The sought after Large HR Consultancy of the Year award was picked up by Progeny, which impressed the judges with a long-term engagement project that has shown marked improvements, demonstrating a clear alignment of individual and business goals. We profile the winner and the work of the other shortlisted firms in this particularly competitive category.

WINNER

Progeny

Progeny client Flowmax Limited is an industrial holding company with a unique structure comprising 12 separate small and medium-sized owner-run enterprises. Progeny began working with Flowmax in January 2018 and has supported it in one of their key objectives, to grow through acquisition. Over the past five years, it has grown from owning eight companies to the current structure of 12, so creating a unified approach to employee engagement across all businesses was essential.

Project Engage was conceived in July 2019 and is a long-term, strategic project, encompassing a number of separate initiatives, all focusing on creating a common framework for people related activities, while acknowledging, valuing and maintaining individual business cultures. This type of holistic and cohesive approach to measuring and improving employee engagement throughout a number of separate group organisations is rare, especially for individual enterprises of this size (some have fewer than 10 employees).

Prior to establishing Project Engage, the businesses were disparate, with a disjointed, ad-hoc, reactionary approach to people related activities. Our initiative creates a “golden thread” running through all businesses, via a common framework to achieve the level of insight required to fully support and develop employee engagement.

Progeny has worked collaboratively with Flowmax to develop a long-term strategic employee engagement plan, that is continually being assessed and developed to ensure it meets the evolving needs of the business.

Engagement survey results for business leaders since the introduction of annual one-to-one sessions show a marked increase in positive responses on role, specifically clarity of objectives and the link to business strategy. The leadership development programme has a community of 35 current and future leaders who are actively engaging and sharing experiences.

The most positive result across all businesses in 2022 was in response to the statement ‘I understand how my role contributes to the Company’s success’. 92% of employees were in agreement, demonstrating an alignment to business goals and clear understanding of the important role each individual plays at their respective organisation.

RUNNERS-UP

Civil Service HR Casework in partnership with MatchFit

The CSHR Casework team is a 170-strong group of HR professionals supporting over 45 government departments: 38% of the Civil Service with complex HR issues. MatchFit is a fully integrated external strategic L&D partner focusing on creating sustainable high-performing working environments. Faced with the need to tackle an increase in grievances and other negative HR trends, the CSHR Casework Team and MatchFit jointly created HR Technical Consultancy (HRTC).

By deeply analysing and understanding HR trends, uncovering, and tackling, the root causes of behavioural shortcomings among  management and staff, the HRTC supports Civil Service departments in creating sustainable high-performing environments. The HRTC shifts cultures and builds capability and confidence, while also installing robust HR processes that deal with complex HR cases.

Prior to HRTC, the wider CSHR casework team primarily focused on supporting departmental managers with a broad range of HR issues, including grievances, sickness/absence management and formal disciplinary processes. This struggled to deliver a sustainable change. It was clear a ground-breaking solution needed to be found.

The team initially works to audit existing HR issues and identify key trends. A dedicated single point of contact from the HRTC for HR technical issues provides expert HR case management advice for all HR cases. This creates more technically robust HR case management that better accounts for the organisation’s risk appetite and business needs. Clients benefit from a professional HR framework with vigorous HR practices and processes, minimising mistakes when handling cases and increasing management confidence and capability to eventually take over this process themselves.

The HRTC is consistently measured to demonstrate clear and tangible returns on investment. As a result of its success CSHR Casework is now recruiting permanent full-time HR technical consultants to deliver the programme more widely across the Civil Service.

HR Solutions

HR Solutions provides outsourced HR support to more than 1,000 clients nationwide across a wide range of industry sectors including financial services, charities, medical, hospitality, industrial, media and technology.

Clients benefit from services including a HR health check, bespoke documentation, employment advice, and a dedicated, experienced HR consultant of their own.

Team members have wide and varied experience and are passionate about providing the best HR, health and safety and employment advice. The firm prides itself on customer excellence, and regularly achieves Feefo scores of 4.8-4.9 stars.

For one client, HR Solutions carried out a strategic HR audit and onsite SWOT analysis. It surveyed the senior team to find out what they wanted from a people strategy and created the strategy with six clear streams to implement over a three-year period. These included succession planning, talent management, appraisals linked to key performance indicators, engagement and communication and a learning and development plan. HR Solutions provided a dedicated expert outsourced HR service for the team so that they were able to effectively implement the people plan with guided support to help transform the organisation through its people.

