What we are called into do, and how it ends.

The situation

The trust had grown quickly. A central team — finance, HR, estates, IT — sized for six schools was now serving eleven, and the strain showed in different ways in each function: some roles had become impossibly wide, others had been duplicated at school level because the centre could not respond fast enough. The board wanted a structure that would carry the trust to fifteen schools, and wanted it in place for the start of the autumn term.

Two things made this harder than a commercial restructure. The affected staff sat on a mix of NJC-derived and trust-specific terms, which meant two different notice, pay-protection and redundancy frameworks applied inside one consultation. And the trust's own board cycle — a finance committee, a full board, then a decision — put hard dates into a process that employment law already puts hard dates into.

What we did

We began with the timetable, not the org chart. Working backwards from the go-live date and forwards from the earliest realistic announcement, we mapped where the statutory collective consultation period, the board's approval points and the school holiday fell — and found that the trust's preferred announcement date left no room for a genuine consultation. We moved it forward by three weeks. That single decision is the reason nothing that followed was rushed.

We then produced an options appraisal for the board: three structures, costed, with the consultation and risk implications of each. The board chose, and we wrote the business case, the consultation document and the selection criteria in language the trust could publish without embarrassment. Union representatives were briefed before the general announcement, which is both the right thing to do and the reason the first consultation meeting was constructive rather than defensive.

Through consultation we attended every collective meeting, ran the individual meetings with managers present so they would learn the process, and kept a running log of every question raised and every answer given. Two roles changed materially as a result of consultation — which is what consultation is for, and which the log evidences.

Why it held

The trust ended up with a structure it could defend line by line, a written record that would survive an employment tribunal or a governance review, and managers who had run a fair process under supervision and could run the next one without us. That last part matters: the point of a small senior firm is to leave a client more capable, not more dependent.

The situation

A community health provider came to us with a problem that was visible in its board papers: more than forty open employee relations cases, a handful over a year old, an HR team of three who were spending every day on the newest and most urgent, and a trade union that had — reasonably — started to raise the delays formally. Several of the oldest cases involved staff on long-term suspension, which is both an unfair position for the individuals and a significant cost the organisation was carrying month after month.

The instinct was to ask for “an HR contractor”. The actual need was different: capacity for the volume, and judgement for the handful of cases that had become entrenched.

What we did

Within the week we placed two experienced ER caseworkers, both with NHS backgrounds, both referenced, both with an IR35 status determination the provider could put in its file. Before they started, our senior practitioner spent two days with the HR team building a triage framework: every case categorised by risk, by age, by whether someone was suspended, and by what the next concrete step was. It sounds obvious. It had not been done, because there had never been the time to step back.

The caseworkers took the middle of the list — the cases that needed steady, competent process work. The provider's own team kept the newest cases so the flow did not stall. Our senior practitioner took the six oldest, three of which involved suspension. For each we produced a short written view: what the case actually was, what a fair and proportionate resolution looked like, and a timetable to get there. Two suspensions were lifted within a fortnight because there was no longer a justification for them. One case that had been running as a disciplinary was, on review, a capability matter and was moved to the right process.

Throughout, we reported to the Director of People fortnightly in a one-page format the board could see: cases opened, cases closed, oldest case age, suspensions outstanding. Numbers that move are what turn a problem into a plan.

Why it held

The provider needed people, but people without a framework would have cleared the backlog once and watched it return. The triage model stayed. The fortnightly report stayed. The union relationship improved because the delays stopped — which was the fastest route to improving it.

The situation

A collective grievance was submitted by several members of a service against its director. The allegations were serious, the individuals involved were senior, and the council's own constitution meant that any internal investigator would either report to the director in question or sit alongside them on the leadership team. The Monitoring Officer, rightly, wanted someone with no prior relationship to anyone involved.

There was an additional pressure that private sector investigations rarely carry: members were aware of the grievance, local press had been asking questions, and whatever the council did next would eventually be read by people looking for reasons to criticise it.

What we did

We started with the terms of reference, and we were unusually insistent about them. What exactly was being investigated, who commissioned it, who would receive the report, whether we were being asked for findings of fact only or also a view on whether there was a case to answer, and what the timetable was. We drafted them, the council agreed them, and both parties to the grievance saw them before the first interview. Most investigations that later unravel do so because that document was vague or was never written.

Fourteen interviews followed, all in person, all with the interviewee offered a companion, all with typed notes returned for agreement within two working days. We requested and reviewed the documentary record — emails, meeting notes, previous appraisals — before the interviews rather than after, so that questions were specific. Where accounts conflicted we went back to people with the conflict put to them plainly.

The report set out each allegation, the evidence for and against, a finding of fact on the balance of probabilities and, because the terms of reference asked for it, a view on whether there was a disciplinary case to answer. It was written to be read by the council's legal advisers, by a tribunal, and — in summary form — by the public. Some allegations were upheld; some were not; one was found to be a management practice that was poor but not misconduct. Each conclusion was tied to its evidence.

Why it held

The council was able to act on the findings without the process itself becoming the story. The director's representatives challenged the outcome, as was their right, but not the investigation — which is the test of whether it was done properly.

The situation

The provider's Head of HR resigned with a month's notice and left sooner. At the time, the organisation was six weeks into a CQC improvement plan with workforce actions attached — training compliance, supervision records, safer recruitment files — was acquiring two homes from another operator under TUPE, and had promised staff a pay review. The Chief Executive was covering HR personally and, in her words, “badly”.

A generalist agency would have sent a competent HR manager. The provider needed someone who had sat in a CQC inspection before, understood what “safer recruitment” means in a regulated setting, and could run a TUPE transfer of care staff on the incoming operator's terms without the deal stalling.

What we did

We placed an interim Head of HR with a care sector background within eight days. The first fortnight went entirely on the CQC workforce actions, because that was the deadline that could not move: a full audit of recruitment files against the regulations, a gap list, and a corrected file for every member of staff before the re-inspection window opened.

The TUPE transfer ran in parallel, with our senior practitioner acting as a sounding board rather than a second pair of hands — the interim led it, we checked the employee liability information, the measures letter and the consultation record at the points where a mistake would have been expensive. The transferring staff arrived with their terms intact, their questions answered in writing, and their induction into the provider's supervision and training framework already scheduled.

The pay review was the workstream most at risk of being quietly dropped. It was not. The interim built a simple banded framework aligned to the regional care market, costed it, and had it approved by the board in month four — which meant the provider went into the next recruitment cycle with something to say to candidates.

In month five the interim ran the recruitment for a permanent Head of HR, sat on the panel, and spent the final fortnight handing over a written state-of-play on every open matter.

Why it held

The provider bought a person, but what it needed was continuity across three workstreams none of which could wait. The right interim — sector-specific, senior, supported at the risk points — gave it that without the organisation having to become a training ground for someone learning the sector on its time.