Chris Simmance:
Thanks Voice Over Guy and I’m really pleased to have Deborah Spurway from the HR department on today. How are you doing Deborah?

DEBRA SPURWAY:
Very well, thank you, Chris, on a

Chris Simmance:
Welcome

DEBRA SPURWAY:
sunny

Chris Simmance:
to the…

DEBRA SPURWAY:
Monday morning.

Chris Simmance:
Yes. Well, and thankfully you said Monday because this does go out on a Monday, just not this

DEBRA SPURWAY:
Thank you.

Chris Simmance:
Monday. So when you’re listening to this, you are indeed hopefully experiencing a lovely sunny Monday morning yourselves. Um, Deborah, first of all, give us a bit of an introduction to yourself and then uh, obviously who the HR department are and what you guys do as well.

DEBRA SPURWAY:
So I’m called Deborah Spurway. I’m a business owner. Like most of you who’ll be listening, we’ve all had the pains of starting a business and hopefully growing a business. We set up the business called the HR Department. And the HR Department is about providing employers with correct employment documentation and giving them advice. Advice to hold their hands and coach them through what can be painful situations, but at the same time, looking at a bit of a roadmap as to how we navigate through as we grow our business and we bring people on board, how they make the contributions to our business and how they remain happy and want to stay in our business.

Chris Simmance:
So I’ve got a question for you that’s been burning in my mind a little bit. It’s a bit like, where do the therapists go for therapy? Where do, where do, where do HR professionals go for their own kind of advice in that area, because it’s, it’s easy to kind of, um, not put a mirror up to your own thoughts when it comes to, um, your own sphere of, of awareness and knowledge. So, you know, if you’re in, if you’re an SEO agency, you don’t typically look at what’s going on outside because. You think that you know it. So how do you guys do that sort of thing? Do you

DEBRA SPURWAY:
I

Chris Simmance:
do

DEBRA SPURWAY:
think

Chris Simmance:
much

DEBRA SPURWAY:
that’s quite

Chris Simmance:
introspection?

DEBRA SPURWAY:
a, yeah, I think that’s really quite a valuable question. And certainly on the basis that when you start your business in HR, you’re continually, any business owner is looking to undertake business in what their specialist subject is, and then the business pours in and you can forget the other things. So

Chris Simmance:
Oh yeah.

DEBRA SPURWAY:
the mirror is really important to understand that you, for us, employment documentation has to be correct. Obviously, the people we employ understand that. The way in which we deal with people, the way in which we bring people along, one-to-ones, probation reviews, roadmaps, appraisals,

Chris Simmance:
Hmm.

DEBRA SPURWAY:
performance reviews, we are continually looking at that. If we get difficult situations, there are a number of minds that might talk about it together. Generally, if it’s in your business, it will be your business partners such as I have with Peter Jones. But at the same time, you’ve got to look commercially at some of the decisions that you need to make. And that’s something where we do step aside. We are aside from many sort of call centres because we are looking to keep an eye on that profit that we’re making and making sure that we’re not going to add a loss to it through the people. So generally, we have some very good friends who are employment law solicitors who may have dealt with cases a little bit unusual that we might say. anything you’ve come across in this way before.

Chris Simmance:
And one thing which kind of aside to some of the questions that we’ve got for today, one of the things that I think it’s really important to distinguish these days is that HR is not the firing department. It kind of has a tangential link to the finance aspect of the business, but there’s very much a focus on making sure that there’s a wellbeing area to the business. And something that I found myself and something that other agencies that I speak to a finding is that a lot of people based issues are expectation setting and balancing expectations with different people and a lot of people positives, as in, you know, the great things you get from people who work with you in the business come from expectation management and proper expectation setting. And I think that if you think of people like yourselves at the HR department as the people you call when you’ve got a problem, you’re going to have more problems. Is that B-eh.

DEBRA SPURWAY:
It’s a bit like saying, you know, you’re going to have a clinic. You only go to the doctors if you’ve got a problem.

Chris Simmance:
Mm.

DEBRA SPURWAY:
So we try very much to encourage our clients that we are here to be supportive and coaching. We’re like an in-house HR department where you drop in with a cup of coffee and you’re saying, you know, Melanie’s not quite herself today, but

Chris Simmance:
Mm.

