I'm Alice, and I'm the whole business
Ten years in HR and people management, ten years teaching primary school before that, and a deliberate decision not to build this into an agency. When you get in touch, you get me. That's the entire point of how I've set it up.
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10 years in HR
CIPD Level 5 qualified
Ten years teaching first
How I got here
I spent ten years as a primary school teacher before I moved into HR. People find that funny when I mention it, and then about thirty seconds later they see the connection.
Teaching is managing people. It's holding a room, staying calm when something kicks off, having the difficult conversation with somebody who doesn't want to have it, and being fair even when you're tired and it would be easier not to be. Those are the same skills. I use them more or less every day.
The HR came after that, and it's been ten years now, in businesses of every size and most sectors. Somewhere along the way I worked out that the businesses I'm most useful to are the small ones, because they're the ones with nobody to ask.
This business used to be called 8th House HR. The name had a story behind it, but nobody could ever tell whether it was one person or a firm of twenty. It's one person. It's me. So the name says so now.
I'm not a call centre. I'm an HR consultant.
The large HR providers will tie you into a five-year contract and offer you a 24/7 phone line. I've had clients arrive after exactly that: locked in, ringing on a Tuesday morning, speaking to somebody who has no idea who they are or what the business does.
I don't know what I'm doing in five months, let alone five years. Neither do you. So my support runs month to month, with 30 days' notice on either side, and if it stops working you leave without penalty and without a conversation about it.
I don't offer 24/7 either, and that's a choice rather than a limitation. Everything in HR can be handled Monday to Friday between 9 and 5. Anyone promising round-the-clock cover is putting you through to a call centre.
Being the one person in the room who isn’t upset
What I see constantly in small businesses is owners who are too close to their own people to be objective. It's your business, so you expect the same commitment from everybody else that you put in yourself, and any lapse feels like a personal attack. That's not a flaw. It's what happens when you've built something.
The trouble is that when it becomes personal you lose sight of how to respond. It goes one of two ways. Either you take a make-them-pay approach, or you go straight to Defcon 1 over something that didn't warrant it. Neither one solves the problem and both create new ones.
That's where I come in. I can look at the whole picture with a fresh pair of eyes, and because it isn't personal to me I can be objective and stick to the facts. People tell me afterwards that they don't know how I did it. Honestly, it's mostly that I wasn't the one it happened to.
Protecting the business means being fair to the people in it
I do this work to protect businesses, and I'm clear-eyed about the cost of getting employment matters wrong. Tribunal awards on discrimination claims aren't capped. Solicitor's fees run to £20,000 or £40,000 even where the company has done nothing wrong.
But that isn't the only reason to do it properly. If you take on employees, that's a responsibility. Your wages pay their mortgages. I've turned down the odd request to help somebody get one over on a member of staff, and I'd do it again, partly because it's wrong and partly because it never works.
The businesses that treat people fairly are also, almost without exception, the ones that don't end up at a tribunal. Those two things are the same project.
What clients say
Excellent
5.0 
Based on 8 reviews
10 years in HR. CIPD Level 5 qualified. 5 stars from every client who's reviewed.
I've been working in HR and people management since 2016. Before that, 10 years as a primary school teacher. I hold a CIPD Level 5 Associate Diploma in People Management, based near Darlington, and I've helped businesses across the North East: and every one of those calls has come to me, not a team.
Excellent
5.0
Based on 8 reviews
Based near Darlington.
Working across the North East.
I work with businesses across the North East: Darlington, Durham, Bishop Auckland, Stockton-on-Tees, Newcastle and the surrounding areas. For the right client I'll travel further. For businesses that work remotely, I can do that too. If you're within an hour of Barnard Castle, I can be with you in person when it counts.
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