Tuesday Morning HR Pile-Up

Picture this. It's a Tuesday morning. You've been at your desk for seven minutes. You haven't had a drink of anything yet. Your laptop is still loading and your inbox is already winning. You've had a message asking when payroll is being run. You've had a WhatsApp from someone saying they won't be in today, no reason given. You've had a note from a manager saying, can we have a quick chat? And we all know what a quick chat means. You've had a reminder that the new starter is arriving in five days and no one has actually sent her a contract yet. Then your phone rings. It's the employee from last week, the one who's been struggling and she's crying. You did not start this business to be an HR director. You started it because you're good at the thing. The plumbing, the marketing, the hairdressing, the cake decorating, the laser cutting, the thing. But here you are, running payroll, drafting the contract, managing the grievance, holding space for someone in tears, and it's not even 10 o'clock. This is HR in a small business. There is no HR department. The HR department is you. On a Tuesday morning, in between absolutely everything else. Today is International HR Day. And the first thing I want to say to you before we even start is this. Yes, it counts when you do it, even when nobody calls you HR. Even when you've never done a CIPD course, even when you're just trying to keep the wheels on. It still counts. You are doing the work. Welcome to the hive. Hey there. Welcome back to Buzzing About HR, the podcast for small business owners and HR professionals who want straight talking, plain English advice. I'm Kate, your host, HR Queen B, and someone who has done payroll, written a contract, and consoled an employee in tears all before a single sip of coffee. So I know. With me, as always, in spirit, if nothing else, is Hazel, our well-being officer, who is currently lying upside down with one ear inside out, snoring like a small lawnmower. She has not yet noticed it's International HR Day. She has noticed there is a biscuit on the corner of my desk. Today's episode is a little different. It's a bonus, slotted into the schedule because today, May 20th, is wait no, today is May 5th, and depending on which calendar you follow, your international HR Day might be in May, in September, or whenever your country celebrates it. Some bodies mark May 20th, some mark earlier. The important bit is, today on this podcast, we are marking it. This isn't an episode celebrating massive HR departments with floor-to-ceiling dashboards. This is a real, honest look at what it takes to do people management well in a small business. Why it matters more than ever in 2026, and the one thing you can do this week, just one, to make it all a little less chaotic. Kettle on, let's go. The buzz. What we mean by HR in a small business. Let's get one thing out of the way. When most people hear HR, they picture something it usually isn't. They picture a department, they picture suits. They picture being marched into a beige room and handed a form. That is not what HR is. That is what bad HR looks like. Real HR, good HR, is the work that happens before any of that. It's the contract that's clear, so nobody is arguing about overtime in six months. It's the induction that means the new starter actually understands what they're walking into. It's the manager who spots someone struggling early enough to do something about it. It's the policy that's written like a human wrote it, not like it was bolted together by a robot in 1998. In a small business, HR is not a job title. It's a hat you put on 20 times a day between every other thing you have to do. And here's the kicker. Most of the time it's invisible. Nobody walks past you and says, Wow, great work on that risk assessment, Karen. Nobody notices that the team isn't falling apart. Nobody sends you a thank you card for the tribunal you didn't end up in because you handled something properly three years ago. HR done well is mostly invisible. HR done badly is suddenly very visible, usually in the form of a panicked Wednesday afternoon and a letter from somewhere official. So today, on International HR Day, I want to give you the visibility you don't usually get. Because you are doing it quietly, constantly, often badly, sometimes brilliantly, mostly somewhere in between. But you're doing it, and that matters. The hive check, the numbers. Some numbers because they matter. There are around 5.5 million private sector businesses in the UK. Of those, more than 99% are small or medium-sized. Around 4.1 million are sole traders or micro businesses with fewer than 10 people. Most of these have no formal HR person. Most of them have a founder, an owner, or a long-suffering office manager doing the work in stolen pockets of time. Now think about what's landed on those people in the last 12 months. The Employment Rights Act 2025, in force from April 2026. The Fair Work Agency, which launched on April 7th. New rules on holiday leave records. Day one paternity leave. A whole stack of October 2026 changes still incoming, including third-party harassment, fire, and rehire reform and extended tribunal time limits. Plus the day job, plus the team, plus the customers, plus the kids, plus the dog. When the CIPD looked at small business owners last year, more than half said they spent more than five hours a week on HR-related tasks they didn't expect to be doing. A third said they were genuinely worried about getting something wrong. And almost a quarter said they had not had any kind of training in employment law since starting their business. That's the reality for most people listening to this. You are not behind. You are not bad at this. You are simply trying to do a complicated job in a fast-moving area of law with very little time and even less support. Today is your day. The sting, why the invisible work stays invisible. Here's the bit that frustrates me most about HR in small businesses. The work is endless and the credit is non-existent. People only notice it when it goes wrong. They notice when there's a grievance. They notice when someone walks out and slams the door. They notice when the tribunal letter arrives. They never notice the calm version. The version where the contract was clear, the conversation was kind, and the person who was thinking of leaving stayed for another two years instead. There are three reasons the human side of HR keeps getting missed in small