HR Consultancy

An HR Healthcheck is a key area of our HR consultancy service and includes:

• Auditing all your current HR policies, processes and related documentation to ensure compliance with current legislationAssess current practices in relation to business needs and requirements.
• Identifying any particular areas of concern, risks or difficulty that may be affecting productivity and effectiveness of the organization
• Teasing out the strategic position of HR in the business.

An HR Healthcheck is the starting point of most of our business relationships.

Rather than wondering if you have got it right, let us give you the facts and suggestions to put you on the right track.

» View the 4 stages that make up the HR healthcheck

We will then prepare a report which takes each part of the employee life cycle and makes a number of recommendations and positions your organisation in-line with our HealthCheck Scorecard. This will allow you to visually identify your performance in HR and management of employees and help you to prioritise any action you need to take to minimise risks and start your journey of development of an HR Strategy that will support your business.

Following our recommendations from the HR Healthcheck we will implement HR Best Practice – in most cases this is developing and implementing an HR strategy and infrastructure that allows managers to effectively manage employee issues.

This can include a variety of HR policies and practices and would typically involve:

• Updated terms and conditions
• Employee handbook with core policies
• Role profiles with clarity on roles and responsibilities at all levels
• Performance review processes including appraisals
• Induction
• Attendance at work policies and procedures
• Training and Development initiatives
• Individual case management
• Re structuring.

The HR Best Practice that is implemented in your business will be bespoke and specific to you – we draw on our expertise and learning across different sectors and develop the right blend of policies, practices and performance triggers.

HR Best Practice usually follows HR Healthcheck and is often the precursor for Monthly or Quarterly HR Support.

The transfer of undertakings legislation has particular implications for the transfer of employment obligations as employees are afforded specific rights in these circumstances.

We would recommend that you take advice on your employment liabilities and on how best to manage the transfer of employees to ensure compliance with the legislation and to give you the platform from which you intend to manage your employee relations and achieve your business objectives. We have had experience of managing small and much bigger TUPE related projects and can pass on the benefit of our experience to you.

It is estimated that Absence costs the UK economy (tax and loss of employer) £17.3bn overall (source Personnel Today).

The average cost of absence is £692 per employee per year. (Source: CIPD – Annual Survey Report 2009 Absence Management.) In addition to this cost there may well be other costs for example cost of covering absence for example with agency or other temporary staff, the cost of management time to address will increase with time, detrimental effect on productivity and the knock on effect to other employees.

It is important to remember that absences can be managed. You need to have effective policies and procedures, a strategy to manage particular cases and the advice and support to carry this through. We can provide all of these services and meet the specific requirements in your organization.

Fit Notes now replace the doctors’ medical certificates as of April 2010. We would recommend that you review your attendance at work policies and procedures to accommodate the revised regulations and allow you to effectively manage attendance at work.

From time to time you may be faced with a situation which takes you out of your comfort zone in terms of your knowledge of the legal obligations, the inherent risks involved and your impartiality to reach the "right" outcome.

The situation may present either informally or formally, either way you need to manage proactively and take reasonable management action. When you start to feel that you may not be making the right decisions, this is a good time to seek some advice from professionals who do understand the provisions within employment law, can help you to develop strategies to manage situations and can provide the support and resources to manage particular cases.

Building the right team with the blend of skills, experience and cultural fit is critical to the success of all organisations.

It is so obvious and yet the processes and skills applied to recruitment are often lacking direction and critical thinking. Over reliance on recruitment agents and abdication of responsibility for the "hire decision" can lead to some terrible mistakes.

We can help you to build a recruitment strategy that puts you in the decision making driving seat – you make the decisions, get impartial advice and are supported through the process. We can also follow through with the offer and contractual agreement that binds the recruitment decision.

Mediation is increasingly becoming seen as an effective approach to resolving disputes thus avoiding the need for adversial methods, including litigation. Mediation can be quicker, more cost effective and more likely to reach a collaborative solution than alternative processes.

It can be successfully applied in workplace related disputes for example where there have been relationship difficulties, grievance issues, disciplinary outcomes which have resulted in appeals, or long term absence issues. The recurring theme is the requirement to bring about a resolution which is agreed and settled.

We can work with you to understand the issues and determine whether this is a suitable approach, given the circumstances. We would seek agreement from all parties to enter into mediation and then facilitate the process. At each step we would clearly set out the stages that would be followed.

Whilst we manage the process, it is the parties who work together to understand the issues, develop possible solutions, identify common ground and ultimately agree a way forward. The process is voluntary, confidential and empowering.

If this is an approach which you believe could benefit you or someone you know, please contact Margery.

All organisations who have employees, invest time and money in their employees and yet we do not always see the need to have a regular review of performance; what is working well, what could be better, what development could enable individuals to contribute more or in a different way.

We can help you build a bespoke performance management process that could be competency based, could include 360 feedback, could be paper based or involve some IT technology – whatever is right for you we will work with you to develop and build a system, coach everyone to use and provide the infrastructure to record and review.

External factors change – in many cases you do not have a great deal of control over the circumstances.

Statutory requirements; Economic factors; environmental constraints are just some of the influences you cannot change. However you can react to and modify your organisation to respond to those changes.

This can lead to redundancies but not necessarily – there are other approaches. The key is to identify the causal effects, options for responding and then executing a plan. Sometimes the outcome is to identify new opportunities and give a new breath of life.

Scottish Community Foundation

"Gravitate HR have worked with us to develop a bespoke performance management process that has linked our strategic intents, the core competences and the values that underpin our organisation. 

"The resultant framework set out a clear process for making objective assessments and recognising development paths for all or us.  This process was successfully implemented through consultation at the development stage with managers and staff forum; thorough presentation about personal responsibilities and individual coaching were necessary. 

"Gravitate HR team also helped us to successfully manage employee related issues that arose following this process. The feedback from staff has been positive and it has given us an effective tool to relate individual’s contribution to the aims and objectives of the organisation."

Giles Ruck,
Chief Executive, Scottish Community Foundation

Almond Engineering

"We used Gravitate HR to assist us with some very tricky issues associated with persistent absence and capability. Their advice was timely, practical and accurate and enabled me to take the appropriate action with confidence. I intend to use Gravitate whenever we require HR support."

Chris Smith
Managing Director, Almond Engineering

Freespace

"Freespace is a medium sized charity; we do not have a designated HR department or HR personnel even though we employ about 100 people.

"There are times a particular HR situation requires a level of expertise, specialist advice and support and it was a real help to Freespace that Gravitate HR were on hand to provide this. Gravitate HR are committed to supporting agencies and their employees to improving the working environment. I appreciated Gravitate HR’s ability to deal with more complex HR matters and bring a fresh, objective perspective, balancing the needs and rights of all involved. I also found all of the staff were particularly helpful and worked alongside staff at Freespace in a professional, knowledgeable and supportive manner. I would recommend Gravitate HR."

Rebecca Allen
Chief Executive, Freespace