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Hosted by Ben Thompson, the Oxford Business Podcast is a monthly podcast featuring conversations with experts in a range of fields including marketing, finance and sales.
[00:00:00] Ben Thompson: Welcome to the Oxford Business podcast of the Oxford Business Community Network, recorded at the wonderful Story Ninety Four podcast studio here in Oxford. If you haven't visited, definitely come and have a look, it's a really, really cool space.
Today, I'm really, really delighted to be joined by Jane Fryatt of Face2Face HR, many of you will know her. But if you don't know her, definitely, definitely check out her website, a really great HR professional. Welcome Jane.
[00:00:31] Jane Fryatt: Thanks, Ben.
[00:00:33] Ben Thompson: So, firstly, thanks so much for joining us. Let's start, tell those who don't know you about yourself and Face2Face HR.
[00:00:39] Jane Fryatt: Sure, thanks for having me, I'm Jane Fryatt from Face2Face HR. We're a small HR consultancy based in Wallingford in Oxfordshire, and we look after our small business clients, helping them to get the best from their people and deal effectively with those tricky HR issues when they arise.
[00:00:57] Ben Thompson: Absolutely, and just in terms of HR, I saw one of your LinkedIn posts, not so long ago in terms of, is HR about making us politically correct or whatever else? And so what is HR and what are the best practices behind HR? Can you sort of sum that up a little bit?
[00:01:15] Jane Fryatt: Oh my God, that is, that's a massive question, but yeah, I do remember that post and it's really funny because that post I was asked that question in a meeting, like a networking meeting, you know, oh, if I worked with you, would you make me be all sort of PC and would I not be able to say certain things? And it did make me think like, you know, HR has got that reputation of the fun police. I mean, I'd like to think I've never really been like that in my career. I've always been very external client facing and very much more project focused rather than, you know, I've done in house positions and everything, but you know, I do have a bit of a habit of photographing ridiculous notices in toilets, you know, saying things like please do not drip on the toilet seat or whatever, you know, that these ridiculous things that sort of HR people end up being responsible for and you know, of course, HR is not about that. It's about enabling people to do successful things at work and, you know, and making workplaces a great place to work by empowering, by having you know, support for your team members, making them feel comfortable, welcomed, able to be innovative and creative, a safe space to kind of raise concerns that all these things fall into the HR remit as well as, you know, how do we support people to be more productive and work effectively and support line managers with doing a great job around managing people and supporting them when it's needed, but also, you know, dealing with issues effectively and feeding back. I mean, I read a quote the other day, which said something like employees are four times more engaged if they get regular feedback and yet how many managers sort of err on the side of caution before telling people, you know, maybe when things aren't going so well, or even when things are, you know, we're kind of nervous of like having difficult conversations and I think HR's got a real role to play to help managers feel more confident around those sorts of things. So...
[00:03:20] Ben Thompson: Absolutely. I couldn't agree more with that, couldn't agree more. With my recruitment hat on. I think more often than not, when I speak to a candidate in the market, they've left their job because they didn't feel inspired, or if they've been asked to leave the job, actually, often they didn't know about it until it was happening, so I couldn't agree more in terms of that constant communication and feedback.
[00:03:42] Jane Fryatt: We do a lot actually of just listening to managers and business owners around what they maybe just even like rehearsing. Oh, I want to say this, is it okay? And nine times out of ten, it's fine. But people are nervous. You know, can I say that? And this is the sort of PC thing. You don't have to be PC. You just need to be mindful of the other person and, you know, you don't want to make that person feel awful, but the best course of action usually is to tell the truth, to be honest, and just do it in a way that people can understand, and it's just being a bit more transparent maybe than perhaps we felt able to in the past.
[00:04:20] Ben Thompson: No, very much so. So let's talk about the full cycle of HR. Let's go right back to the start. So if you are employing a staff member, what are the things you should be considering? Because not every business does do it the right way, do they?
