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With over 240 sites across the UK and Nordics, Directional Pizza is rethinking how HR works at scale, ditching legacy admin and leaning into tech to create a seamless, mobile-first employee experience.
When Emily Curtis joined Directional Pizza as Chief People Officer for Europe in July last year, she brought with her years of HR leadership across telecoms, retail, and foodservice, including time with Phones4U, Amazon, Argos, Sainsbury’s and Starbucks. Her most recent role was Head of Field HR working directly for the Pizza Hut brand, before taking the bold move to Directional Pizza - a major European franchisee of Pizza Hut - was a step into something bigger: shaping the people experience across multiple countries, cultures, and operational models.
Now overseeing the HR strategy for more than 240 sites in the UK, Sweden, Denmark and beyond, Curtis is part of a leadership team pushing for rapid, tech-enabled growth. And key to that, she says, is keeping things simple.
“We really want [employees’] work experience to be great, to be seamless, to be ‘faffless’,” says Curtis. “If people are used to doing all of the everyday tasks in life on their phone, you should be able to do the same with work tasks.”
Emily Curtis
Group Chief People Officer
Building a scalable, app-first employee journey
Curtis is clear: in a competitive labour market - especially for younger candidates - having the right digital tools in place can make or break the hiring and retention strategy.
“One of the things that we pride ourselves on at Directional is that we want to balance the experience of the consumer with the experience of our team,” she says. “Our HR tech stack really needs to match that experience in the workplace.”
That means ditching outdated, paper-heavy processes in favour of mobile-first platforms that mirror the way people manage the rest of their lives: on the go, in real-time, and with autonomy. “No more having to contact HR to change your address. I mean come on, it’s 2025!” she adds.
If people are used to doing all of the everyday tasks in life on their phone, you should be able to do the same with work tasks
Directional Pizza’s digital-first strategy includes a partnership with HR and payroll platform Deel, which provides employees with instant access to contracts, handbooks, payslips and more, all within a scrollable app interface.
“When we think about new hires, we can give them the Deel app and say ‘hey, download this, tell us your bank details, your address’... then in the app, their contract is there ready to sign,” Curtis explains. “You don’t need to go asking HR for a copy of the company handbook. We shouldn’t be treating our employees like children, we should make all of this information accessible.”
