The HR Podcast | Built for Business

Should You Cancel the Christmas Party? Managing the Risks Employment claims rise 30% in January — often from Christmas parties. This episode covers the risks, your liability, and how to celebrate safely. Listen now. The Christmas party is one of the most anticipated — and most reliably problematic — events in the workplace calendar. Employment claims rise by as much as 30% in January, often from s...

Side Hustles at Work: Should You Stop Employees Having One? 25% of UK workers now have a side hustle. This episode covers when it's a conflict of interest, when it's a benefit, and what your contracts should say. Listen now. A quarter of UK workers now have a side hustle — and that number is rising. Your instinct might be to shut it down, but a blanket ban could cost you good people. In th...

Can AI Replace Your HR Department? What Businesses Need to Know 55% of UK HR teams already use AI. But can it replace HR entirely? This episode covers what AI does well, where it falls short, and what to do next. Listen now. The question isn't whether AI is coming to HR — it's already here. 55% of UK HR professionals say their organisation uses some form of AI or automation in HR. But &quo...

How to Restructure Without Destroying Your Business Culture 58% of employees say they feel less loyal to their company after a restructure — especially when communication was unclear or poorly handled. That statistic isn't just about the people who leave. It's about the ones who stay, watching how their colleagues are treated and deciding what it tells them about the business they're s...

Why Do People Hate HR? The Reputation Problem and How to Fix It 42% of employees say they don't trust the HR team. That's the finding from a 2023 People Management poll — and if you've spent any time on LinkedIn recently, you'll have seen the sentiment playing out in real time. HR is accused of being the corporate police, of working for management, of hiding behind processes. Some...

Hiring for Culture Fit vs Capability: How to Get the Balance Right 89% of hiring failures are attributed to attitude and culture mismatch — not a lack of technical skill. So how do you hire for culture without just recruiting people who look and think like you? In this episode: whether you can genuinely hire for both, what "culture fit" means versus "culture add," how scorecard...

How to Stop Being a Bottleneck in Your Business If every decision, approval, or sign-off has to go through you, you're not leading — you're blocking. According to McKinsey, 61% of growing businesses cite unclear decision-making structures as a top barrier to scaling. And in most cases, the bottleneck starts at the top. In this episode: why bottlenecks happen in both small and large busines...

How to Choose the Right Employee Benefits for Your Business Over 80% of employees say benefits are a key factor in staying — yet most small businesses offer packages that go unused or weren't designed around what people actually want. Getting benefits right is about choosing deliberately, not adding more. In this episode: where to start with benefits strategy, why focus groups beat surveys, wh...

Do Employee Appraisals Still Work? A Practical Guide Only 14% of employees find appraisals motivating. Yet businesses that replace them with nothing lose the thread entirely — no visibility on performance, no development conversations, no link to pay or progression. In this episode: how appraisals work in practice vs theory, why linking performance to pay gives the process meaning, why personal de...

Can You Make Your Team Return to the Office? What UK Employers Need to Know The return to office debate is back. Amazon, Dell, and others have mandated it. Some businesses are going fully remote. Most are in the middle and not sure where they stand legally or practically. Before you issue a policy, there's a lot to work through: what your contracts say, whether custom and practice changes thin...

Why Can't We Just Fire Them? A Practical Guide to Employee Dismissal "Why can't we just fire them?" is one of the most common questions HR gets — and it almost always comes from genuine frustration. The answer isn't always no. Sometimes you can. But there are three types of cost — legal, cultural, and moral — and most business owners only consider one of them. In this episode...