Partner Article

Providing clarity in a complex HR landscape: Shrewd HR

Shrewd HR
www.shrewd-hr.co.uk
LinkedIn: Shrewd HR

In an era of shifting employment rights, regulatory change and accelerating workplace transformation, effective HR has become a strategic necessity. Helping organisations navigate that increasingly complex landscape is Chester-le-Street-based Shrewd HR. Here, founder and managing director Martin Potts tells Steven Hugill about the firm’s tailored support, its balanced approach to clients’ individual needs and why it is primed for future growth.

Another of Martin Potts’ sentences is punctuated by the clatter of broken stumps and shrieking fielders.

Durham Women are toiling.

Despite the hurried counsel of coaches and their prevailing team-mate, batters are departing Chester-le-Street’s striped broad sward with frantic regularity.

For Martin, though, watching through open patio doors on a top-floor office overlooking Durham’s Riverside ground, it’s all remarkably fitting.

As founder and managing director of Shrewd HR, he’s more than accustomed to finding measured solutions to complex challenges.

Launched at the height of the pandemic in July 2020, the business operates across the entire HR spectrum.

Spanning Government policy changes, recruitment and restructures, the company additionally guides clients through areas including performance management, workplace culture, grievance and discrimination matters, and – ever more increasingly – the implementation and utilisation of technology.

Its work is anchored by operational pillars that are tailored to organisations’ size and growth blueprints.

Its flexible HR Solutions arm – aimed primarily at SMEs – provides day-to-day support across areas including employee relations, absence management, compliance and policy development.

It is augmented by monthly retainer packages – branded as Core, Spark, Pulse, Edge and Elevate – which provide scalable assistance from recruitment and people management through to cultural development, board representation and fractional HR director services.

For organisations facing greater strategic challenges, the firm’s HR Consultancy Services arm delivers senior-level expertise across areas including people strategy, workforce planning and leadership development, while HR Projects supports larger and multinational businesses on initiatives including departmental restructuring and technology introduction.

The final pillar is employment law support, which provides guidance on matters ranging from legal interpretation and settlement agreements to tribunal risk management and complex employee relations cases.

“Our broad range of services suit clients’ evolving needs whatever their size,” says Martin.

He adds: “We come without bias; we look at a business’ structure from an objective perspective.

“Businesses can sometimes look at HR and just see a cost, but our advice provides far greater added value.

“HR is not a black and white landscape; it comes with a lot of grey areas that require a balanced view to ensure the right decision is taken for each organisation.”

Central to such delivery, says Martin, is the expertise of Shrewd HR’s seven-strong team, which understands not only the nuances and complexities of clients’ operations, but the wider implications of HR policy decisions – conversations that often require honesty, challenge and careful judgement.

He says: “Our role is to advise, guide and support – we are not there to tell.

“A lot of business owners have either invented a product or founded their company to deliver a service; they are not HR experts, and our role is to hold their hand and clearly outline processes.

“We ask clients what success looks like in a situation, but we always identify potential risks and ramifications too, while presenting other options for consideration.

“We take the right decision based on every case,” says Martin of the business, which is the official HR partner of Durham County Cricket Club, Newcastle Eagles, Durham Women Football Club and Durham-based True Padel.

He adds: “We are there to protect businesses, but we do so by treating people in the right way.

“Equally crucial is the building of long-term relationships with clients; by working with them and having conversations, we are often able to tackle a potential issue before it has arisen.

“And that element of our support is evolving.

“Through the relationships we’ve built, I’m increasingly supporting chief executives, acting as a sounding board for them to bounce ideas around ahead of internal discussion.

“That is a niche – and valuable – offer.”

Such close connections, says Martin, are significant as businesses grapple with Government policy changes and technological advances, with the latter, through artificial intelligence, arming employees with an ever greater understanding of their rights and obligations.

Amid such a labyrinthine landscape, Shrewd HR operates like a compass, pointing clients in a forward direction while ensuring technology adoption coalesces with compliance and culture.

He says: “The Employment Rights Act has brought an incredible amount of information and change around areas such as sexual harassment, discrimination and flexible working.

“It has created a lot of noise, and it’s so important businesses take a calm and calculated view.

“Clients need to understand the measures to put in place now, and what needs to be on their radar in the future.

“And we deliver that support,” says Martin of Shrewd HR, which additionally provides twice-yearly employment law update events every March and September, as well as training sessions to boost managers’ people and HR process skills.

He adds: “Through our employment law service, which is led by employment law and HR advisor Stan Heslop, we help clients know exactly where they stand.

“Stan comes with great experience from the North East Law Centre, where he supports employees, so he is able to look through two lenses and provide greater support across areas such as discrimination.

“That is so important because these changes are coming amid the rise of new technology.

“Through impending policy changes like the reduction in the unfair dismissal claims qualifying period to six months, people are more protected than ever.

“Their access to information has similarly never been greater.

“Our role with clients is to help unravel situations that may arise, while also helping them harness digital tools in a safe and positive way.

“HR consultancy has always revolved around compliance and policies, and while that remains the case, it is now set against things like artificial intelligence.

“And businesses must embrace it.

“That extends to having the correct protocols in place, so that if an organisation uses artificial intelligence to support procedure delivery, it is done so in the right way and is legally sound too.”

Outside the office, Durham Women have steadied, the prevailing two batters’ change of strategy having extended the team’s total beyond the century mark.

And with its own foundations firmly set, Martin says Shrewd HR is similarly primed to build over coming years.

He adds: “The vast majority of our work remains via word of mouth.

“That speaks volumes for the quality of service we provide, but we’re now looking to expand further.

“The team is supporting clients across numerous platforms, which is allowing me to work more strategically on business development and drive further growth.

“These are exciting times.”

To learn more about Shrewd HR and the services it provides, visit the website at the top of this article.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by N Magazine .