Buzzing About HR

You’ve got a contract term you regret. Maybe it’s overtime you can’t sustain, enhanced sick pay that keeps biting every winter, or a bonus structure that looked generous when the team was small and now feels ruinous. You’ve heard the “solution” at the golf club: dismiss them and re-engage them on new terms. The problem is that, from October 2026, that move becomes a legal landmine for most employe...

A summer Friday work BBQ can feel harmless right up until it isn’t. One drink too many, an argument in front of clients, a messy taxi story that surfaces secondhand, and by Tuesday you are juggling a complaint, a possible safeguarding concern and a sensitive disclosure without a single written policy to anchor your decisions. We’re talking about the workplace alcohol policy gap most SMEs don’t kno...

That familiar small-business safety net, “they’re under two years so we can let them go”, is about to shrink dramatically. With the Employment Rights Act changes taking effect on 1 July 2026, unfair dismissal protection moves much closer to day one, and a rushed, undocumented exit in month nine can become the expensive problem you never saw coming. We walk through what is actually changing, why th...

Someone on your team used to be unflappable, then suddenly they’re overheated, not sleeping, forgetting things, snapping over tiny issues, and quietly losing confidence. Many managers read that as performance or attitude. We see it for what it often is: perimenopause showing up at work, in a culture that still makes the topic feel awkward to name. We get practical about menopause at work for small...

Someone on your team is still turning up, still delivering, still saying they’re “fine” and yet the spark has gone. That grey zone is where quiet quitting lives, and in a small business it does real damage long before anyone resigns: slower problem solving, lower energy, and a subtle drop in standards that others quietly copy. We’ve both been on the receiving end of it, and we know it’s rarely abo...

A new starter turns up on Monday morning and, before you have even finished the office tour, tells you their baby is due in eight weeks and they want paternity leave. If your first response is to do the rota maths in your head, you’re not alone. The problem is that from April 2026, paternity leave becomes a day one right in the UK, and many small business managers are about to have these conversat...

One of the hardest workplace risks to spot is the person who never complains. We open with “Mark” the dependable grafter who shows up early, takes barely any time off, and quietly carries months of poor sleep, pain, and pressure until he disappears from the business. That story is not rare, and during Men’s Health Week we’re naming the pattern that costs lives and costs small businesses: men often...

Someone hands in their notice, sends a polite email, and casually mentions they have 11 days of holiday left. You open your tracker and realise your “system” is a spreadsheet on someone else’s computer, a trail of emails, and a few approvals buried in WhatsApp. That’s annoying today, but from 6 April 2026 it becomes a legal risk: UK employers must keep annual leave records for every worker for six...

Your kitchen wall says 29 degrees, the Met Office alert pings, and you can feel the mood change at work. Someone goes quiet because they feel rough. Someone else rewrites your dress code with shorts and flip-flops. And at least one person is watching to see whether you notice. Heatwaves at work are not really about temperature, they are about trust. We break down what UK employers actually need to...

That casual “looks fine to me” moment during hiring can become a £60,000 problem long after the person has settled in. We walk through how UK right to work checks actually work in practice, why the Home Office issues civil penalty notices to ordinary small businesses, and how you can be on the hook even when you never knowingly employ someone illegally. The goal is simple: keep your statutory excu...

You've got a vacancy. You've written the job ad. The same job ad you wrote in 2019, with two new bullet points bolted on the front and one removed from the bottom. Five years' experience required. Degree preferred. Industry knowledge essential. Familiarity with the system is desirable. You stick it on Indeed. You wait. 47 applications. Five tick the boxes. You interview three. You h...

You've been noticing. For about three weeks now. She's quieter than usual. Missing a couple of mornings. Apologising for things she hasn't done wrong. Saying "I'm fine" before anyone's actually asked. You've thought about saying something. You've thought about it twice this week. You've talked yourself out of it twice. You don't want to overst...