[00:04:32] Jane Fryatt: No. Well, that again is, it's a really good question. We have a lot of business owners take on their first employee and it is a really exciting time for a business, you know, it's a huge milestone and, you know, it means that the business is doing well if they're ready to kind of, you know, start to delegate tasks to another team member. I think one of the main things actually to make sure it's successful is to be really clear, what's that person actually going to do? And we do a little exercise with people where, called like the skills and interest matrix, where you look at the tasks that you're doing as a business owner and you kind of sift them into quadrants and the top right hand quadrant is all the things that you should be doing, you know, the things that are added value, you know, high skill, you're interested in, and then the other three quadrants are where maybe you should delegate or outsource, it's a really good exercise just to kind of focus your mind on, I think I know what this role is going to do, but actually, am I giving it the things that are maybe the more repetitive or don't inspire me as much or, you know, that I can kind of process map and then give that, give it easily to somebody else, you know, so that's quite a good exercise and the other thing is, is just to be really clear about expectations and that's what sort of the documentation is around setting out what you're going to pay them, what hours they're going to work, where they're going to work from, you know, what responsibilities they have, who they're going to report to, how many days holiday they can get, all of these sorts of things, you know, need to be set out ideally in advance, but even things sort of around expectations, you know, if you're putting any sort of incentive scheming, like a bonus scheme or commission, or it's just so important for the person to be clear about on what basis are they going to be able to attain those benefits? Because if that's unclear, we see that leading to, you know, people feeling aggrieved or the business owner, you know, not foreseeing maybe that certain things might occur that, you know, suddenly it drives cost, you know, so I think being really clear about expectations is important and then obviously for us, we always say, make sure you've got the right documentation clearly, you know, because if you're recruiting a friend or someone is in your family, which is often the case in a small business, you know, you go for someone that you think you know really well and so you're a bit more relaxed, so maybe you don't get all of the kind of ducks in a row. nine times out of ten it's going to be fine, obviously, but what you don't want to be doing is try and negotiate contractual terms when you're already heading down a kind of, a line where maybe you're not getting on or it's not working or, you know, you want to do that upfront when things are all rosy and yeah, so does that answer your question?
[00:07:11] Ben Thompson: Yeah, no, definitely, definitely. Let's continue with this part of the conversation really is you touch on benefits there, and I think that's really, really key. There's no hiding from it, particularly here in Oxfordshire, it is hard to hire staff, we're in a candidate driven market.
What is your views on things like the four day week? What is your views on unlimited annual leave? All of the things that actually are really going to attract people to your organisation. What should be the thought process or the conversation process that businesses should be looking down when considering some of these, I guess, new benefits, in terms of quite recent, quite headline benefits that businesses are considering.
[00:07:53] Jane Fryatt: Yeah, it's a really good question and it is tough, you know, and not only is it, as you say, difficult to recruit, we are seeing people getting counter offered, you know, people accepting roles and then you know, for different reasons, accepting maybe more than one role and then pulling out, so it is a really challenging market.
I think benefits, obviously, it plays a part in people deciding where they work. I think the main thing actually is to make sure that they really fit with you as an organisation. You know, just to give you an example, I was having a discussion with a client the other day about their benefits, so they're, they're fairly new startup. They've got about, you know, 10 staff now, but, and they were wanting to review benefits and they were talking about things like, oh, you know, should we have death in service? Should we have private medical, you know, all the kind of real traditional ones and actually this is a highly innovative tech startup whose workforce is entirely remote and they're in wellbeing and you think actually you want to give your staff benefits that kind of align with your vision and what you're providing to your clients. So you know, things like four day week is a great example of that, you know, where actually there are great wellbeing benefits, as a result of people working less, but not taking the drop in salary, you know, but there are other things like helping people to, if they're recruiting a lot of young people, helping them to set financial goals for themselves and maybe having some support with how they manage their money. We work with an organisation called Octopus Money Coach, which does that, which is a great benefit to offer people. Private medical is very expensive and actually, if you're in an early stage of your business, you may not be able to afford to give everyone private medical, but what you could do is give everyone an annual health check, which is again, if you're employing younger people, that's a benefit now, you know, things like income protection, very sort of traditional, really desirable benefit for maybe older employees, but you know, gen zeds or whatever, if you're trying to attract, you know, a younger or more diverse workforce, that probably isn't the sort of, route that you'd want to go down, you know, again, very costly and people just don't see the benefit for years and years, you know, it's not something that's going to attract.
