HR Consultancy

Our specialist expertise can save you time and money plus reduce the legal risks you face.

Disciplinary and grievance investigations

Our highly qualified and experienced staff can conduct investigations at all levels of the organisation. They will produce a clear report that not only details their findings but also any recommended actions that should be taken.

Due diligence for acquisitions and TUPE transfers

Acquiring staff, whether through a company acquisition or a TUPE transfer, can create many challenges for employers. Whilst companies conduct financial and operational 'due diligence', the staff, their terms and conditions, their benefits, even their performance, can often come as a large surprise after the acquisition has been completed. Our comprehensive due diligence audit provides clear information in advance of the final decision to acquire, which can be used in decision making and any subsequent integration.

Redundancy and restructuring advice

Whether it is in response to a downturn in business or to equip an organisation to develop in a new direction, restructuring can require expertise and resources that an employer does not possess. Our highly experienced HR team can provide a vital resource to ensure that any restructuring or redundancy programme is successful, legally compliant and minimises disruption.

HR audits

Our comprehensive audit and a workplan, done partly on-site, ensures that your HR documentation and processes are up to date, robust and legally compliant.

Employee surveys

In conjunction with the client, we devise and prepare an online employee survey, collate the responses (thus ensuring anonymity and confidentiality) and present the results in a final report. We can also provide advice on the communication process with employees and on developing a possible action plan based on the results.

Online recruitment

After preparing the job and person specification, we devise a range of short, relevant case studies for applicants to complete online, thus giving a professional approach which significantly assists the short-listing process and reduces the cost - only those who are able to complete the answers satisfactorily progress to the final interview.

Exit interviews

We devise an online exit interview form for all leavers - thus saving time and effort in completing, collating and presenting the results of feedback gained through this process. In addition, we can undertake more detailed confidential telephone exit interviews for all managers and key staff and present the results on a quarterly basis.

Contact us today to discuss your HR consultancy needs.

Compensation Services

Effective compensation programmes must not only motivate staff but also meet legal requirements. BusinessHR can assist clients with the following:

Job evaluation

In organisations of more than 20 staff, ensuring equal pay is difficult without having some form of job evaluation in place. Developed for use with SMEs, our process is practical, easy to implement and equips the client with the tools to manage the process in the future, without the use of consultants.

Equal pay audits

The year to April 2008 saw Employment Tribunal equal pay claims rise by over 42%. Our audit examines both the current distribution of pay and the policies by which it is administered. It recommends both short-term actions and the policies and processes that will ensure the employer remains legally compliant.

Sales compensation

Sales compensation plans can over or under reward sales staff, be complex to administer and not aligned with business goals. Our development process involves all those who create the plans, are rewarded by them or administer them, to ensure these problems do not arise.

Bonus planning

Bonuses can provide well directed motivation to either individuals or teams. However, it is essential that they are closely aligned with business goals and yet are simple to understand and administer. Our approach focuses first on the business objectives, then on identifying the key contributory factors for success and then at the measurement / reporting capabilities to produce effective plans.

Salary surveys / Benchmarking

We can design surveys to suit your particular requirements and then obtain the relevant data for you to make informed decisions about your levels of compensation. We can also help groups of employers, trade associations etc develop a salary survey to suit their requirements.

Contact us today to discuss your compensation needs.

Manager and Executive Training

Giving managers a practical knowledge of relevant employment and discrimination law can free them to maximie the productivity of their organisation, whilst substantially reducing the risk of expensive litigation.

For many managers the law, or their perception of the law, can be a barrier to maximising the performance of their teams. Our goal is to remove the myths and allow them to effectively and legally manage their staff.

Our programmes are designed to meet the client's specific needs but some core programmes include:

Contact us today to discuss your training needs.

Customised HR intranet

By combining BusinessHR's interactive website with your Intranet, you can reduce the HR workload, provide up-to-date HR information to managers and supply 'as needed' training for managers.

