Dynamic HR Services

Dynamic HR Services I am your unconventional HR and people strategy consultant! Working to increase your profit through innovative HR and people-practices.

Call me today and find out how I can help your business stand out from your competitors - 020 8798 3470 I do things differently

Straight up - I have an unconventional approach to HR! I believe that too many processes, procedures and policies bog down a company and hinder its growth. If a process, procedure or policy isn’t required by law, doesn’t contribute to a company’s growth or pro

fit, there’s generally no need for it. I like to keep things simple. This enables a company to remain flexible and evolve quickly and easily when necessary. When it comes to people problems (for example naughty employees and poor performers) and HR strategy I’ll rarely tell a client 'you can't do that'. I prefer to come up with a range of dynamic options for them depending on the circumstances and talk them through the pros and cons of those different solutions. I won’t ‘sit on the fence’, I’ll happily say which option I recommend and why! I love to find innovative solutions to HR or people problems; however, I don’t just work on contracts, policies and disciplinaries. I work on a strategic level, looking at a business as a living and breathing entity. People are the lifeblood of that entity and I love nothing more than helping a company grow, innovate and profit with their employees being central to that. That’s where the name ‘Dynamic HR’ comes in. I’m

I'm pretty down-to-earth and I'm led by my clients' cultures and values. I believe in great customer service. I listen to your queries, I provide you with useful materials to refer to and I love to solve problems! I don't believe in tying anyone into onerous contracts. I’m happy to work on a retained basis or pay as you go. Whatever suits your business works for me. Finally, I'm here to help my clients' businesses be the best that they can be, through their people and I have plenty of quirky and modern ways to keep you one step ahead of your competitors! Disclaimer: Information on our page is for guidance, ideas, and assistance only. It is not intended either as a substitute for professional advice or judgement or to provide legal or other advice with respect to particular circumstances.

22/05/2026

Here's a realistic picture of where a lot of small businesses are right now.

Hiring decisions made on instinct. Probation periods that drift and get extended without any formal structure. Performance conversations that are too vague to be evidenced. Holiday records that sort of make sense if nobody looks too hard. Sickness absence managed inconsistently. Statutory processes followed in a rough approximation of how they should work.

That has been survivable — just about — for a long time.

It is becoming far less survivable.

The combination of higher employer costs, expanded employee rights, lower barriers to bring employment claims, and active enforcement agencies means the operating environment for small businesses has genuinely changed.

The businesses that get caught out won't necessarily have done anything with bad intentions. They'll just have kept doing things the way they always did, in an environment that no longer accommodates that approach.

You don't need to become a corporate machine. You don't need a dedicated HR department. But you do need to know what your legal obligations are, have the right documents in place, and handle people decisions in a way that's consistent and evidenced.

That's what I'm here for.

If any of this has landed, let's talk.

The pace of employment law change over the past 18 months has been significant — and more is coming.Here's what small bu...
21/05/2026

The pace of employment law change over the past 18 months has been significant — and more is coming.

Here's what small businesses should have on their radar right now:

Unfair dismissal protection is expected to extend from two years to six months — meaning your window to make a clean departure decision during employment is shrinking considerably.

Day one rights are expanding. Bereaved Partner's Paternity Leave (BPPL) is already in force, giving employees a right to up to 52 weeks' leave from their first day in certain circumstances.

Holiday pay record-keeping is now subject to enforcement. The Fair Work Agency has powers to check your records and penalise businesses where entitlements and calculations can't be properly evidenced.

The duty to prevent sexual harassment is now a proactive legal obligation — not just a reactive one.

Taken together, this is a genuinely significant shift in the employment law landscape. The businesses that navigate it well won't necessarily be the largest or the best-resourced. They'll be the ones that got properly informed and acted early.

If you're not sure where you stand on any of the above, let's have a conversation.

20/05/2026

Most businesses put a reasonable amount of effort into hiring — and then the new hire starts, and the induction is basically "here's your laptop, here's the kitchen, here's the Slack channel."

