Originally posted April 2014

When I arrived at a client recently, the receptionist greeted me cheerily with “hello Simon, nice to see you. I suppose this means we’ve got a staff problem!”

Now it’s true that for many smaller businesses, an “HR issue” means a problem with an employee – whether it’s sickness, disciplinary, work performance or something else. And it’s also true that in a small business these individual issues take on a much greater significance than in the large corporate world. Making sure they are handled correctly is important.

But it’s worth remembering that HR is “not just there for the nasty things in life”. Taking positive HR initiatives can help your business to grow and be more successful. For example in recent months I’ve worked with organisations to:

• Support new first line managers to understand and develop their managerial roles
• Integrate their HR systems into their quality management, allowing them to tender against much larger competitors
• Review recruitment processes, enabling them to attract better quality candidates
• Review their pay and benefits package, helping them to retain key staff.
• Run team building sessions for work teams that weren’t gelling

So while I’m always happy to troubleshoot for a client, it’s very satisfying to help a business succeed by developing the people it employs.

If you’d like more information, please don’t hesitate to drop me an email or give me a ring. And as Ariadne Associates are accredited with both Growth Vouchers and Big Assist, as well as being Knowsley Council’s approved HR provider for its Business Growth programme, you may be able to get support with the costs