We interviewed Solid8's Managing Director, Emma, to find out how Brumpton and Brumpton supported with their policies and employment contract within a tight deadline.
Talk to me about Solid8 and the position you were in before contacting Brumpton & Brumpton
Solid8 is a company that provides B2B services including outsourced sales, phone answering and call handling, customer services and admin services on behalf of their customers.
I set up Solid8 with my sister, as a small family-run business to work around both of our personal needs. The business was doing well but after a few years my sister left the business.
I was in a situation where, in order to keep the business running, I needed to hire someone really quickly. I was worried as I didn’t know the first thing about employment but knew there were a lot of legal requirements associated with employing staff.
As a business services provider, Solid8 represents our customers' businesses, so finding the right person, in a short time period, was very important.
I was worried about getting it wrong, not having the correct protection in place, and the possibility of staff suing me if I made a mistake.
What issues did this cause when looking to set up policies and employment contracts for Solid8?
Given the situation, the fact I needed to employ someone quickly and the very high costs associated with solicitors, which my small business couldn’t really afford, I looked for a low-cost quick-fix to help get me out of the situation.
I found a website that, for a small subscription fee, enabled me to download templated policies and contracts. But, the main thing that worried me about this was that the policies can vary a lot in terms of content and there was nothing that was totally relevant to Solid8 and the way we run. So I picked what I thought was most relevant and made some tweaks.
I’m no legal expert, so how was I supposed to know what was legal and correct? I didn’t know what impact making these changes could have on my business. For me, this was very worrying as if something went wrong my whole company could be at stake.
After deciding to reach out to Brumpton and Brumpton, how did they provide a solution?
To begin with, I was really uncomfortable about laying the bare bones of my small family-run company to an outsider. I was also worried that I’d be judged for trying to find a quick-fix by downloading a template from a website. However, I was quickly set at ease.
Josh at Brumpton and Brumpton listened to my situation without judgment and asked lots of questions to build a picture of Solid8 and to understand my values and what was important to me as an employer.
He asked me situation-based questions and helped me understand all aspects of the templates I had downloaded. He asked me what I wanted to offer my employees, why I wanted to offer it and explained the impact things could have on my business. Things that I'd not thought of before, like if I offered too much sick pay - it could potentially be hugely damaging to my business if I couldn’t back-fill the staff gap.
It was a great sanity check, showed me that I had not thought about certain areas that were really important and was a simple, pain-free process. Josh really listened to me, he was extremely easy to talk to and had a great way of explaining things so I was able to understand. I really didn’t feel uncomfortable when lifting the lid of Solid8.
After going through this process with Brumpton and Brumpton, what was the overall result?
Relief! When he produced the document he went through everything point by point, so I really understood how he had taken my requirements and business needs and considered them when producing my contract. He explained every aspect to me (Multiple times if needed!) until he was totally sure I understood every element of the contract. This was really important to me because, as a business owner, I wanted to understand the contents of my contract and exactly where both me and my new staff stood.
I had a lot of confidence that, if I made any wrong decision with a member of staff, they could stand by their contract and if a member of staff made the wrong decision I could do the same.
Ultimately, I had a contract that I was proud to hand out, something I was confident in and knew protected all parties.
Did you continue to use Brumpton and Brumpton after the first project?
Yes, over the past few years since first reaching out to Josh to produce my first contact, Solid8 has grown from a team of 1 to a team of 11. Josh and Brumpton and Brumpton have been there throughout the journey and as the business has grown and evolved, Josh has continued to review and amend our policies and contracts to fit our changing business needs.
If staff join who have slightly different working requirements, Josh can make amendments to make our documents applicable to the specific situation and add addendums to our current contract without having to re-write anything from scratch.
Josh has always been on hand to provide advice and suggestions on how things could be changed to run more smoothly or efficiently. He takes time to really understand the business, turns things around really quickly and continues to support Solid8.
I’m at ease knowing the documentation that Brumpton and Brumpton put in place sets a solid, secure foundation for my business. Also, If I’m ever worried about anything I can go to Josh and he will say ‘This is what the contract states and this is what you need to do’. Not all staff work out and things at companies can go wrong, on these rare occasions I’m very thankful that everything has been covered in a thorough and professional contract.
To find out more about Brumpton and Brumpton, email info@brumptonandbrumpton.co.uk.
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