It's interesting on holiday. Actually, I don't think unlimited holiday works. I've held that belief for a long time, but actually I've had two clients trial it recently and people actually take less. I think the reason that they take less holiday is because actually it's unclear what their entitlement is because it's unlimited and you can put all the words in around, you know, we expect you to take at least four weeks or whatever, but I think it's just that word unlimited, you know? So actually I think if you're, if you're going to go with a, you want to be generous on holiday, be generous on holiday, don't go on limited, give them like. 40 days or something, you know, which, you know, is a lot with bank holidays, but that will have more of an effect. I think people will see, that is my entitlement, but just coming back to kind of flexible working, obviously we've had a revolution in flexible working since COVID and I was reading about the flexible working bill that's coming through and it's just for me, like that's already happened naturally from. COVID. We work with a lot of tech and, you know, creative businesses who are already remote potentially, or if they weren't, they've certainly gone to a hybrid model and so, you know, saying to people, you can now make two flexible work requests in a year, it's going to make absolutely no difference to those type of clients. But I think the four day week definitely is, I'm an advocate of it, you know, I think it does need careful planning and you know, people do need to have autonomy over how they work so that they can be more efficient and they can decline meetings if they aren't required in that meeting and they, you know, when someone sends me a meeting request for an hour now, I feel really grumpy about it because I think since COVID, it's not the thing to do, you know, if it's online, I'm talking about, you know, at least give me 15 minutes before the next meeting, you know, so I would only schedule a half an hour, 45 minute meeting now and I just think things like that. We just need to be more guarded about our time.
If you are trying to work a shorter week, but getting the same amount done, which is the whole premise of the four day week, the four day week is not compressed hours, by the way. Cause I've had a few people come to me and say, oh, we want to implement a four day week and people are going to work their 40 hours over four days. Well, that's crap. Do you know what I mean? Like I wouldn't advocate that at all. The four day week is where you work 80 percent of your hours for 100 percent of your pay. It doesn't mean it has to be over four days, but it does mean that people do need to be really in control of how efficient they are and, you know, that they have control over their own sort of productivity levels and, you know, the evidence is overwhelming that people are more productive, actually not less, which feels weird because we're so ingrained in this kind of if that person's not sat at their desk and they can't be effective, well, you know, the evidence shows on average, people are only productive like three hours a day or something stupid in a seven hour day. So I think obviously there's always a caveat here, you know, there will be some businesses where it's going to be very difficult to implement what I'm talking about, you know, that kind of four day week, but I think most service based businesses who, you know, are delivering an output to, you know, their clients who have control over that, you know, how they work, where they work, when they work, then trial it, you know, give it a go. You don't have to make it permanent from day one, you can do a three month trial, six month trial, you can have a little focus group of the team because it's got to be bottom up, right? This can't be a top down thing, have a focus group who are looking at, you know, what are the ways of working that we need to all learn as a team? What are the learnings? How do we share those? You know, I've got a whole checklist of things to think about before you even consider implementing a four day, which I'm more happy to share with anyone, you know, just drop me a line on LinkedIn or email or whatever and I'll send it to you, but you know, you've only got to Google it now and there's so many case studies, you know, recruitment's a primary one. Are you going to do it then Ben?
[00:14:03] Ben Thompson: Yeah, it's certainly our ambition. It's something that we had a focus group across my team, and actually it was really interesting because I expected them to say yes, and they all said no.
[00:14:14] Jane Fryatt: No way!
[00:14:14] Ben Thompson: They want to hold off for three months and review because they felt that there's been so much change in the business as a result of growth, two of my team have been promoted within the last two months, and actually they really want to learn their new roles before cutting their hours and then also learning a new role as a result of a promotion, they felt it was the wrong time, but no, we had that conversation and I think that one of the things that I see, and I am by no means an expert under the HR umbrella, but in the world of recruitment, I think my biggest advice I see that employers should consider is listen to their people and give choice and give flexibility because actually going back to the holiday piece, 40 days for one staff member is amazing, but actually some people wouldn't want 40 days, they love being at work.
