I have spent my career in People and Culture roles at Walmart, Apple, Starbucks, Loblaws, Amazon, and the LCBO, plus a stretch as the first VP of People and Culture for a multi-site healthcare network. High volume, distributed teams, and environments where getting people decisions wrong is expensive.
What I kept noticing is that the problems do not change much with size. A five location owner and a five hundred location operator are usually solving the same thing: roles that have blurred, pay that has drifted, managers promoted without support, and risk nobody is watching closely enough. What changes is how much sits behind you when you go to solve it.
I do this work full time now, on a retained basis, and I am judged on what actually changed. Often that means working alongside whoever already holds HR and building them up rather than replacing them. Sometimes there is no HR function and I work directly with the CEO or the founder. It also frequently means leadership development, since structure only holds if the people carrying it can lead. I facilitate DiSC and Life Styles Inventory and run sessions that bring leadership teams together.
I am based in the Greater Toronto Area and work across Canada and the United States. One of the retail businesses I support operates globally, so cross border work is familiar ground.