Saltwater HR

03/09/2026

The Fair Work Agency has named 658 employers for underpaying staff below the national minimum wage, in its first naming round since taking over enforcement from HMRC. B&Q, Five Guys and two NHS trusts were among those listed.

❓ So how do companies end up underpaying?

The causes are worth noting, because most weren't deliberate but were down to miscalculations and incorrect processes, including:

- Deductions that reduced pay below the minimum, such as salary sacrifice schemes, dress codes or childcare costs. B&Q underpaid over 4,500 staff due to miscalculations surrounding geographical pay allowances, while NHS trusts faced issues tied to non-tax-deductible salary sacrifice schemes, such as childcare vouchers, where deductions reduced gross pay below statutory minimum thresholds.
- Unpaid working time, including early starts, late finishes and rounded clock-in times.
- Missing a pay increase when a worker had a birthday or when rates rose in April.
- Technical differences in how payroll regulations were applied, as Five Guys reported when its errors were identified during an HMRC review.

What employers can do to stay compliant:
1. Audit gross vs. effective pay – Regularly check whether pay still meets statutory minimums once deductions have been applied, not just before them.
2. Account for every minute worked – Make sure mandatory setup time, briefings and handovers are recorded and paid, not treated as unpaid extras.
3. Review your allowance logic – Confirm whether location or shift premiums actually count towards NMW calculations under current rules, rather than assuming they do.
4. Build limits into salary sacrifice schemes – Set automatic caps so an employee's take-home pay can't accidentally fall below the threshold.

The Fair Work Agency treats technical errors with the same seriousness as deliberate underpayment. Regular audits of your pay mechanics aren't just good practice, they protect your workforce and your reputation as an employer.

If you want to review your current setups against statutory rules get in touch at [email protected].

Fair Work Agency names and shames 658 employers including some NHS trusts for national minimum wage (NMW) underpayments.

28/08/2026

With autumn fast approaching and further employment legislation changes on the horizon (in addition to the significant updates introduced in April around statutory sick pay, day-one paternity rights, and extended tribunal time limits) an out of date handbook can leave gaps in protection for your business and confusion for your team.

Now is the perfect time to refresh your handbook and make sure it fully reflects all the latest rights and legal obligations.

At Saltwater HR, we offer handbooks to suit every business and budget:

📘 Essential Handbooks – covering the core policies every business needs, written in plain English
📗 Branded Handbooks – your policies, your tone of voice, your look and feel
📙 Culture Books – a magazine style, online hosted handbook that brings your values, benefits and personality to life.

Whether you need a simple compliance refresh or a complete culture showcase, we can help you find the right fit.

If your handbook hasn't been reviewed in the last 12 months, now's the time.

[Photo by Tamas Pap on Unsplash]

10/07/2026

The face we make when a client tells us they don't have right to work checks in place for their workers.

It is a scenario encountered more often than it should be, leaving businesses exposed to severe and unnecessary risks. Every UK employer has to check someone's legally allowed to work. No exceptions for size, sector or how long someone's been in the business.

The checks should be done before the worker starts working for you but if they weren't done then, do it now and get the evidence on file!

You can do this a few ways: check original documents in person, run an online check with their share code, or use a Digital Verification Service where it applies. Whatever method you pick, keep a record of it, and if someone's permission to work has an expiry date, put a reminder in the diary for a follow-up check before it runs out.

Do this properly and you're covered even if it turns out later the person wasn't eligible.

Skip it or get it wrong, and the fines are not small. Up to £45,000 per worker for a first breach, up to £60,000 for a repeat one. If someone's knowingly employed without the right to work, that's a criminal matter too, with unlimited fines and up to five years in prison on the table. And this is per worker!

If you're not sure your checks would hold up under scrutiny, now's the time to look, not after a letter from the Home Office turns up.

Want help getting the process set up, let us know and we're happy to help.

15/06/2026

Every small business owner will recognise the situations that come up in a working week.

Someone arrives late one too many times, a team member seems tired and disengaged, a disagreement between colleagues needs sorting out before it affects the wider team.

