Hugh Hood, HR director BT Wholesale, has been appointed as director of organisation development for BT Group. Hood is a former group HR director and director HR transformation at Transport for London, and head of HR service operations and head of HR transformation for Barclays bank.

Professional staffing recruitment consultancy Barclay Meade, part of the Matchtech Group, has hired Sue Palmer as manager, finance and accountancy division. Palmer joins from Martin Ward Anderson. The firm has also appointed ex-England rugby international Jon Sleightholme to head its new sport and leisure division. Sleightholme, who won 12 successive caps for England, launched recruitment and career transition business Sport2Business.

Financial products distributor, Personal Touch Financial Services (PTFS), has appointed a new HR director to its board. Karen Pearson will oversee the business’s HR function, including recruitment, organisational design and development, and transformation and change management.

Legal recruitment firm Douglas Scott Legal Recruitment has recruited Denise Phoenix in a management role with a remit to develop Douglas Scott’s Midlands operations.

Global professional recruitment and IT outsourcing group Harvey Nash has appointed Ian Davies as an independent non-executive director and chairman of the audit committee. Davies is currently deputy chairman of BMT Group and a member of the Council at the Institute of Chartered Accountants.

Jennifer Plant has returned to commercial recruiter Huntress as manager, heading up its London West End permanent team. Plant is a former area manager at Huntress and senior account manager at media staffing specialist pfj.

Driver Agency INNOV8 Recruitment has appointed Fran Higgs as chief executive, ahead of planned expansion. Meanwhile, Karen Taylor has been appointed head of the firm’s Out Of Hours 24 Hour Response division.

Interim management solutions provider Interim Partners (IP) has appointed Liz Sinclair as account director. Sinclair, who was previously lead consultant for executive search firm Tyzack’s consumer division, has been appointed to head up IP’s KPMG account.

Talent management solutions firm, SumTotal Systems, has appointed Richard Watkins as senior vice president of product development, while Christopher Faust has been appointed vice president of global marketing. Both Watkins and Faust join SumTotal from Softscape as a result of the company’s recent acquisition.

Tony Pearce has joined TEC Group International Recruitment as associate director, responsible for growth of business in construction and engineering. Pearce is a former director at Appraise Consulting and sales director at both Synergy Group and Eden Brown.

Professional services firm KPMG has appointed Iain McLaughlin as UK head of recruitment. McLaughlin joins KPMG from GlaxoSmithKline where he was global talent business leader.

International executive search firm Pedersen & Partners has appointed Chinedu Duru as country manager to lead its new office in Lagos, Nigeria.

Specialist recruitment consultancy IntaPeople has appointed Simon Goldsworthy as business development and HR commercial director. Goldsworthy, who heads up HR and training business Oriole, was previously HR director at Hitachi, Grundig and Thomson.