Fiona Dukes - Human Resources Services

Case studies

A multi-location Distribution Company asked me to ‘professionalise’ its HR activities and this was achieved through the development of policies, creation of an Employee Handbook, improvement of HR/payroll procedures, and creation of an HR Manual for Managers, outlining their HR responsibilities, with special emphasis on  recruitment and advertising.  I also prepared and delivered training courses on HR skills and coached HR administrators to develop their HR skills further. Ten years later, the company has well established policies and procedures, which comply with the constantly changing employment legislation, and my involvement as a part-time HR Manager/Adviser enables managers to seek advice, as and when they require it.

A self-employed builder dismissed his only employee in the heat of the moment, which resulted in an Employment Tribunal claim.  By using me to deal with this on his behalf, not only was he able to free himself from the worry of dealing with something unfamiliar to him, but he benefited from my knowledge of legislation and tribunal procedures.  The end result was a modest settlement, which he would not have achieved without my help.

After conducting an HR audit in a medium sized Electrical Contractor, I prepared contracts of employment for different groups of employees, drafted various HR forms and created an Employee Handbook which contains detailed terms and conditions and HR policies eg stress, harassment and family friendly issues.  The company now has a sound base of HR policies and I continue to keep them up to date on employment legislation and support them, mostly by telephone and email, when dealing with difficult employee issues such as long term absence, discipline or grievance.

The Managing Director of a PR Company needed advice on handling the termination of employment of another Director.  As a consequence of this and the strong working relationship which ensued, I was retained to prepare contracts of employment and develop HR policies, including maternity, absence, references and exit interviews.  The Managers in the company benefited by having an HR resource available to support them when dealing with difficult staff issues.

An engineering distributor gained a large integrated supply contract with a blue chip company covering 10 locations around the UK.  This involved the transfer of over thirty staff from the blue chip company (the transferor) to the distributor (the transferee) and I managed the smooth transfer of staff by guiding the transferor’s Regional HR Managers through the TUPE Regulations (applicable in mergers/acquisitions/ change of service providers) to ensure that all the consultation procedures were met and the terms and conditions which had to be applied were fully understood by the transferee. In consequence, the transferee was able to focus on the operational issues of the new contract and leave me to handle the HR issues.

I acted as an ad hoc HR Manager for a mail order company for several years until they were sufficiently large enough to justify appointing their own HR Manager.  During my spell with them, I worked with a selected group of employees to design a performance appraisal scheme and trained both Managers and employees in the objectives, procedures and implementation of the resultant scheme.  The scheme continued to thrive year on year and the company benefited from having feedback from employees about their jobs, their training needs and their personal goals.

Two print companies, based 20 miles apart, decided to merge their businesses to form a smaller company.  I guided the Directors through the process of transferring staff from one of the businesses to the new business (TUPE) and handling redundancies – of which they had no experience.  The Directors used my expertise to draft scripts for meetings, prepare letters to staff, clarify terms and conditions, calculate redundancy entitlements – all time consuming activities which they would have had difficulty in addressing without having a detrimental effect on their other priorities.  My involvement alerted them to the rights of employees, protected the company from employment tribunal claims and ensured that the employees were dealt with in a compassionate manner.