Management, Employee Engagement, Compensation & Benefits, Performance Management, Policy review and development, Change Management – at both strategic and operational levels.

Mary Bryce

Senior Associate HR Consultant

Mary Bryce is a senior Human Resources professional with over 23 years working at local, regional and national levels. She is a graduate from Queen’s University with a Master’s in Business Administration, (MBA) and BA Hons in Economic and Social History.

Prior to entering HR consultancy, Mary worked at the Thales UK head office in Surrey as the Director of Employee Development and Employee Relations. Her areas of expertise include coaching, training and development, performance management, recruitment and selection, employee engagement and generalist HR.

Photograph of Alison McVitty

Alison McVitty

Senior Consultant

Alison is an accomplished Human Resources professional with significant experience encompassing all areas of HR. She is a graduate of Queen’s University Belfast, and is a Chartered Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development.

Alison has a solid track record that includes recruitment and selection, performance management, training and development, employee engagement and communications, and a career that spans both public and private sectors. Her HR management career began with one of Ireland’s leading financial services institutions (The Ulster Bank) where she progressed into HR consultancy when the organisation grew to a global scale.

Alison has worked extensively across government departments in NI as an Independent Assessor for the Commissioner for Public Appointments, and with the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development in membership assessment.

Photograph of Brenda Bennett

Brenda Bennett

Senior Consultant

Brenda is a Chartered Membership of the CIPD (since 2010) and holds a BA Hons (2:1) in Business Studies + CIS from Ulster University and Post Graduate Diploma in Personnel and Development from Queens University, Belfast.

Brenda is an experienced HR professional with 14 years HR experience within the private and voluntary sectors as well as considerable HR Consultancy experience; Brenda’s experience spans the jurisdictions of UK, NI, ROI. In addition to expertise in HR, Brenda has 3 years’ experience managing commercial contracts on a global basis and is a skilled Project Manager, with accreditations in Lean Six Sigma (Green Belt) and Prince2 (Practitioner); as well as having achieved other professional and qualifications/accreditations – CIMA Cert in Management Accountancy, EFQM/ISO Assessor awards.

Brenda is experienced in all aspects of the employment lifecycle, specialisms include: Industrial & Employee Relations, Organisational Design & Development, Workforce Planning & Resourcing, Talent Management, Employee Engagement, Compensation & Benefits, Performance Management, Policy Development, Employment Law – UK, Change Management – at both strategic and operational levels.