DEBRA SPURWAY:
I’m a bit nervous about what I’m allowed to say nowadays. But actually you’re caring about Melanie, but you just want somebody to give you some confidence

Chris Simmance:
Hmm.

DEBRA SPURWAY:
on how you can approach situations. I mean, Brexit, pandemic, mental health, well-being, social movements, menopause, costly living crisis. Some employees just don’t know where they need to prioritize, but having some of the basics right is important.

Chris Simmance:
And in an agency as well, digital agencies in particular, things change so quickly in

DEBRA SPURWAY:
Hmm.

Chris Simmance:
the industry. It’s very hard to focus on things which are outside of your area of expertise and therefore on the list of things to do that seem to be filtering towards the bottom oftentimes. And you can lose some great people or you can risk managing some great people. without the right sort of frameworks in place. And I think that sometimes when you’re, um, when you’re looking at things, you can do well, okay, I’m an SEO agency. Um, and I’ve got an underperformer. I’m going to train them how to do SEO better. That might be the solution to that individual problem, but if it’s a people behavior or it’s a, um, a performance based thing, which is not connected to direct skill related things. And you often ignore it as long as you can until that can becomes very big and very heavy and unable to kick it any further.

DEBRA SPURWAY:
That’s because we like to be liked and we’re fearful that person who’s doing an OK job for us on a project, we can’t do without

Chris Simmance:
Mm.

DEBRA SPURWAY:
them at this time. So we’re just going to let that go. And that, I would say, Chris, is people don’t wake up in the morning with the call for action, oh, I must go and get an HR team to help and

Chris Simmance:
Ha

DEBRA SPURWAY:
support

Chris Simmance:
ha!

DEBRA SPURWAY:
me. They wake up to a problem and then that’s their call to action. So.

Chris Simmance:
Hmm.

DEBRA SPURWAY:
People do like to be liked and we all like to be liked and that means at times, because we don’t have that skill, we forget it and those are generally the biggest problems that we end up with and they go, I know I should have done something before.

Chris Simmance:
Yeah, completely agree. So talked about call to actions and the guy jumps in with an ad with a call to action. You should have listened to that call to action. Everybody bit rude though, to be interrupted. Sorry about that, Deborah. Um, so agency, um, they’re, they’re sort of plotting along with their normal build and their normal workload, everything that they’re normally doing. Um, and they think, right, okay, I do need to sort out some HR stuff. What is it that you typically do when you first have an interaction with an agency beyond the, we have a problem to solve first bit. Let’s just say they’ve got no problems right now, but they’re being, they’re smart. They’ve listened to their agency support team

DEBRA SPURWAY:
Mm-hmm.

Chris Simmance:
at the OMG center and they’ve picked up the phone and spoken to you.

DEBRA SPURWAY:
So typically we would look at compliance in the first area. So we all know that we have somebody who deals with our financials. We’ve usually got somebody who’s sorting out our IT because these are the important things in business. But then

Chris Simmance:
Mm.

DEBRA SPURWAY:
we’ve forgotten that we have people who are our business. So typically we look at the compliance and that’s about having a fit for purpose set of employment documents. And on those documents, there will be legislation, but there were things that will relate to your industry type. You want to weave

Chris Simmance:
Mm.

DEBRA SPURWAY:
your culture through it. So we talk to people about, you know, what are our processes going to be? How do we onboard people? How do we induct people? How do we give somebody a job description and tell them what we expect from them? So they’re quite clear from the very beginning, how they will contribute towards the business. So… Compliance and fit for purpose employment documentation is what you will need to have to rely on when you need to make decisions. So those are the important things to start with. The next thing

Chris Simmance:
Hmm.

DEBRA SPURWAY:
we do

Chris Simmance:
And

DEBRA SPURWAY:
is we… sorry.

Chris Simmance:
I was going to say, what’s the next thing? I

DEBRA SPURWAY:
The

Chris Simmance:
was going

DEBRA SPURWAY:
next

Chris Simmance:
to say,

DEBRA SPURWAY:
thing

Chris Simmance:
what’s

DEBRA SPURWAY:
we

Chris Simmance:
the next thing and you got there.

DEBRA SPURWAY:
do, so we’re looking at creative people. You know, we’re looking at people who might have different minds to us, you know, talk SEO to me and I’m going, oh God, I don’t wanna know too much about that because I don’t understand it. Will somebody do it for me? So what we have to do is understand the way in which people like to work. They want to be

Chris Simmance:
Mm.