Many organisations are looking for ways to reduce the HR workload and also need their managers to take more responsibility for HR matters. The organisation's intranet is the obvious tool that can help meet this need but developing and maintaining the content demands time, knowledge and resource. Combining the extensive material contained in the BusinessHR interactive HR website with your own letters and policies will produce a highly flexible and time saving tool for both HR and line managers. The BusinessHR managed HR intranet service provides:

• Customised HR intranet site with client 'look and feel'
• Continually updated legal documentation
• Client specific documentation integrated into the site
• Separate access levels for HR, managers and employees
• Advice to HR on legal changes required to policies and procedures
• Website hosting and management

Manager training

The website can also act as vital training support tool for managers. Within the site are many management guides which provide step by step support to handling many employment situations. This support provides training for managers just when they need it and minimises the risk of them acting incorrectly.

Additional support

An even more comprehensive service can be provided by combining the intranet with other additional support including:

• Telephone helpline for HR and, if required, line managers
• HR Consultancy and support for special projects
• Training for managers on all aspects of employee relations

Contact us to explore how we can help you maximise your HR intranet.

Distributors and Partners

Distributors

We are experienced in working with trade associations and professional bodies to distribute our service to their members as a membership benefit.

Our service is also provided to commercial companies and professional firms, who then distribute our services to their clients.

We have proven processes and technology in place to undertake such distributed arrangements. We can provide a distributed service in the name of BusinessHR or in the name of the trade association, professional body or company.

HR Partners

If you are an HR consultant who would find our website and services useful for your clients then you should consider becoming an HR Partner.

Under our normal terms and conditions access to our website, hot topics and helpline is limited to the purposes of assisting our clients in managing their own businesses.

However, our partnership agreement gives consultants:

• authorised use of the website for your client work - thus saving time and energy reinventing the wheel - you can generate documents to give to your clients quickly and professionally using our extensive range of templates
• a monthly emailed spreadsheet report showing helpline usage per enquiry - so your clients can be individually recharged if necessary
• the helpline can be used either as a sounding board for you to discuss issues with a professional colleague, or by your clients directly (with your prior authorisation), giving you professional cover for your absence on holidays/seminar attendance etc. The relationship always remains with you. If you give your clients access to our helpline, we can send you copies of our summary email advice so that you are always kept in the loop.
• complete enquiry records available to you on request.

We also offer commission to those consultants who recommend their clients purchase our website directly.

Please note that we are very protective of our copyright and any use of our services for the benefit of other parties, whether for payment or not, is only authorised to those who hold a partnership agreement with us.

A partnership agreement costs from £500 per annum per consultant as follows:

Service	Annual subscription fee per consultant user
Website partnership licence gives you access to our website to customise, download and print any document for your client(s) payable annually in advance if bought alone	£500 + VAT
Premium partnership upgrade (addition to website licence) gives you access to a wider range of more specialised documents allows you to generate and store contracts and policies on our server and update them quickly also to generate word processing versions (rather than pdfs) enabling you to refomat the documents and add the client's logos if desired payable annually in advance if bought with website only licence	£150 + VAT
Helpline licence gives you up to 10 hours' helpline time per year, to be used by you or your clients a monthly csv breakdown of usage per enquiry plus we copy you on any emails sent to your clients (and will provide copies of entire enquiries on request) can be bought separately or in addition to a website licence payable quarterly in advance if bought alone or in conjunction with a website licence	£1000 + VAT

To take out a Partnership Agreement, or for further details, please call 0870 162 4882 or email us: sales. Online purchases will be available soon.

Finally from time to time, we do work with other HR consultancies. If you feel that BusinessHR and your consultancy could work together on specific HR projects please do contact us.

Contact us to discuss how you can distribute the Business services or become a Partner.

Our website offers.....

• A large collection of documents for you to use:
  • a highly customisable employee handbook to issue to all of your staff
  • a wide range of contracts of employment (some are only available to our premium customers)
  • more than 50 customisable policies that you can tailor and issue to your staff
  • at least 60 guides on management topics, legal overviews plus step by step guides to specific topics such as recruitment, induction and redundancy
  • over 70 forms to print off and give to your staff
  • a huge range of customisable letters to send to your staff
  • at least 25 guides to general health and safety issues.
  You may wish to view some sample documents:
  • Offer of employment - letter
  • Maternity and parental leave guidelines
  • Absence warning letter
  • Management notes on retention
  
   
  
• Customised documents are generated as PDFs, with a blank area at the top so that they can be printed on headed paper. If you send us a logo of the appropriate size, this will automatically be inserted into your contracts of employment, policies and handbook.
   