[00:14:59] Jane Fryatt: And you could have like a buy and sell policy or something like that to cater for that. I mean, I think, I do think the thing with benefits is it's not a one size fits all, you know so, but it is really difficult for small businesses to offer a true flexible benefit system, you know, there aren't systems out there really set up for it.
There's some amazing systems set up for like a hundred plus size companies, but obviously we're dealing with much, much smaller than that. One thing you could do actually. Just talking on the four day week for your business is you don't have to have the fifth day off, you could do it as a kind of personal development day. So maybe they might feel a bit more comfortable about that or just do it as a half a day or some people are doing a nine day fortnight, you know, one day off in two weeks. I think this is the thing, it's not like, again, it's not like a one size fits all. I think you can flex it to meet your business.
[00:15:51] Ben Thompson: Mm, absolutely. So let's have a bit of a negative conversation, if that's okay, Jane. I think one of the things that a lot of business owners hate is confrontation and those difficult conversations. What's your advice to businesses who are needing or are unhappy with how a staff member's performing, or there's a situation that they're not sure how to deal with, what are the steps that they should consider?
[00:16:15] Jane Fryatt: Well, they can watch my video on YouTube. It's just practice, it's like anything like you can't expect to be confident and good at something that you never do, you know, you wouldn't say that about, I don't know, learning to row or I'm, I can't do it, you know, I don't like doing it, so I'm never going to try. It's just about having a go and it will feel uncomfortable, but there are methods, there are many methods actually, you just need to find the one that That suits you. We've got a five step method. If you follow that method, I guarantee the conversation will go as well as it possibly can do and I know I say that, you know, that sounds a bit overconfident, but because we've had so many people use it, you know, and the feedback is actually it really works. You should never have one of these conversations without preparing and if you do, you're a fool because it will go wrong and that's it. What we all do, you know, we, it's often these situations are emotional. We blurt something out. We haven't really thought about it. The staff member doesn't quite understand. You know, that is a recipe for probably a fallout and, you know, maybe a complaint or whatever might happen. So I think the main advice I would always give is if you've got, a team member where you need to give some feedback that they're probably going to find a bit challenging, whether it's, you know, their performance isn't good enough or their absence is too high or, you know, actually the way they deal with clients is inappropriate or other team members, you know, then just sit down for 10 minutes, 15 minutes and just decide exactly what the one thing that you want them to remember from that conversation, because that will kind of hone your, you know, the communication you're going to make, you know, to that person.
It's normally it's just one or two things that you really want to get across and then you can build your kind of feedback around that and often it's sort of telling them what that one piece of, you know, communication you want to get across them and then asking questions to understand where they're sitting, you know, because they may be completely unaware of what you're seeing or they might be aware but they might not really know how to change or there may be other factors. So I think always keep a bit of an open mind as well because often, you know, it may not be what it seems, and I remember once, this is a long time ago, but I was asked, most HR people have had this happen to them, but I was asked to speak to a staff member about their body odour, so not a nice conversation to have and I was very young in my career, I hadn't gone away and looked up a framework or anything like this. I just started the conversation with them, but due to the sort of person I am, you know, I was very much like asking questions, listening to what he was saying. It turned out he'd lost his accommodation, he was temporarily homeless, he had no access to showers, like, there was, it was a real sad story and the business was able to. actually give him an advance, help him get back into accommodation and that issue went away. So it wasn't just, you know, he couldn't be bothered to wash or he had sort of bad grooming generally, there was a sort of a real difficult situation there that the business could tangibly help him with and that's, I'm not saying there's always going to be a story like that, but the one thing that is true is you will feel so much better after having that conversation. Yeah, definitely.
[00:19:31] Ben Thompson: And just in terms of somebody listening, and I'm sure there are going to be people listening to here thinking, wow, Jane's very knowledgeable, but how do I do this myself? So one option is outsourced HR. Can you talk to those listener about what is outsourced HR and how does outsourced HR work?