This is where so many people problems start.

A proper induction isn't just about being welcoming. It's about setting the foundation for everything that comes after: clear expectations, an understanding of how the business operates, introductions to the right people, and a structured way of assessing whether things are going well in those early weeks.

When that foundation is missing, new hires spend the first few months figuring things out by trial and error. Standards drift because nobody clearly defined them. And by the time it becomes apparent that something isn't working, weeks or months have passed with no documentation, no formal review conversations, and no clear evidence base.

A structured first 90 days — with regular check-ins, documented conversations, and clear milestones — gives you a much stronger position if things do go wrong. And it significantly increases the chances that they don't.

I hear this from business owners occasionally: "We're only small, we don't really need HR."I understand the instinct. Bu...
19/05/2026

I hear this from business owners occasionally: "We're only small, we don't really need HR."

I understand the instinct. But the businesses that say this are often the ones most at risk.

Because small businesses typically don't have the internal knowledge to handle a grievance properly, conduct a fair disciplinary process, or navigate an absence management situation. They improvise. And when it goes wrong — and eventually it does — the commercial and legal consequences fall entirely on the business owner.

Employment tribunal fees were abolished for claimants in 2017. The bar to bring a claim against you is very low. And the average cost of defending even a straightforward claim, when you factor in management time, legal fees and potential compensation, runs well into thousands.

HR support for a small business isn't a luxury. It's a very practical form of risk management.

You insure your premises. You insure your vehicles. The people decisions you make every single day carry significant financial risk too — and most small businesses have absolutely nothing in place to manage it.

18/05/2026

I want to walk through what actually happens — in practical, commercial terms — when a business doesn't use probation properly.

Month one: the new hire seems fine. There are a few things you're not sure about, but it's early days. You give it time.

Month two: the doubts are growing. Performance isn't quite where you expected. But there's been no formal review, no documented conversation, no clarity on what success in the role actually looks like.

Month three: you're fairly certain this isn't working. But you're busy, it feels awkward, and you keep thinking you should give it a bit longer.

Month four or five: you're now confident they're not right for the role. But you've had no structured probation reviews, no written warnings, no documented performance concerns. Your window to make a clean, low-risk decision is closing rapidly.

Month six: you're at the end of probation. You either have to extend it formally — with proper documentation and a clear improvement plan — or you're entering the unfair dismissal risk window with someone you already knew wasn't right three months ago.

This is entirely avoidable.

Probation works when you treat it as a real assessment period with clear expectations, honest review conversations, and the confidence to make a call early if it's not working.

A grievance lands on your desk.Your first instinct is probably to deal with it quickly and make it go away. Possibly by ...
13/05/2026

A grievance lands on your desk.

Your first instinct is probably to deal with it quickly and make it go away. Possibly by having an informal chat, trying to smooth things over, and hoping it resolves itself.

Here's why that instinct will cost you.

A grievance is a formal complaint. The moment an employee raises one in writing, you are legally expected to deal with it properly, following a reasonable and documented procedure. If you don't, and the matter escalates, your failure to handle it correctly becomes part of the claim.

What "properly" looks like: acknowledge the grievance promptly, investigate it fairly, hold a formal meeting, give the employee the right to be accompanied, communicate the outcome in writing, and offer the right of appeal.

This isn't about being formal for the sake of it. It's about being able to demonstrate, if challenged, that you took the matter seriously and dealt with it consistently.

The businesses that handle grievances badly rarely have bad intentions. They just don't have a clear process — so they improvise, and it unravels.

12/05/2026

Of all the people management issues I work with, sickness absence is the one most consistently handled badly.

Not because business owners don't care. But because it feels awkward to question someone's health, and nobody wants to come across as unsympathetic.

So instead, they do nothing. They accept every absence without question. They fail to spot patterns. And before they know it, they've got a significant absence problem that's genuinely hard to address — partly because they have no documentation from the previous months.

Here's the reality: managing sickness absence properly is not about being heartless. It's about being consistent.

