HR Advice for Employees

We provide HR support for employers and business owners

At the current point in time we don’t directly provide our HR support services to individual employees.

Instead, we advise employers and business owners, so they can support you.

Sources of HR advice for employees

We nevertheless think it’s important that everyone should have access to high quality HR advice, so if you’re an employee in need of HR help directly from a third-party we recommend that you consider the following options.

Acas

Acas (Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service) provides free, impartial, and confidential advice to employers, employees and their representatives on employment rights, best practice and policies, and resolving workplace conflict.

Acas is probably your best ‘first port of call’ as an employee seeking HR advice.

Their helpline has a free translation service for over 100 languages.

You can ask Acas about:

You can:

Citizens Advice

Citizens Advice provide free, independent, confidential and impartial advice to everyone on their rights and responsibilities.

This includes information and advice about how to resolve problems at work.

You can contact Citizens Advice by phone, online, or in-person at a local centre.

GOV.UK Website

GOV.UK is the official website for UK government departments, and provides a range of useful information concerning your employment rights, written in a clear and straightforward manner.

In addition, it also contains user-friendly online calculators for holiday entitlement and redundancy pay.

Mediation

Whilst workplace disputes can sadly sometimes become confrontational and acrimonious, it is typically in everyone’s interest to resolve issues on an informal basis before they reach this stage.

Should you wish to attempt informal resolution of your workplace issue, you should discuss this in the first instance with your employer, suggesting the possibility of using a third-party as an impartial mediator.

We have Acas trained mediators within our team, so if you think we might help with this process please contact us.

Early Concilliation

Should informal mediation not prove successful, the next stage is to attempt early conciliation through Acas

Reaching a settlement through early conciliation is quicker, cheaper and less stressful for all concerned than attending court for an employment tribunal hearing.

Indeed, it will be expected by an employment tribunal that you should have already explored early conciliation before lodging a claim.

Trade Unions

If you’re currently a member of a trade union, they can provide you with free advice, support, and representation concerning many employment related matters. Even if you are not currently a member, some unions may be willing to support you with your ongoing case should you join, or alternatively to provide paid-for support for non-members.

Solicitors

You can also personally engage a solicitor specialising in employment law to advise and represent you in relation to workplace matters.

Whilst this option can often be quite a costly one, many home insurance policies will cover you for such expenses relating to workplace disputes.

If you believe this to be the case, you should contact your insurer prior to actually engaging a solicitor, as the insurer may have preferred partners or various limits or conditions that you need to be aware of.

We currently work with a number of excellent employment lawyers that we are happy to recommend should you contact us.