Our Services

There are a range of valuable reasons why businesses, charities and education sectors should consider outsourcing and using HR consultancy services, including:

• Expertise and Specialisation: HR consultancy firms are staffed with HR experts and are a flexible added value talent pool, who bring specialised knowledge with significant experience in various areas of human resources, such as employee relations,  dispute resolution, mediation, recruitment, training, induction, job evaluation and leadership development. Their expertise ensures that HR policies and processes are handled efficiently and effectively in line with employment law and best practice.
• Cost Efficiency: Outsourcing HR consultancy can be more cost-effective than maintaining an in-house HR team and will add additional strategic and hands-on professional capacity. It reduces overhead costs related to salaries, benefits, training and induction. Outsourcing provides access to a talent pool of HR Directors, with a wealth of sector-specific experience, without the considerable cost of employing them!
• Access to Best Practice: HR consultants stay up-to-date with the latest HR trends, and regulations and share best practice. They are independent and highly confident to deal with disputes, negotiations, processes efficiently and effectively, which provide timely outcomes and dedicated support up to Executive Board level.
• Strategic Focus: By outsourcing employee relations casework, dispute resolution, recruitment, mediation, policy updates, and implementing people strategies, internal HR teams can concentrate on strategic and other initiatives such as talent development, succession planning, and organisational culture, which can significantly impact on long-term success and meeting priorities. Getting tied up with time-consuming, stressful and potentially controversial people matters, such as grievances, disciplinaries, redundancies, capability or lack of appropriate resources and expertise to drive forward outcomes, can have a detrimental costly impact. Ask leaders, what most keeps them awake at night, it’s normally dealing with people issues.
• Flexibility: HR consultancy services can be tailored to meet your specific needs. Whether you require assistance with a one-time project, ongoing support, or crisis management, consultants can adapt their support and services accordingly and have a wealth of sector-specific experience, knowledge and skills to challenge, provide insight, deliver leadership, and people priorities. They are an extension of your executive board and team.
• Scalability: As your company grows or experiences fluctuations in HR needs, consultancy services can scale up or down accordingly. This adaptability ensures you receive the right level of support at any given time.
• Mitigation of Legal and Compliance Risks: HR consultants are well-versed in employment law, legislation and regulations. Their guidance and experience help minimise risk management, reducing the potential for costly claims. During the last 7-years, and despite dealing with some very complex and contentious casework, Birch-HR and all their clients have not had a successful claim nor been required to attend a tribunal.
• Objective Perspective: HR consultants can provide a varied objective viewpoint on HR, leadership and people-related issues, fostering a fair, impartial and innovative approach to employee relations, conflict resolution, and policy development.
• Confidentiality: HR consultants maintain a high level of confidentiality when handling sensitive HR matters, ensuring that employee privacy and information are strictly safeguarded. They are a safe-sounding board up to executive board level.

In summary, outsourcing and utilising HR consultancy services can enhance HR functionality, reduce costs, improve compliance, and allow internal HR teams to focus on other initiatives and/or can be the sole HR service, ultimately contributing to overall success and growth.

With a rational pragmatic focus on HR resolution, we provide expert employee relations advice and guidance on:

• Disciplinary, grievance and capability process
• Sickness/special leave of absence
• Restructures
• Performance management implementation
• Conflict resolution
• Contracts of employment
• Policies and procedures
• Negotiating exit strategies
• Trade union and employee consultation
• ACAS conciliation

When workplace investigations on disciplinary, grievance, dignity-at-work, whistleblowing or other complaints benefit from independent external support, a dedicated senior HR consultant will be allocated to support you. Besides drafting the terms of reference (TOR), our HR consultant can also undertake the actual fact-finding in a fair and objective way and keep the process on track on your behalf. Skilled at gathering evidence, fact-finding, interviewing witnesses and presenting evidence at hearings and appeals, our investigators include former HR directors who have an excellent understanding of the complexities of formal HR processes and the sensitivities involved.

DiSC is a leading and trusted personal assessment tool, to help improve teamwork, communication, self-awareness, productivity, leadership effectiveness and develop collaborative working relationships.  Our Birch-HR network of trainers, facilitators and coaches, are DiSC accredited and have full access to the Everything DiSC and Five Lencioni Behaviours suite of assessments. Birch-HR can facilitate individual/team personality assessments, interactive leadership and team workshops, which act as a catalyst for change and can take your organization or multi academy to the next level.

This programme is for new, developing and aspiring leaders in education. There are three key themes: managing yourself, leading the team and leading across the school/Multi-academy. The programme is high impact across 6 days, typically over 2 full-day sessions for 3 months. It focuses on using an effective coaching model to improve self-awareness and develop individual leadership skills. We can customise the programme for our clients.

High-impact leadership is a key element for the success of high-performing individuals and senior leadership teams in schools, academies and MATs. Over and above delivering fantastic teaching and curriculum excellence, our leadership and coaching programme develops the leaders and managers of tomorrow and avoids “team traps” that hinder high performance. This ultimately leads to improving outcomes for young people and the best leaders/managers.

In partnership with Therapy Centre Services, our dedicated team of Counsellors are here to support employers and employees with a wide range of  counselling service solutions. A referral is made within 24 hours, counselling is NOT time limited to 6-8 sessions, you will receive an initial report, interim report and final report to assist with managing and supporting an individual case and there is no annual contract to sign.

Counselling can assist to resolve a range of employee work and personal related issues, as well as exploring coping skills. Counselling changes lives. This includes dealing with anxiety, family issues, cancer, bullying, depression, trauma, domestic abuse, sexuality etc.