DEBRA SPURWAY:
best employer. They want people to like coming to work. They don’t want to be on glass door with a rubbish review about them. I often say to clients and employers, if you’ve got a really happy team, why don’t you get them onto glass door now and tell everybody

Chris Simmance:
Yeah,

DEBRA SPURWAY:
because

Chris Simmance:
yeah, yeah.

DEBRA SPURWAY:
let’s think about where we’re going to get our next lot of talent as we’ve done such a good job for our clients. We need more people because the word is out there that we’re growing. So understanding culture. This isn’t a big change piece that people have to consider. This is just, how do I behave towards my team? They’re

Chris Simmance:
Hmm.

DEBRA SPURWAY:
not behaving as I want, but how am I behaving? You know, leading, managing people is quite easy. Leading people is being an example that they can follow.

Chris Simmance:
Hmm. And, and I think one of the key things that I focus on with agencies is that leadership aspect. And it isn’t a case of setting tasks and giving things out. That’s, that’s very much a management type thing. Leading is, is a, it’s a, an earned level of discipline that people want to follow you. And, and I know, and I forgive me, Deborah, I know that quite a lot of the compliance based stuff is a little bit boring from an agency point of view. But You do the compliance stuff when you’re looking at building a website for someone. You do the compliance stuff when you’re auditing a PPC account. It’s the same kind of thing on your scale as it is to working on a, with HR professional, with a legal professional, with an insurance professional, with, um, with a, uh, an accounting with, so any one of these people coming on board with you as a customer would expect to do some kind of compliance audit before they start doing any work. on, before you do any work on their site, much the same way in it with HR or any other kind of professional services, they need to know what you got, how it’s all laid out, where it all, what it all looks before they can give you some support that will actually take you next, the next steps on, you know, if you’ve got five people in your team now, the next three to five years, assuming you’ve got a plan is going to be 15, maybe 20 people. Your. policies and you’re onboarding and things like that, they won’t work when you get to that level because you on your own are not doing all of the interviews and all of the performance management and all of those sorts of things. And the people you hire aren’t necessarily doing them the same way as each other. So you have to have

DEBRA SPURWAY:
right.

Chris Simmance:
these things to be great as a leader.

DEBRA SPURWAY:
And to help employers out, we will do free reviews of what employment documentation they’ve got now to either say if it needs to be updated legislation-wise or recommendations that we make based on some of the pinch points that other employers have experienced.

Chris Simmance:
Exactly. So I think that’s one of the things, the review stage is key, but beyond the review stage is why people stay in contracts with professional services such as HR and things like that. What is it the over the course of like all the time all of the agencies that you’ve spent time working with and all of the people who were part of the HR department in their in their local areas? And what do you think would you if you were to poll everyone who’s a professional working with you guys? Um, what they think the thing that they love the most about working with agencies is what, what would you, what do you think you pick out there?

DEBRA SPURWAY:
I think it’s the sort of creativity, the way in which they have to approach their work. And because people are creative, people are likely to engage more in what you’re trying to do to help them. So you talk typically about you’re not going to be doing the same thing when you’ve got five staff as you might when you’ve got 20. So we call that a little roadmap.

Chris Simmance:
Mm.

DEBRA SPURWAY:
So we’re telling people what they need to be thinking about next. without them coming to us with a problem saying, look, I can’t do all the interviews, I’m missing the best talent, I don’t know how to get the performance reviews right, how do I get all the managers thinking in the same way? So it’s really about the fact they probably listen more than say somebody in manufacturing who

Chris Simmance:
Hmm.

DEBRA SPURWAY:
may just want to look at how we get the product from one end to the other end. Although a lot of employers, the

Chris Simmance:
apps.

DEBRA SPURWAY:
pandemic actually did us all a favour because we got work from home attracting talent. You know, one point two million people left London in the pandemic. Sixty percent of those are actually in hospitality, but everybody’s struggling with talent. So people are thinking more now. They want to do something more about

Chris Simmance:
Mm.

DEBRA SPURWAY:
well-being. They want to think about their culture. They want their teams to contribute to. how they take things forward. So they’re doing pulse surveys, employee surveys, benefits surveys, and benefits don’t have to cost a fortune. It’s showing somebody that you really do care about them and you’re thinking about them.

