CASE STUDIES
We respect and maintain confidentiality always, so rather than talk about who we’ve worked with, here are some of the issues we’ve helped our clients solve over the last few years, to give an idea of the scope of our expertise:
- Supporting a recently formed Academy through a planned staffing review; preparing the consultation timetable with staff and trade union representatives; guiding the leadership team and governors through the consultation; handling queries from staff and the subsequent appeal process. Despite being advised from another consultant this wasn’t possible, with our help the Academy has now introduced a new structure into a new era.
- The owner of a growing business needed to take on his first new employee. Having discussed the pros and cons of all aspects of employment, we produced contracts of employment and some basic employment policies – nothing too complicated to start with.
- A medium sized business came to us with questions on handling performance and attendance problems with a long-term employee. Having understood what policies and documents they already had, which in this case were good, we’ve been able to advise the line manager and director how to handle the situation, showing them courses of action open to them – and importantly what the costs/risks of each were likely to be – enabling them to reach their decision, better informed.
- A school we had previously worked with found that due to options taken by pupils, they faced some small-scale staffing changes and subsequent redundancies. Having built up their own experience in handling this on their own, they managed the whole process, but invited us in as an independent ‘auditor’ of their selection methods and rationale before seeking leadership approval and implementing. This gave them reassurance their processes were fair, gave their governors faith in the process, and their trade union representatives reassurance their conclusions had been challenged.
- A garage owner came to us with evidence of a member of staff stealing from his business. While he was devastated a key member of staff had been doing this over a number of years, we were able to help him deal with the problem, despite there being no formal policies or documents. We were then able to advise on introducing policies and working practices to safeguard his business more effectively in the future.