  
• Additional document formats are available if you have our premium service. This incorporates:
  • document generation in HTML, as well as PDF format. This is useful if you want to put your company policies on your company intranet, or if you want to modify them in a word-processor.
  • an easy-to-use but technically advanced policy template tool which gives you the ability to store your own policy templates. The template tool, which is not available using our standard service, makes the process of implementing, reviewing and updating policies even quicker and more effective.
  • a range of specialist contracts and documents not available with our standard service such as an apprentice contract, an associate agreement and a non-executive director's agreement.

  This is an optional add-on for the BasicCare package but is built into the other packages.
  Existing BasicCare subscribers can now upgrade to our premium service.
   
  

• You can find a document in various ways:
  1. by going to the topic pages shown in the left hand navigation bar. This allows you to approach the site from an activity point of view.
  2. by using the short cuts to find documents by document type, ie all policies are grouped together
  3. by using the site map
  4. by going to the A to Z listing
  5. by searching for documents using the search control.
      
     
• Archive copies of the newsletters (going back to 2001) are also available to you. These can often be useful if you are looking for information on interesting cases you have read about in previous issues. The newsletter page shows which main topics are covered in which newsletter, with a link enabling you to get to the chosen topic directly.

Own use: If you are an HR consultant, please bear in mind for the future the 'fair use' paragraph in the terms and conditions section of our web site. If you wish to be able to offer the site to your clients as part of your total service range please contact us to discuss a suitable arrangement.

When should you use our helpline?

Our clients choose to talk to us on many issues but we strongly recommend advice is taken prior to:

• carrying out any disciplinary procedure or action
• dismissing an employee (even with short service)
• making anyone redundant or starting consultation or considering a selection process for redundancy
• acting on any notification (formal or informal) of a complaint relating to sex, race, disability, sexual orientation, religion/belief or age or any complaint of harassment (from an employee, a worker or even a job applicant or ex-employee)
• making any changes to terms and conditions of employment (including altering anyone's hours or time or place worked or demotion or deduction from or reduction in an employee's remuneration)

We would always advise taking advice at the earliest possible stage and certainly within 24 hours of:

• an employee failing to attend work and not notifying you of the reason - and in any event before any action is taken relating to the non-attendance

and immediately:

• an employee walks out or resigns without written notice
• an employee raises a formal grievance
• you receive an ET claim or formal or informal threat to commence such a claim.

If you are a new business start up, you might like to read our overview for new businesses.

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Our helpline details

• Our helpline is operated between 9.00am - 6.00pm Monday to Friday.
• You can contact us by telephone to receive instant, practical advice - or by email, in which case we will respond to you within 24 hours.
• All telephone calls are followed up by an email summary of the advice given, setting out our recommended course of action - so you don't need to make frantic notes during our discussions.
• Through our backoffice system we have access to the complete history of enquiries for each client, enabling any advisor to pick up a previous enquiry and advise you without you having to re-explain previous events. This also means that we can easily make that entire history available on request, thus saving you time, effort and money in establishing an accurate record of events over a period of time.
• We will happily review letters or redraft these for you, we will comment on new draft policies or procedures you are considering.
• We also follow up more complicated enquiries - to ensure that the enquiry has been resolved to your satisfaction, and offer further advice as necessary.
• Unlike many helplines, there is no escalation procedure. All of our advisors are able to handle all enquiries. However, subscribers have a designated account manager - so that if they prefer to speak to one advisor about longer term or more complex enquiries then, subject to availability, they can do so.
• We can also provide reports if requested, showing you your usage, the topics you most frequently ask about, which of your authorised staff use us most regularly, and offering advice and recommendations for future action.

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  A subscription to our helpline starts at 10 hours per annum.
  If you feel you will use more than this, you can buy additional time on an ad hoc basis, or upgrade your subscription.