That means having return-to-work conversations after every absence — not as an interrogation, but as a standard part of how your business operates. It means spotting patterns, like absences that cluster around Mondays or particular team pressures. And it means addressing those patterns early, in a supportive but honest way, before they become embedded.

If you treat every absence identically regardless of pattern or context, you're not being kind — you're creating a system where absence carries no accountability. And that affects everyone in your team.

Performance management gets talked about like it's some complex, dangerous minefield that only HR specialists can naviga...
11/05/2026

Performance management gets talked about like it's some complex, dangerous minefield that only HR specialists can navigate.

It isn't.

The basics are genuinely straightforward: be clear about what you expect, have honest conversations when those expectations aren't being met, keep a record of what's been discussed, and give people a reasonable opportunity to improve.

That's the essence of it.

The reason it becomes complicated — and the reason businesses end up in tribunal — is because they skip all of that and jump straight to a decision. Or they have vague conversations that were never documented. Or they set expectations so loosely that nobody can agree on what was actually said.

Good performance management is mostly just good communication with a paper trail.

If you've got a performance issue on your hands right now, the first question to ask is: have you actually told them, clearly and specifically, what good looks like — and what isn't working?

If the honest answer is no, start there.

08/05/2026

Founders are decisive people. They make commercial calls. They take risks. They move quickly when something isn't working.

Except when it comes to people.

When it comes to people decisions, everything slows down. They second-guess themselves, soften things, and decide to wait.

Part of that is because people decisions feel heavier than commercial ones. Part of it is because the employment landscape is genuinely daunting right now and people are more cautious about getting it wrong.

But here's what I've noticed: the caution that's supposed to reduce risk is often increasing it.

The longer you leave a people problem unaddressed, the harder it becomes to deal with. And the more it affects the rest of your team — who can see exactly what's going on and are drawing their own conclusions about your standards and your leadership.

Your team is constantly watching what you tolerate.

I'm not saying go in all guns blazing and make rash decisions. I'm saying trust your judgement, and if something feels off, get proper advice before the problem compounds.

Most of the expensive situations I get called into didn't start as big problems. They started as small decisions that someone kept avoiding.

You're losing your best people. And I'll bet you're blaming it on salary.Sometimes that's the reason. But often it isn't...
07/05/2026

You're losing your best people. And I'll bet you're blaming it on salary.

Sometimes that's the reason. But often it isn't.

More often, your strongest employees are leaving because they're exhausted carrying everyone else — whilst watching the person doing the bare minimum sit comfortably in the same role with no consequence.

High performers have options. They know their worth. And they will not indefinitely prop up a team where standards aren't enforced.

What you tolerate becomes your culture. If average is acceptable, your exceptional people will find somewhere it isn't.

This is a people management problem — not a recruitment problem. And no amount of hiring will fix a retention issue caused by weak standards.

06/05/2026

I hear this constantly from founders — usually when the conversation turns to clearer job expectations, proper contracts, or KPIs: "We don't want to formalise things because we don't want to kill the vibe."

Someone around the table starts worrying that introducing a bit of structure will somehow destroy the magic that got the business off the ground.

Here's what I'll say bluntly: the vibe you're trying to protect is often already dying.

When a company is small, chaos feels exciting. Everyone is grafting, everyone knows roughly what needs doing, and people fill the gaps because they care about the mission.

Then the business grows. More people arrive. Roles blur. One person works their arse off whilst another quietly coasts because nobody has defined what good looks like. Managers avoid difficult conversations because nothing's been formalised.

And slowly the original energy turns into confusion, frustration and quiet resentment.

Then the founder tells me "the culture just isn't what it used to be." Well, of course it isn't. Chaos isn't culture — it's just a lack of structure that people tolerate for a while.

Structure protects culture when it's done properly. Clear expectations mean people understand how to succeed. Proper contracts mean everyone understands the deal. Managers gain the confidence to have honest conversations instead of tiptoeing around problems.

Adding structure doesn't kill the vibe. Letting the place drift into a vague, messy free-for-all eventually does.

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