People Management/HR Consultant in London

Looking after your people while your business grows.

Passionate about people, I believe that building strong and engaged teams is the key to business success.

Choosing prevention over cure, I provide people management and HR consultancy services to London and south-east based SMEs by ensuring you have the company culture, people management processes and HR policies in place.  This limits the amount of time and energy spent putting things right and allows us to focus on developing great teams of great people who will help drive your business.  HR shouldn’t be about policing policies, but growing engaged teams.  If you value your people, they will value your business as much as you do.

You have an accountant to look after your money, having HR support to look after your biggest asset (and cost) is a no-brainer.

HR Consultancy services in London:

Outsourced HR Services

You may not have, or need, an HR team yet, but you still have to ensure that you are managing the inevitable people issues. By outsourcing your HR, you can ensure that you’re getting professional advice in HR matters which protects you as the employer, and enables your business to review and improve your people practices. It also frees up your time to run your business. Plus, access to pay as you go HR software.

But it’s not all paperwork: engaged employees, great morale and an open culture keep your people happy and your business moving.  I can work with you to identify issues and make improvements.

People Management

People Management can be very rewarding, but very time consuming.  It covers a range of legal and best practice areas which include employee relations, line management, disciplinary and grievance matters, performance management and appraisals, company culture, absence management, well-being to name just a few.

I prefer to work with my clients with a prevention over cure approach. By nurturing a great company culture, creating an open and honest environment, rewarding good work, dealing with issues in a timely and fair way and enabling diversity and flexibility you’re far less likely to encounter the bigger problems that lead to conflict or legal action.  Create and nurture an engaged team and your business will only sour.

HR Policies & HR Processes

Taking on staff is a big responsibility, you need them to help make your business a success. By ensuring that you have your HR policies in place and have documented your HR processes, you will save time, money and a fair few headaches. By doing this with employee number one, you ensure you’re all set for when your business grows.

I can provide you with HR policies and HR processes (some are required by law), or if you already have them, review them to ensure they’re up to date. This will help keep your business running while you’re busy making it grow.

HR Software

I’ve partnered with a cloud-based HR software provider to enable me to offer a full-service to my clients. HR admin can take up so much time; messing around with a dozen spreadsheets, filing systems and documents all over the place.  This system, developed in the UK by a small business specifically for small businesses, takes away all of that leaving you to work with your people, not pieces of paper.  It’s great value, no long contracts with pay-as-you-go, is very user friendly and complies with GDPR and ISO standards.

More information is available here.

Recruitment Services

Your people will make or break your business.

Getting the right person for your business is critical, but recruitment in London isn’t easy and can be time consuming, frustrating and costly. I can take this over for you as much or as little as you like – from defining the role and job description, advertising, CV sifting, interviewing, managing candidates to offer.

Just one hire can take weeks to achieve, meanwhile, the work still needs to be done, it can impact the rest of your team or perhaps you’re putting off hiring because you just don’t have the time. Before you spend £000s on recruitment consultants, let’s have a chat about how I can help you save time and money.

New Starter Onboarding

Once you’ve found that perfect new team member, you need to follow up with reference checks and security checks (if applicable) – have you checked for skeletons in the closet?

Most importantly, making the right impression from day one is critical to retaining staff. It is in your interest to ensure they have all the tools they need to succeed; you don’t want to have to start all over again because you weren’t prepared. I can take over the onboarding process for you by managing your new starters; from them accepting the job offer to day one, as well as providing an induction plan to see you through the first few weeks.

Exit Interviews

Many businesses, big and small, do exit interviews with staff leaving the business as matter of course these days.  For some it’s a tick-box exercise; the information gathered disappears into a file somewhere never to be viewed again, for others it’s conducted by someone too close to the person leaving; in some cases, the line manager or business owner themselves – neither of which are likely to garner truly honest feedback.  I can provide a completely independent, impartial and anonymous service, gathering vital information from exiting staff which will then be passed back to the business and can be used to develop stronger people practices.

Mediation and Grievances

Work can be a stressful environment filled with a fabulous mix of different people and different personalities. With that there can be times when conflict arises, it’s almost inevitable, but how you deal with it is critical to reduce the disruption to your business and the people working within it.  I can intervene and provide support to help resolve these issues.

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Get in Touch

Contact: Maria Riley
Email: maria@acornsandoaks.uk
Phone: 07787 582981