Redundancies

Making redundancies within an organisation is a very difficult decision to make and it can be even more difficult to deliver the news to employees. In smaller to medium sized organisations there is often no specialised HR professional, and with such a sensitive, but legally imperative issue, you need to be absolutely certain that you are working within the realms of Employment Law. The potential cost to the business if steps taken are not exactly as they should be are astounding.

Pat Colden of Colden HR works closely with Custard Recruitment and they can help your business to achieve the most from your greatest asset – your employees. Colden HR can alleviate the HR pressures faced by your business by providing a professional service tailored to suit you if you do not have a dedicated HR team or have one but require some additional specialist support – maybe for specific projects or at time of high demand.

Their services can be provided on a fully outsourced retained basis, tailored to meet the size, nature and culture of your organisation or on a project basis to meet your specific HR needs as and when they arise.

Colden HR offer a range of services, all tailored to meet your business needs.

HR Advice & Guidance

• Updates on changing employment law
• Recruitment, Selection & Induction
• Employee Relations
• Employee Consultation and Communication
• Grievance & Disciplinary
• Performance Management & Appraisal
• Absence Management
• Staff Development
• Redundancy, Restructuring & change management
• Equal Opportunities & Diversity
• Workplace Mediation
• Advice on complex staffing issues affecting organisational growth

Leadership of Specific HR Projects

• Business restructuring
• Redundancy
• Change Management
• Organisational Development
• System Development
• Transfer of Undertakings (TUPE)
• Employee Surveys
• Analysing & improving staff turnover, absence & sickness
• Investors in People Accreditation
• Development of HR documentation
• Contracts of Employment
• Employee Handbooks
• HR Policies & Procedures
• Guidance for Managers
• Letters required to support the ongoing management of people issues

Tailored Management and Staff Development Programmes

• Leadership and Management Skills
• Managing Disciplinary and Grievance
• Performance Management and Appraisal
• Equality and Diversity
• Recruitment and Selection

Colden HR is led and managed by Patricia Colden, a qualified HR professional with more than 15 years experience in strategic human resource management. Patricia has supported organisations in a range of sectors including education, public services, private business and social enterprise. Patricia has a first class honours degree in Business and is a Fellow, and active member, of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development. CHR is supported by associates and professional specialists with a range of specific expertise and works in partnership with other, well selected, organisations to ensure that all requirements can be fully met.

"It is a fact of business life that managers often have little time to manage their most valuable asset – their staff. Regrettably, this can have a negative impact on employee performance and productivity and affect the overall success of the business. Furthermore, with an ever increasing raft of employment legislation, errors in managing human resources issues can prove costly. Even the most well meaning organisation can find itself faced with an employment tribunal claim. Not only can this have significant financial consequences, but the negative impact on the reputation and credibility of the organisation can be even more damaging. CHR aims to take some of that pressure away by working with companies and helping them to develop sound people management strategies which maximise business performance and minimise the risk of costly error. Even more importantly, we help organisations to develop a best practice and ethical approach to people management which pays dividends in the long run in the form of an effective, flexible, motivated and high performing workforce. I hope you find our services of interest and very much look forward to hearing from you and working with you."

Patricia Colden

Patricia works alongside Custard Recruitment and can help you on a retained or one off basis.

Our employment workshops are tailor made and vary greatly depending on how many staff are potentially facing redundancy. They are aimed at offering a positive touch to a very difficult situation.

We look at skill set gained within this most recent role, what the individuals have enjoyed and any elements of their roles that they have not found so rewarding.

We emphasise that this is an opportunity for a new beginning, the chance to really look at where they would like their careers to go. Sometimes people take stock and look at taking semi-retirement (reduced hours), sometimes it is the chance to push yourself to the next level on the career ladder.

There is a large focus on confidence building, as talk of redundancy naturally leaves people feeling vulnerable and can sometimes really knock their confidence.

An example of the positive impact of a workshop can be given from when we have previously worked with a Midlands based Police Force, talking to their staff who have been offered redundancy after having spent all of their working lives in the police. The overwhelming sense that we gained from the employees was that, having never worked on “Civvy Street” they really had no transferable skills to bring to an employer.

To our recruitment team it was astounding, as the attributes the officers had were great, but their confidence in using them outside of the police was rock bottom.

Time and again our team were told by officers with 25 years of experience that they had no experience other than policing. It was great to talk them through what we saw in them. Commitment and loyalty, staying with one employer for 25 years is a massive achievement in this day and age, their CPD, their understanding of confidentiality and data protection, a very important element to many roles. They have man-management skills, conflict resolution skills and excellent interpersonal and communication skills.

The employees would leave our workshops with so much more confidence in themselves, their abilities and their transferable skills.

During our Career Advice workshops we work with people who are entering into the world of employment, those who are looking to get back in to employment or those people who are just not exactly sure where they see their career going.

An outstanding example of how we can change someone’s self perception in a workshop like this comes from one of our early experiences where we were helping a group of young people to write effective CVs in order to secure the type of work that they were interested in.

One young gentleman, aged 17, said he couldn't write a CV as he had no experience and so had nothing to put on there. He had never been on a work placement or had a part time job so really he felt he could not write a CV and therefore was struggling to secure employment.

On deeper discussion the young lad opened up about his passion, football. He casually mentioned that he was Captain for a local PFA youth team. We talked through his team building skills, his motivational pep talks, the focus he had on his goal and how his sheer drive and ambition paid off with a very successful playing career. Once his confidence was higher he mentioned his Twitter and Facebook accounts and it was identified that actually, on top of his team building, motivation and strong sense of ambition, this young person was also very technically skilled and completely au-fair with social media, an area that many businesses are aware they could greatly benefit from. It didn't take too long to have created not only a very professional and positive CV, we also had a candidate who’s self esteem had been lifted and who was ready to make a positive impact on his new employers.