None of these things are unusual, but how they are handled often makes the difference between a quick conversation and a much bigger problem down the line.

At Saltwater HR, we work with businesses to build the structures, policies and people practices to help them manage these everyday issues with confidence, so the small stuff stays small and the team can focus on what matters.

If you are facing a tricky situation with a member of staff and are not sure where to start, we are happy to talk it through. A quick chat can often save a lot of stress later on.

10/06/2026

Is your business ready for the next crisis?

Five years on from COVID, many businesses have moved on from their pandemic protocols. But if a similar situation hit tomorrow, would you know exactly how to manage your team?

And it's not just pandemics to think about.

▪️ What if your premises flooded or had a fire?
▪️What if a key member of staff was suddenly absent for weeks?
▪️What if a cyber attack took your systems down overnight?
▪️What if severe weather cut your power and internet for days?

These things happen to businesses every day. And most of the time, they happen without warning.

During COVID, businesses were faced with complex people challenges almost overnight, with little time to prepare. Remote working, furlough, health and safety, keeping teams informed and supported. For many businesses it was an incredibly stressful time.

The good news is you don't have to start from scratch again.

At Saltwater HR we work with businesses to make sure their people processes are ready for whatever comes next. That might mean reviewing your existing policies to make sure they still reflect how your business operates today. It might mean carrying out a full HR audit to check your systems and processes are fit for purpose. Or it might mean working through your operational contingency plans together to identify gaps before they become problems.

Whatever stage you're at, we can help you build a clearer picture of where you stand and what needs attention.

If you're not sure where to start, get in touch. We'd love to help.

(Photo by Gary Butterfield on Unsplash)

05/06/2026

When Bolt's CEO fired his entire HR team, it made headlines. What got less attention was what he did next.

He replaced them with a leaner people operations team, focused on compliance, employee support, and training. The goal was to reduce inefficiencies and build a high-performing team. His argument was that traditional HR was the wrong energy and format, and he wanted a leaner and more agile people management model.

This is operational HR and for small businesses, it is critical to success.

Without operational HR, managers struggle to handle people issues because nobody has ever shown them how. Problems that should be dealt with early are ignored until they become expensive, because without a clear process to pick them up, it is easier to do nothing. New starters are left to figure things out on their own as there is no induction plan in place. Absence goes unmanaged because nobody is tracking it and managers don't know what they're entitled to say or do. Performance conversations don't happen because without a framework for having them fairly, most managers will avoid them altogether. When something inevitably goes wrong, there is no process to fall back on.

Operational HR is the foundation that stops all of this. It is not about creating bureaucracy and it's not just about policies. It is about understanding where things are breaking down, putting the right processes in place, and equipping the people who already work in your business to manage their teams with confidence. That is their job, it shouldn't need to be HR's.

At Saltwater HR, this is what we do. We carry out gap analyses to understand where processes are missing or failing. We identify training needs. We build the foundations. And then we help your managers own it.

Without the foundations, you cannot build and you cannot scale. And anyone who tells you differently is lying to you...

04/06/2026

The right automation can give you hours of your week back. The wrong kind just creates new problems 🤷‍♀️ There's a lot of noise right now about automation and AI, and if you're a business owner it can feel overwhelming trying to work out what's actually worth your time. So let's make it practical.

For a business of 10 to 50 people, the right tools can make a real difference across a few key areas. HR platforms that handle onboarding, absence tracking and performance reviews so things actually happen on time. Payroll and finance tools that remove manual processing and the errors that come with it. Project management software that brings clarity to who owns what, which matters more and more as your team grows. None of these are revolutionary on their own, but collectively they can free up a significant amount of time every single week.

The problem we see most often is businesses jumping straight to a solution before they've properly defined the problem. Something looks great in a demo, the subscription gets signed off, and six months later the team are working around it rather than with it.

Getting it right means three things. Proper scoping before you commit to anything, so you're solving the right problem. Genuine implementation support so your team actually uses it properly. And regular review to make sure it's still doing what it's supposed to be doing, because businesses change and technology should keep up.

