I was once told by a business coach friend of mine that 80% of the problems you have in any business have got hair on their head! I have been in business for 25 years now and I have to say that unfortunately I tend to agree. The problem for me, I think, is that I like people and I believe what they tell me. This means that if I am interviewing people for a job, I try to ask relevant and probing questions, I try to be objective, but in my head I’m thinking, aren’t they nice, offer them the job now, or even worse, I don’t think they can do this at all, they seem pretty useless, maybe they just need a break, offer them the job now. The result is that I have had some real, how do I put this, NUTTERS work for me. Allow me to give you a couple of examples.

I’ve employed a raging alcoholic as an installation engineer who on his first week on the job drilled a whole straight through a £140,000 flat roof so he could poke a cable through, obviously not thinking that if it will fit a cable through it will also let water through. Upon realising his mistake he immediately decided that the best course of action was to say nothing about it, go the pub and wait for the rain to come in and ruin the ceiling below it. On the next job, (no I didn’t sack him), he turned up in the morning drunk, went to the pub at lunch time, put up wonky cables all over the property and crashed the van in the afternoon. I didn’t sack him then either. I eventually sacked him after he was given an emergency call out job at 8am and I ended up waking him up at 2pm still drunk. Another guy took 25 separate days off out of 30 working days, using excuses like, I had to wait in for a letter and my Nan’s dog has gone mad and I had to go and hold it to stop it attacking her, (which took him all day). Bear in mind that this guy had been given a final written warning for unauthorised absences just before this period and when he was sacked, threatened to take the company to court for unfair dismissal whilst at the same time telephoned daily to threaten other members of staff. To be fair, after a couple of weeks he did apologise, 4 hrs before I received a telephone call from another company for a reference for him. I have taken on a young lady to do telephone sales who when asked to pick up the phone for the first time said she was going to the toilet and literally ran down the street crying, we never saw her again. You get the picture, I’ve actually left out the worst ones.

It’s a big thing to employ people. There’s a lot to it. People are usually the biggest expense a business has, so to get it wrong is extremely costly, believe me I know. Thankfully there is help out there, and expert help at that……..

Elaine Courtney, owner of Courtney Consultancy, is passionate about HR and employment law. I know, weird isn’t it? To be honest I don’t know how she finds the time.

You know every so often you meet someone who just seems to achieve twice as much as anyone else in the same time. I recently had the privilege to sit down and chat with Elaine who is a voluntary director of Enable, which is part of the Sirolli initiative, enabling enterprise in the local community. She is also an official NWDA Women’s Enterprise Ambassador and a voluntary mentor for the NWDA Mentoring Programme. She recently established Sefton Business Network and is a member of the North Liverpool Business Forum and was a finalist in December 2009 for the Women in Business Networker of the year. Courtney Consultancy was recently selected by Business Link as a prime example of a business that has succeeded in its 1^st year despite facing barriers and overcoming them, becoming stronger as a result. The Liverpool Daily Post ran a story on this and Business Link created a case study document on Courtney Consultancy. Wow, I told you didn’t I.

Elaine originally started Courtney Recruitment in April 2007, but as the recession hit and more importantly, a family bereavement, Elaine needed to take a little time out, but not for long. In mid 2008 she was back and re launched as Courtney Consultancy. Elaine’s background is in sales and recruitment. She is qualified with the Chartered Institute for Personnel and Development and has a keen interest in employment law. Over the years in the industry she has been able to hone a finely tuned interview technique which has proved extremely valuable to her customers. In fact Elaine started her business with just one big client, (Blue Orchid), and she has grown from there. When Elaine was brought in to Blue Orchid they had 14 staff, but plans to grow rapidly. Elaine has been able to grow that up to almost 100 staff, with almost no turnover of people and is responsible for all of their HR. When a position there arises Elaine writes the job spec, the person spec, advertises the position, deals with the applications, does initial telephone interviews, then face to face interviews, before finally she will propose someone to Blue Orchid. It’s this diligence and expertise that keeps her clients loyal to her business.

One thing Elaine is keen to point out is that she is not a recruitment agency. “The ethics of the whole thing just doesn’t sit well with me, you can often find people putting square pegs into round holes in order to get paid”. Elaine doesn’t work that way. She will agree a fee or an hourly or daily rate with a client and then simply go and do the best possible job for them. Also she offers many more services than simply recruitment. As Elaine puts it, she is there for the full life cycle of a member of staff. After substantial research she has found that there are 4 main areas that people struggle with.

1              Bringing people into your business.

This involves all of the previously mentioned processes up to the 2^nd round interview, which Elaine usually drops out of, although can do it with the client if required. She then picks up again with a verbal offer, a written offer letter, contract of employment, creation of their personnel file and can also create an induction process and check a person’s eligibility to work in the UK.

2              Helping you deal with staff you already have.

This would involve sorting out your HR policies, maternity leave, sick pay, etc.

3              Staff as they go.

This is dealing with things like staff leave, sacking people, retirement, redundancy, resignations and disciplinary / grievances.

4              Training

For this Elaine has developed a number of courses so business owners / managers can deal with their own HR requirements, negating the need to outsource them. There are 4 courses available at the moment, but more will be added on an on going basis. The 4 current courses are;

Employing your first member of staff – How to set yourself up as an employer.

Company policies and records – Do you know what you should have.

Review and appraisal process.

Disciplinary procedures, disputes and grievances.

Many people don’t realise just what is involved in employing staff. For a start, employment law changes every 6 months. Usually you find that a small company will give the HR role to an existing member of staff as part of their overall role, so having someone like Elaine on hand, either at the end of the phone, or face to face often makes all the difference. Elaine believes that companies just don’t put enough emphasis on their HR and it can make a huge difference.

Elaine herself became an employer in late 2009 when she took on Jess, her first member of staff. She has now moved into new premises to enable further growth, (this was essential as all of Elaine’s business so far has come from word of mouth recommendations and she say’s 2010 is all about bringing in new clients) and has taken her second member of staff, with a third to follow shortly. Besides her business going from strength to strength and apparently fitting 2 days work into every day, Elaine is also very excited about fostering Courtney, the Fairy Mankey Monkey, on show at Mankey Monkey HQ.

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