Speaker: Crispin Hardy, MD, Location One Ltd
Who are you and who do you help ?
Crispin Hardy: Hi, my name is Crispin. I'm the MD of Location one. We are a hire business hiring equipment to the feed, tv and film industry.
What challenges were you having before working with me ?
Crispin Hardy: Looking back now on the time when we were running our business before we had Debbie helping us, I can really see how much we didn't know then. We didn't know what we didn't know We had people on various different contracts. We had no sort of centralized HR system to speak of. We had quite an interesting overtime policy. People had different overtime policies, essentially, Essentially, we had holidays on a central spreadsheet. We had informal arrangements, not a lot of consistency. So yeah, probably we weren't untypical in terms of how small growing owner managed businesses might look, I guess in the early days.
What reservations did you have before working with me ?
Crispin Hardy: Before Debbie and tribalHR joined the business, we had been using a large HR consultancy to help us. The great thing about Tribal HR and Debbie is she is really easy to get hold of and in the early days we didn't really want to be taking on a permanent HR manager. So to have that consultancy opportunity was was great because we could flex Debbie's time with with the requirements of the business. So in the early days, Debbie was coming in sort of one day a week to help us set-up all the systems and processes and now it's the advice to get as much more sort of ad hoc now that, that ground work has really been put in, so yeah, it's worked well.
What changes/results have you had since working with me ?
Crispin Hardy: We've done a lot of work with Debbie on the contract side of the business. So we have a sort of standard contract for each employment type. So we have drivers / warehouse contract. But then obviously we have different contracts for some senior Directors but everyone has a contract that we're happy with now which is great and we've got some brilliant training in place for our leadership team. And we have the tribalHR outsourced retained package which means Debbie is on hand to provide any guidance and assistance to me or my managers whenever we have a tricky employee situation to deal with. And Debbie is very good. I probably shouldn't say it. she is very good at answering the phone out of ours as well. She's helped us to employ some key people from our COO Down to our branch managers. and recently an internal HR admin person as we've been growing a lot recently. She doesn't come in one day a week anymore. She continues to provide more senior and specialized HR and employment law advice. And the software she introduces has really helped streamline a lot of our of our work the work that comes with employing a large amount of staff. So yeah. Debbie was brilliant as well, In the lockdown period, we did a lot of furloughing and obviously that was a tricky time for the business for every business in the land important law.
Would you recommend me / tribalHR and why ?
Crispin Hardy: It's been really fun working with Debbie over the last few years. She's really good at her job. I definitely advise anyone looking for someone. whose's seeking help with this area of their business to to call her. She she always has great advice and she administers the advice well, She's very likable and yeah, she's been great for our business and I would definitely advise calling her.
