Merger and acquisition support
How do you manage the people aspects of buying another business? What people challenges will business integration bring? How will you manage the employment law requirements of managing an acquisition? Not sure? Call Blue Star Human Resources who are seasoned HR practitioners with first-hand, recent experience of managing the people aspects of large-scale M&A activity across the UK. Blue Star Human Resources can work with you and your management team to make sure that optimum value is achieved from your merger or acquisition. Remember in cases where an M&A fails stats show it’s usually down to poor management of the people issues.
Organisational change
Has your business reached the stage where it needs to change to grow? Is your organisational structure holding the business back? Do you need to change your organisation structure to meet customer requirements? Do you need to change the roles your staff are employed in? If so, Blue Star Human Resources can help you re-think how the business is structured and implement the change.
People planning
What is your business plan for the next 5 years/ 3 years/ 1 year/ 6 months? Do you have one? Do you need one? You know your business inside out so what value does a business plan have?
Business planning is good discipline: it’s a method of capturing your ideas and communicating business progress. If you employ people they may not have an intuitive insight and understanding of what the business needs to achieve to remain successful. Your bank manager and accountant love to see a plan, it helps to demonstrate that you are managing the business and understand the market place in which you operate.
A people plan integrated into your business plan can help to set out how you will achieve your targets. This will include target staff numbers, skills, pay and reward structure, management structure, impact on your workforce from new technology, changes in market conditions and employment legislation.
Blue Star Human Resources will work with you to capture these issues and develop these into an action plan to manage the business through the challenges identified. With robust, flexible HR policies and practices in place you will be ahead of the game having planned and budgeted ahead. Blue Star Human Resources appreciates the different needs of large organisations with 1000’s of staff and those of smaller businesses where often one or two staff are critical to the success of the business.
TUPE
The Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment) Regulations may apply when work previously undertaken within one business is transferred to another. The people transferring with the work may be subject to the TUPE Regulations. This basically means that their existing terms and conditions of employment transfer from one employment to the other. However, the law in this area is complex. When and where a TUPE transfer occurs is sometimes difficult to ascertain. If TUPE does apply, there is then the matter of how the transfer is carried out to fully comply with the law. What if the new employer wants to change terms and conditions of employment after the transfer takes place? Is there any continuing potential liability on the part of the old employer?
We have experience in this area and can therefore help you to avoid the many pitfalls.
Succession planning
This is the classic ‘what happens when Chris falls under the bus’ scenario. Is your business geared up to fill a vacancy when it arises unexpectedly? Some of your key people may be on short notice periods. What happens if they suddenly decide to leave? Do you have someone ready and available to fill their shoes? Blue Star Human Resources can help by putting in place a simple and effective succession planning approach in your business that also links in with your personal development planning process.
Culture and environment
Has your business stood still whilst the market has changed? Are competitors stealing a march on you? Could productivity be better? Do you want to change your business to be really successful? Do you need to change your business culture? If the answer to any of these questions is “yes”, Blue Star Human Resources can help you. Working with you and your management team, Blue Star Human Resources’ skilled practitioners can help to raise the bar in your organisation.
Staff surveys
How do you know what staff feel about working for you? You can ask them of course but can you rely on the answer. What might they be saying behind your back? Staff surveys are a good way of asking people what they think and focus attention on key issues. A series of such surveys can track views over time to see whether improvements are being made. But what questions do you ask? How do you analyse the results? What do you do with the results?
It’s often better for such surveys to be carried out externally. They can be seen as more credible. We can manage the whole process for you from identifying the questions you want to ask, implementing the survey, and discussing the outcome with you and the actions you might want to take.
Reward strategy
Whilst most managers will recognise that reward is important, few have a reward strategy in place. The strategy is important in determining not only how base pay is to be established and reviewed but also how any bonus system will work and how other forms of reward are to be used as part of the overall, strategy. Is the desire to adopt a total reward approach where all the elements of reward right down to training and development expenditure are reflected in the overall package? Is there a desire to link reward with other HR factors such as rates of sickness absence? How are pensions reflected in the overall reward structure and is the current pension strategy right for the business?
We can work with you to consider all of the above factors to determine the right overall reward strategy for your business.