Meanwhile, another client made the difficult decision to close which meant all staff being made redundant. HR Solutions produced a project proposal which set out the requirements for the process to run smoothly and how it could assist the client at each stage to fulfil their needs. As there was no in-house HR team, HR Solutions spent time explaining all legally compliant processes to follow in stages, inclusive of the collective consultation process and election of employee representatives due to the numbers involved and produced a timeline for its ExCo to review.

For a transport operator client, HR Solutions provided clear advice on TUPE and employment law legislation and made it aware of any potential challenges. It ensured the firm had a robust absence management process in place for both long and short-term sickness absence.

Peninsula Business Services

In October 2022 the Co-op awarded Peninsula the contract to provide HR and employment law advice, and to manage early conciliation matters, for all food stores, logistics, funeral care, and head office employees at the Co-op. As one of the world’s largest consumer co-operatives with over 69,700 employees, the Co-op manages tens of thousands of employee relations (ER) support and advice cases every year.

The Co-op were looking at creating a partnership to optimise the way in which they handled ER queries to achieve maximum value, from both a cost and service delivery perspective. The one-stop-shop ER services teams were deeply embedded within the Co-op’s ways of working. As such, it was vital that any new partner could set themselves within the Co-op in the same way, building a strong, sustainable relationship which provided high quality practical ER advice, and improved the ER capabilities of team leaders and managers across the Co-op’s entire estate.

The partnership and service went live with Peninsula on 16th December 2022. Throughout this time TUPE consultations took place with Co-op colleagues affected by the partnership. From October to December 2022, Peninsula had an account manager involved throughout, representatives from the advisory corporate department were involved day to day, a development manager in relation to the development of the technology, and senior colleagues from the legal services team were also involved in the TUPE consultation process.

As this was the first time that the Co-op’s ER Service had been outsourced, this was a surprise for the employees, particularly those with many years of service at the Co-op and therefore it needed to be approached with sensitivity. Peninsula took this on board and were able to be agile in relation to the consultations. Peninsula drew on experienced and senior managers from its legal services department, as well as managers from the advisory department to carry out the consultation meetings at dates and times to suit the Co-op.

By entering into a partnership with Peninsula, the Co-op is able to focus on its core objectives while being confident that staff will receive the highest quality ER support available. Peninsula provides a fully outsourced team of dedicated employees, accessible via a 24/7/365 freephone service and a dedicated Co-op ER inbox. Peninsula has a dedicated resource planning team, monitoring work levels, telephony and allocating work to individual consultants. The firm has seen numerous compliments and 5-star reviews for its service directly from Co-op management and since December Peninsula has also partnered with the Co-op on several projects where it has been able to provide suggestions to streamline and improve.

Vero HR

With a focus on personal service, Vero combines HR consultancy with other value-adding people services, offering clients a one-stop-shop for managing their wider HR activities. The company delivers professional HR outsourcing, consultancy, and added-value people services to organisations across the UK and internationally.

In November 2002 a large UK-based communications solutions company, approached Vero as it was falling victim to the single point of failure risk within their internal HR team. With their HR assistant on maternity leave and the cover a number of weeks from starting, their HR manager left at short notice, leaving a two-person gap in a three-person team. The immediate impact was a lack of any HR administration cover and day-to-day operational HR support. It also needed assistance with recruiting replacement team members.

Having previously dealt with the client, Vero HR was familiar with their organisation, their ways of working and had an in-depth knowledge of its HR policies and processes. Vero HR proposed an immediate solution; rearranging work activity and redeploying staff from other areas of the business to provide dedicated administrative support so the client could avoid significant disruption to their business. This meant sacrificing our own business priorities by delaying internal developments to provide a temporary solution to keep our client’s organisation working. Furthermore, Vero provided expert recruitment co-ordination support for the high-volume, multi-discipline vacancies across its entire business, including applicant tracking, screening and communicating with candidates and hiring managers.

The client was delighted with Vero’s responsiveness, citing its short turnaround time for all elements of the project and anticipated 5-8% cost saving for each of their replacement hires as specific KPIs they were happy with. Being able to switch on Vero’s HR administration support within 48 hours meant the client had no notable dip in service for its employees.

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