A polite knock at the door. A woman with ID. From the Fair Work Agency. She'd like to see your records, pay slips, hours worked, holiday taken, contracts, and right to work checks. For everyone you employ. And everyone you've employed in the last six years. She doesn't need a complaint to be there. She just is. The Fair Work Agency launched on 7 April 2026. It can recover six years...

You've been at your desk for seven minutes. You haven't sipped anything yet. Your laptop is still loading. Your inbox is already winning. A payroll question. A WhatsApp sick day with no reason. A "can we have a quick chat?", and we all know what that means. A new starter arrives in five days, and her contract hasn't been sent. Then the phone rings. It's the employee f...

There's a box in the walkway. It's been there for three weeks. Your team member nearly trips over it. They say nothing because the last time someone mentioned something, the list went into a drawer. In the break room, someone's been hunched over since January with back pain they haven't told anyone about. Because it feels like making a fuss. Because no one has ever asked. Your...

The minimum wage went up to £12.71 in April 2026. Your newest team member got a pay rise. Great. But what happened to the person who's been with you for four years? When the floor rises, and nothing else moves, experienced staff notice. They don't always say anything. They start looking. That's wage compression. It's one of the most common retention problems I see after every m...

In this episode of Buzzing About HR, I am doing the debrief that a lot of small business owners needed last week but did not have time to sit down for. The sixth of April 2026 was the biggest single day in UK employment law in a generation. Five things changed at once. Day-one Statutory Sick Pay. Day-one paternity and parental leave. The Fair Work Agency went live. The redundancy protective award...

In this episode of Buzzing About HR , I am talking about day one rights and why they change the rhythm of employment for small businesses. Because day one is no longer just about laptops, logins, uniforms, and trying to remember where that one cable has gone. It is also the point where new starters can ask better questions, challenge unclear processes, and spot very quickly when your paperwork say...

In this episode of Buzzing About HR , we are talking about sickness absence. Not the tidy policy version where everyone follows the rules and no one texts at 6:58am saying they are not coming in. The real small business version. The one where something feels a bit off, but you are not quite sure what you are allowed to say. Because let’s be honest. Most absence issues in SMEs are not about one ser...

In this episode of Buzzing About HR , I am talking about one of the quietest risks sitting inside small businesses right now. Not hackers. Not competitors. Not some dramatic cyber attack. Someone on a deadline, with good intentions, pasting confidential information into AI because they want an email to sound better, a proposal to feel slicker, or a tricky message to be “tidied up”. And that is whe...

If someone says “Can I have a quick word?” and your stomach drops, last week was about grievances. This week is what comes next. Investigations. And this is where most small businesses wobble a bit. Not because you’re doing anything wrong. Because you’re trying to figure it out on the spot, while everyone else is already feeling stressed. In this episode of Buzzing About HR , I walk you through ho...

If someone in your business says, “Can I speak to you privately?”, most leaders feel a small jolt of panic. Are they resigning, raising a grievance, or about to report something serious? In this episode of Buzzing About HR , Kate breaks down whistleblowing in small businesses and how to handle it calmly, legally, and fairly. From the UK legal definition of whistleblowing to the simple scripts mana...

If your phone’s been pinging all morning, you’ve nodded through a meeting while quietly panicking, and you’ve already said “I’ll deal with that later” twice… you’re in the right place. It’s World Hearing Day , so we’re talking about the skill that prevents most HR mini dramas from turning into a full series: proper listening. Not the “uh huh” while you type kind. The kind where you hear what’s sai...

If you have heard the words “Employment Rights Act 2025” and thought, “I’ll deal with that later,” you are not alone. Deadlines that sit a little further away feel manageable. Plenty of time. Nothing urgent. Until it is suddenly urgent and you are trying to untangle years of informal habits in the middle of an emotional people issue. In this episode of Buzzing About HR , Kate breaks down what the...

Sick pay changes are coming fast, and messy sickness processes will feel every bump. In this episode of Buzzing About HR , we unpack what day one SSP, the removal of the lower earnings limit, and the new rate calculation could mean for small businesses, especially if you rely on part-timers, casual hours, or weekend shifts. Then we turn policy into practice with a simple framework managers can use...