[00:19:49] Jane Fryatt: Yeah, wow. God, you've got some big questions for me today, Ben. So I suppose it's, you know, it can be from the very basic, literally we'll help you take on your first employee. So you're coming to us for our expertise, you know, on a fixed fee and you may never need to talk to us ever again after that. In fact, that doesn't usually happen. Quite often when we have done somebody's documents, contracts, et cetera, when they first take on their staff member, that's the start of a relationship that can endure, you know, over a long period of time and we'll, we'll help them on board, you know, others, team members and you know, they may have some difficult conversations along the way, like we've just been talking about, to the opposite end of the scale, which is obviously you can outsource your entire HR function and we sort of fit somewhere in the middle of that.
Our business works with smaller end clients, so our ideal clients, so kind of sub 50 staff. Once you get above that level, you probably do need something in house, but there is still definitely an outsourced wrapper that you can have around you and there are often tasks which are much more effective to outsource, you know things like recruitment is a prime one, HR people don't really like doing recruitment, if I'm honest. I actually, I don't offer a recruitment service in my business, but many HR consultants do because it does align so much with HR, you know, things like we support businesses at different levels, you know, so we might may do the full outsourced support. So that might include, you know, as soon as you find the person you want to hire, we do onboarding, we set them up on the HR system, we send them their welcome emails, you know, we'll be there to support with things like any sort of Performance related conversations, any difficult issues with that person, but also the positive things, you know, helping the manager to develop careers and, you know, have conversations around, you know, promotions and what to do about pay and all of those things that you would expect your internal HR person to do.
You can have that through an outsourced model in larger businesses. We can work on an hourly rate, you know, if there's an HR person in there who's maybe less confident and just wants to be able to pick up the phone and ask a question, you know, we might have a redundancy situation or, you know, we've got a person who's appears to have a disability, but we need to do a performance conversation with them, how should we handle that? You know, we, we can also support on that type of thing. So yeah, it really does depend and you know, there are bigger agencies, HR agencies and us who will put a whole wrapper around, you know, the company and will support with things like coaching, you know, occupational health, well being, you know, so if you're looking for something which is really, you know, gives you that full wrap up through, you know, one supplier, then, you know, certainly those solutions exist out there.
[00:22:46] Ben Thompson: No, thank you for that, thank you for that. We are coming towards the end of the podcast, but one of the things that would be really good for you to do, and it may be some of the points that you've touched on already, or it may be something fresh. So if you were talking to the business owner that's listening right now and just give some advice of things that they should consider, what would be your, I guess, top piece of advice?
[00:23:06] Jane Fryatt: I think it's know your limits, maybe. I mean, everyone thinks they're an HR expert, don't they? Let's face it, because we've all been employees, we've all worked in larger businesses and so we've got a clear idea. But I think don't be afraid to reach out, like there's so many professionals like myself, who will give advice and we don't start charging the second you pick up the phone to us, you know, I'm more than happy always to answer questions or speculative or what would you do if kind of things. Same with people I work with like accountants, business coaches, we're all really approachable and more than happy. I would much rather somebody contacted me before they did something than they contacted me after they'd done something and I had to help clear it all up, if you know what I mean, so I do think early engagement is better, you know, so yeah, don't be afraid to drop us a line.
[00:24:01] Ben Thompson: Absolutely. So on that note, it's almost as if we had planned this, but on that note, if somebody does want to drop you a line or has listened to the four day week idea or the five steps to have a difficult conversation, they want to learn more about what you do or have a conversation about potentially working with you, how can they get in touch with you?
[00:24:19] Jane Fryatt: Well, there are obviously numerous ways. I do hang out on LinkedIn quite a bit. I also do have an Instagram account, which is very amazingly managed by Nicole Kluwer. So do have a look on that because I'm trying to do like more videos and stuff, which I think, you know, I'd be really interested in people's views on that or look online, you'll find us.
[00:24:40] Ben Thompson: Amazing. Thank you so much for joining us today, and thank you to you, the listener, for listening to the Oxford Business Podcast of the Oxford Business Community Network. I hope you've enjoyed it and I hope you're going to listen to some more episodes and a final thank you to Story Ninety Four for their wonderful podcast studio here in Oxford, if you haven't been, definitely come and have a look, it's a really, really cool space and you're not going to be disappointed. Thank you so much.