HR guides and articles, page 2

What UK law already says about automated decisions

Companion to the last piece: the legal detail behind why a human always needs to be able to change the outcome, and what actually changed for employers this February.

The manager's guide to working time and rest breaks

What your staff are entitled to during the day, between shifts and across the week, how the 48-hour opt-out really works, and the records you need to prove it.

White-label HR software: why UK HR consultants partner rather than build

Why UK HR consultants offer white-label HR software under their own brand: better margins, no build cost, and client relationships that stay theirs.

Four decisions AI should never make alone

Recruitment scoring, performance ratings, disciplinary outcomes, redundancy selection: four decisions where a plausible-sounding answer is not good enough.

The rules on watching staff are moving

The government wants views on how monitoring technology at work should be regulated. Here is what it actually proposes, and what a sensible employer does before the window closes.

The business case for meaning, not just money

New global workforce research puts a number on something HR teams have suspected for a while: a business's social impact is now part of why people join, and why they stay.

What a 9.4 day sickness absence rate actually means for a small employer

UK sickness absence has just hit its highest level in over a decade. Here is what is actually driving it, and what a sensible employer does differently, rather than simply harder.

The AI policy you already need

Across the UK, 61% of organisations now allow staff to use generative AI for work tasks, but only 31% have put together a formal policy on it in the past year (CIPD, Labour Market Outlook, autumn 2025). That gap is the real risk. It is not that AI is being used. It is that it is being used without anyone having said what is and is not allowed.

AI at work: Why we're writing about AI, and what's coming over the next few weeks

A short series on AI at work: what UK law already covers, where AI genuinely helps, and where it does not. Adoption has moved faster than the thinking around it.