Chris Simmance:
And I think that, you know, some of that, like the people who do that in digital agency land, the people who do that, I would, I would say that they’ve got more resilience when something doesn’t quite go to plan, obviously hoping they have a plan in the first place. If you have a plan and something doesn’t go quite well and you’ve got these things in place, you have an awful lot more resilience to change. And sometimes you can very quickly make that change work for you. So. you know, bring the pandemic into this, for example, and agencies which had good policies or better than average policies and also had the right kind of team structure and culture. They were much more, it felt very much more easy to move into work from home for a period. And those same ones now are doing quite well at doing a kind of approach because everyone’s kind of realized, yeah, we don’t have to be together five days a week, but it’d be nice to be together a couple of days a week. And they’re able to do that and manage that properly without it kind of having a negative impact on this kind of elastic band of staff, which is quite stressful. I think for people.

DEBRA SPURWAY:
Yeah, I agree.

Chris Simmance:
What?

DEBRA SPURWAY:
Sorry,

Chris Simmance:
Sorry, please.

DEBRA SPURWAY:
carry

Chris Simmance:
Now I’m interrupting you.

DEBRA SPURWAY:
on. I was just going to say I agree because we’re finding a lot more interest in actually how you help people manage their teams

Chris Simmance:
Mm.

DEBRA SPURWAY:
when they are actually working from home. It’s about time and it’s about efficiency. You know, we all got a little bit too used to just pinging the teams button and actually you don’t know if somebody’s right and thick of something, interrupting somebody. For us personally, we very clearly mark our diaries, we mark our diaries to say if we’re on a project, if we need some time aside. So the communication has become a bigger deal in working from home, so that people actually start to, you know, portion the right amount of time for these types of calls and the communication that’s needed to help the business.

Chris Simmance:
And apart from like an empirical amount of people who call you with issues and those who work with you and don’t have as many issues, what do you think sort of separates the best from the rest when you’re working with agencies?

DEBRA SPURWAY:
I think what separates the best from the rest is that they’ve got their compliance and they’re actually thinking about a business journey,

Chris Simmance:
Hmm.

DEBRA SPURWAY:
not just what we do, it’s a business journey. So I have to think about my business, Chris, like you do.

Chris Simmance:
Mm.

DEBRA SPURWAY:
So what am I doing to help my business? Resource to deliver is extremely important to us.

Chris Simmance:
Yeah.

DEBRA SPURWAY:
That resource needs to be engaged and happy in the workplace. And it’s the little journeys you have to make to create that collaborative environment,

Chris Simmance:
Mm.

DEBRA SPURWAY:
because essentially, you need to work on your own business and through your people, I think is what sets businesses aside from people who just get the compliance and then get a problem, deal with that problem. In fact, Chris, we’re so open with our clients, we say, look, this has happened once. one too many times now. I think we need to do something and think differently about

Chris Simmance:
Mm.

DEBRA SPURWAY:
this. And what about

Chris Simmance:
Yeah.

DEBRA SPURWAY:
a bit of training? What about bringing people together? So, you know, it’s not just about that call to say it’s bad. It’s the whole of the employment life cycle. We need a bit of training

Chris Simmance:
Mm.

DEBRA SPURWAY:
and development here for people who are gonna be managing those 20 people as we grow and we want consistency. Consistency

Chris Simmance:
Yeah.

DEBRA SPURWAY:
is important in business.

Chris Simmance:
And, and having a plan is key and sticking to something from a consistency point of view is even keyer to invent a word out of nowhere. Um, you know, it’s all well and good having a plan, but if you keep changing it every six months, it’s not a plan, it’s, you know, just what you feel comfortable with at the time. I can say for, for sure, having spoken to a good few number of, um, people who work in your local offices, um, how happy they are at what they do. You know, this compliance type stuff is not my bag, but having spoken to quite a few of your people, I can see that they very much enjoy working with you guys. So it’s, there’s no cobbler’s shoes mentality going on the HR department. You know, if you, if you do it, then you practice what you preach. And that’s really, really important, I

DEBRA SPURWAY:
Exactly,

Chris Simmance:
think. And

DEBRA SPURWAY:
exactly.

