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here are many ACE member companies that are not represented on the HR forum, and it is worrying that the smaller companies may not have access to an HR department and the benefits that robust HR practices can bring to an organisation. It is also challenging for all organisations with people at their heart to understand the ever-changing landscape in relation to people management practices.

Employing people is a very expensive business, complex and highly litigious. Understanding the real cost of employing people, repeated work due to poor output, damaged customer satisfaction, low utilisation, absenteeism, voluntary turnover, and the upkeep of corporate memory is critical to running a company. Understanding how a manager or employee can walk themselves unwittingly into an employment tribunal and the impact of defending the case on the management time, lost utilisation, damaged morale, and reputation management is significant.

This is the world of Human Resources and this is what participation at the HR forum meetings can help you with – not in solving these problems, but in making you aware of what you need to know and where you can go to for help.

We have a standing agenda, which then gets added to in a bespoke manner predicated on the issue of the day.  We discuss upcoming employment legislation, trends that we see in the industry that are likely to impact on people and companies and share experiences.

Regardless of the size of organisation, keeping up to date with employment legislation is time-consuming and very expensive if you don’t get it right - might the HR forum be a useful space for you to be part of?  It provides a fantastic mechanism for sharing people related issues that affect all of our organisations. The membership of the forum is made up of large and small businesses and we have come together to enable change in the industry by sharing our common challenges.

If you would like to attend our meetings, or discuss ways in which you can benefit from the HR forum, please contact the Group Chair, Gareth Drought or myself.