businesses. Reason one, it doesn't have a deadline. Tax has a deadline, VAT has a deadline, customer orders have deadlines, a wobbly culture doesn't have a deadline. So it gets bumped down the list until it's the thing that's broken. Reason two, it feels soft. Founders are usually doers. They like ticking things off. HR doesn't tick off neatly. You can't put made the manager less of a nightmare on a Trello board. You can't measure someone trusting you enough to mention their mental health. So it gets undervalued. Reason three, and this is the painful one, most small business owners have never been shown what good looks like. They've worked in places where HR meant being told off. They've never been in a business where HR meant being supported. So when they start their own thing, they don't know what to copy. So they wing it. And winging it is fine until it isn't. That's why I do this job. That's why we make this podcast. To make sure that you, on a Tuesday morning, with 12 tabs open and a phone ringing, have one place to go where someone says, yeah, this is hard and here's what to do. The waggle dance. The one thing to do this week. I promised one thing, just one. Because if I give you a list of 15, you'll do none of them and we'll both be sad. So here it is. This week, do one HR hour. That's it. 60 minutes. Diary blocked, phone face down. Door shut if you've got one. Hazel removed from the chair, if applicable. In that hour, you do three things in this order. First, you ask yourself what's actually wobbling right now. Not what's nicely written in a policy, not what's been like that for years. Right now, this week, what is the thing that, if it blew up, would ruin your month? Is it that contract you haven't sent the new starter? Is it that conversation you've been avoiding with the underperforming manager? Is it the holiday tracker that lives in three different places and no one trusts? Write it down. One sentence. The actual problem. Second, you decide what good enough looks like for this week. Not perfect. Not a whole new system. Good enough. A signed contract before the new starter walks in. A 20-minute conversation scheduled with the manager. A clean spreadsheet that one person owns. Whatever it is, what does sorted look like by Friday? Third, you book it in. A meeting, a call, a 30-minute slot in your calendar. You do not leave that hour without putting the next step in writing. Because here is the brutal truth about HR in small businesses. The work doesn't get done because of a policy. It gets done because someone somewhere at some point blocked an hour and made it happen. That person is you. Once a week, an HR hour, just one. You will be amazed at how much quieter your inbox gets after a month of doing this. The Swarm. You knew it was coming. Myth one. I'm too small to need HR. If you have one person on the books, you have HR. You have a contract, you have a policy obligation. You have rights and duties. The smaller you are, the more impact one bad situation has. A tribunal claim against a 500-person business is a line item. A tribunal claim against a five-person business is the business. Myth two, I'll get HR sorted when I've got more time. You won't, you will always be busy. What you'll have is more staff, more risk, and the same amount of time. The version of you with 20 employees and no HR foundations is not in a better place than the version of you with five employees and basic foundations. She's in a worse place, she's just got more leverage. Myth 3. HR is just admin. HR Done Well is strategy. It's how you keep good people, how you handle the bad bits without lawyers, and how you build a culture that doesn't fall over the moment you take a holiday. If your HR is just admin, you've not had real HR yet. Myth four, I can't afford HR. You probably can't afford not to. The average tribunal payout for unfair dismissal in the UK now sits in five figures. The cost of replacing one full-time employee is conservatively estimated at around six months of their salary by the time you factor in recruitment, lost productivity, and onboarding. A few hundred quid spent on getting it right the first time is, and this is rare in HR, actually the cheap option. The honeycomb, your quick action list, screenshot this one, stick it on your fridge. 1. Book your first HR hour this week. Diary it now before you forget. 2. Pick the one wobbly thing. Write it down in one sentence. 3. Check that every employee actually has a signed contract on file. Not I think we sent it. Actually on file. 4. Find your last updated employee handbook. If it predates April 2026, it's already out of date. 5. Choose one manager you support and ask them by Friday what's the thing on their team they're avoiding. 6. Write down two things you've done well in HR this last year, even if no one noticed. Today is International HR Day. You're allowed. 7. If reading this list is making you tired, that is a sign. Get some support, even informally. Your future self will thank you. Flying the hive close. Right, before I go, today is for you. The founder doing payroll between school runs. The office manager who became HR by accident in 2019. And has somehow held the line ever since. The HR of one who has no peer in the business and gets very lonely sometimes? The CEO who pretends she has it all under control while quietly Googling, do I need to give notice if? You are doing one of the hardest jobs in the country. You are doing it without the title. You are doing it without a team. You are doing it on top of running a whole business. And on the days when nobody notices, most days, I want you to know that I notice. The work counts, even on the messy days, especially on the messy days. So today, take five minutes, make a proper cup of tea, sit somewhere that isn't your desk, and quietly acknowledge, yeah, I've been doing the thing. Then go again tomorrow. If this episode hit home, share it with another small business owner who needs to hear it. There are more of them out there than you think, and they're all wondering if anyone notices. Find me at kateunderwoodhr.co.uk or email buzz at kateunderwoodhr.co.uk. Subscribe so you never miss an episode. And if you haven't left a review yet, it takes 30 seconds. It genuinely helps, and it is hands down the cheapest good deed you'll do all week. More satisfying than a biscuit with your tea. Not quite as good as cake, but nearly. Until next time, keep buzzing and take care of your people. Kettle on, standards up.