A free Deliveroo voucher won't fix a terrible manager Welcome to Employee Lifestyle Updated September 2026 For years, businesses have talked about staff satisfaction, employee engagement, employee experience — what it's like to join a business, work there, develop and eventually leave. We think there's something else: How does working here fit into someone's life? Because people don't stop being people when they log on. They have families, friends, interests, responsibilities

The surprisingly simple guide to Right to Work checks What you need to check, when you need to check it — and how not to turn it into an HR obstacle course. Updated September 2026 Not exciting. Quite important. Thankfully, not that complicated. Before someone starts working for your business, you need to be satisfied that they have the legal right to do that work in the UK. It’s one of those bits of People admin that can feel more complicated than it actually is. The basic pr

The Surprisingly Simple Guide to Organisation Design Please step away from the Org Chart now! Before you start moving boxes around, there's a more importnant question to answer. Updated September 2026 “We need to restructure.” It’s a sentence that tends to make HR people reach for an organisation chart. Before long, somebody has opened PowerPoint. Boxes are moving. Reporting lines are changing. One department has mysteriously acquired the word “Strategic” and somebody who was

Lost? You just need a map. Your People Strategy shouldn't live in an HR folder. If your business has a growth plan, it already needs a People Strategy. You might just not have written it down yet. Updated September 2026 Let's start with something that probably won't win us any awards for groundbreaking insight. Businesses need people. Good people, ideally. People who know what they're doing. People who know what they're responsible for. People who have decent managers, se

You can't engagement-survey your way out of a bad culture. Culture isn't your values poster. Engagement isn't your annual survey. And neither belongs solely to HR. Updated September 2026 Let's imagine a company. One of its values is Trust. It's written on the website. It's mentioned during ‘Induction’. It's probably on a wall somewhere in a nice font. Unfortunately, managers need three levels of approval to spend £50. People are expected to be online at very specific times.

Would you put this employee on a PIP? It started with a PIP Because performance management isn't about managing poor performers. It's about improving performance. Updated October 2026 There is a particular sentence that HR people hear quite a lot. “Can we put them on a PIP?” Sometimes the answer is yes. But our first question would usually be: “What have you already said to them?” And that is where things can get interesting. Because ‘occasionally’ the answer is something a