At Saltwater HR we help clients with all three stages. If you're thinking about where automation could make a real difference in your business, we'd love to have a practical conversation about it.

01/06/2026

Promoting a top performer into a management role always feels like the natural next step. It rewards their hard work and puts someone you already trust into a position of responsibility.

But often a shift occurs shortly after. Deadlines start to slip, team morale feels slightly off, and your new manager looks completely overwhelmed.

It is a stressful situation, but it is rarely their fault. Being brilliant at a technical job and being brilliant at managing people require completely different skill sets. Most growing businesses simply do not have the time or resources to bridge that gap, and often do not realise training is needed until the cracks start to show. As an owner, you end up stuck in the middle, playing referee when you should be focusing on scaling.

For businesses with 10 to 50 employees, this is one of the most common hurdles we see, but it is entirely fixable. We work directly with founders to spot these gaps, provide practical support for your new managers, and help you build a self-sufficient team culture. You do not need a massive internal HR department to fix this; you just need the right external support at the right moment.

If you are feeling the strain of managing your managers, we would love to have a chat about how we can take that weight off your shoulders.

29/05/2026

Growth is something to celebrate, and when a business scales quickly it's usually a sign that something is going right. But HR foundations don't always keep pace with that growth, and it's only when businesses stop and look back that they realise how much has been left undone.

Recently we've had a number of businesses come to us who are facing a people challenge and have realised, often at the worst possible moment, that they don't have the right documentation in place One is facing a potential grievance and has realised there's no paperwork or process to fall back on. Another operates seasonally and hasn't got return to work checks in place or contracts for their employees.

It's not negligence, it's just the reality of running and growing a business where your focus is, quite rightly, on the day to day. The paperwork gets pushed back, and then further back, until something happens that makes it impossible to ignore. The problem is that at this point you are fire fighting and it becomes harder (and potentially more costly). Another contacted us after trying to enforce garden leave and protect confidential information when a member of staff left, only to discover that the contract template they had been using contained none of the clauses they were relying on.

The Employment Rights Act 2025 introduces significant changes to the unfair dismissal framework, effective from 1 January 2027. From that point, employees will be able to claim unfair dismissal after just six months in post rather than the current two years, and the cap on compensation is being removed. That means anyone you hire from July this year onwards will have that protection from day one of the Act, and if a dismissal is challenged and the right processes haven't been followed, there will be no cap on what a tribunal could award against you.

Getting the right foundations in place doesn't have to be a huge undertaking, and it's much easier to do it before a problem arises than after. If you know things need sorting but aren't sure where to begin, we'd love to help. A conversation costs nothing.

Get in touch at

Saltwater HR offers small businesses personal, practical HR support - direct contact with an experienced consultant, not a call centre. Based in Chichester, we help startups and SMEs across the UK with compliant, people-focused HR, recruitment and performance solutions that work in the real world.

19/05/2026

What's the culture really like in your company? Do you actually know?

Not what it says on your website, or what you tell candidates at interview but what your people genuinely think and feel about working for you day to day.

Most business owners would say they have a good sense of it. But the truth is, there's often a gap between what leaders believe and what employees experience. And that gap can be costly.

The good news - you have two really powerful tools to close it. The problem is most businesses are either not using them, or not using them well.

Exit interviews tell you why people left. Stay interviews tell you why people stay and crucially, what might make them leave. Used together, they give you a honest, rounded picture of your culture from the people who know it best.

When someone hands in their notice, that conversation can reveal things your current team won't say out loud; about management, workload, and what's really going on day to day. But that insight is wasted if it sits in a folder and gathers dust. Look for patterns. Ask questions even if you might not like the answers. And actually make changes.

Don't wait for a resignation to start listening though. A simple stay interview ("What do you look forward to coming to work for?" or "Is there anything that would make you consider leaving?") can be just as eye-opening, and it shows your team you're paying attention before there's a problem.

So when did you last have either of these conversations? If the answer is never, it might be time to start.

Feel free to reach out if you'd like templates or advice on how to hold these types of conversation.