Chris Simmance:
what would you say if you, if you’d spent, you know, poured budget into a, into a magic wand in the R and D department of the HR department? One thing could you use that magic wand for that would change across the whole agency space?

DEBRA SPURWAY:
I think the tools that people have to work with every day is vitally important. There’s nothing worse than when your CRM system goes down or some technology’s

Chris Simmance:
Mm.

DEBRA SPURWAY:
not working. You can’t get the right support side on the IT side. That would be critical, a critical area for us. We are very much a people business and we like to talk. But if your systems aren’t working, you can’t necessarily deliver at the speed. that a case may require. So I think if I had an open, bottomless pit of money, I’d make sure we had absolutely everything we needed, you know, a second laptop set up for when that one gave blue. So that’s important. The other thing is the happiness of people. You know, last week in our offices, it was two people had their one year anniversary. They wanted a number one balloon in Harry Styles. Well, he’s on tour, so we got a big cardboard cutout. And the next day, it was somebody’s birthday, so there was another cake in the office.

Chris Simmance:
Oh my God. Yeah. And there’s a card going around every five minutes, but at the same time, it is, it is, it is nice. I remember, I remember

DEBRA SPURWAY:
Yeah, it is good.

Chris Simmance:
the last agency I worked in, I think there were about 50 people on our floor and I think every other day, at least there was a card that went round and it’s great that, you know, people do these things, but when there’s 50 people in the room, in one room, and you can’t remember 48 of the names, it’s, well, I couldn’t. Um, it’s, it’s very difficult to do, but when you’ve got like, you’ve got, um, relatively small local offices across the whole of the UK, I bet it’s quite nice because one office will celebrate a birthday and the rest could kind of drop in and, and congratulate as well.

DEBRA SPURWAY:
Get on the social media, yeah, sharing.

Chris Simmance:
That’s

DEBRA SPURWAY:
Yes,

Chris Simmance:
awesome.

DEBRA SPURWAY:
good.

Chris Simmance:
It’s really nice. And, and Deborah, if one, if an agency was not right now, and they said, quick one piece of advice, what do I do? And from an HR point of view, what’s the one thing that you’re going to let them take away from this podcast?

DEBRA SPURWAY:
have compliant up to date and fit for purpose employment documentation. That actually is

Chris Simmance:
Yeah.

DEBRA SPURWAY:
key

Chris Simmance:
And

DEBRA SPURWAY:
to

Chris Simmance:
if

DEBRA SPURWAY:
everything.

Chris Simmance:
you don’t, and if you don’t know if it’s up to date, speak to you guys. Is the,

DEBRA SPURWAY:
Send

Chris Simmance:
yeah.

DEBRA SPURWAY:
it over, we’ll be more than happy to do a free review. The one thing a tribunal judge will look at is have you got everything your obligations covered legislation-wise and secondly have you followed your own procedures

Chris Simmance:
Mm.

DEBRA SPURWAY:
because the tribunal judge would say if you can’t do that you didn’t show much importance

Chris Simmance:
Yeah,

DEBRA SPURWAY:
to it.

Chris Simmance:
that’s a really good, really important thing. And genuinely agencies are people, businesses delivering services for other people, um, across the board, there are people involved regardless of what tools you have and AI this and AI that people are at the heart of these businesses because it’s a service based business. Um, you’ve got to sort the, sort it out. If you don’t have a proper compliance set of paperwork, if you don’t have the right audit trails for the right things. If you don’t have. Even it sounds basic to have a handbook and don’t just download a generic one off the internet and change the business name because something won’t be right. And it won’t be congruent with another document and it won’t follow the process of another.

DEBRA SPURWAY:
I think that’s a really important point and not because we try to sell business. We only support people on the basis that we provide them with what they

Chris Simmance:
Mm-hmm.

DEBRA SPURWAY:
need, not what they don’t

Chris Simmance:
Yeah.

DEBRA SPURWAY:
need. So you may actually find yourself with quite an onerous policy that you don’t understand until you have to implement

Chris Simmance:
Yeah,

DEBRA SPURWAY:
it.

Chris Simmance:
and it’s tough. It’s tough. But anyway.

DEBRA SPURWAY:
We are not the public sector.

Chris Simmance:
No, well, thankfully

DEBRA SPURWAY:
We’re not the

Chris Simmance:
not,

DEBRA SPURWAY:
public

Chris Simmance:
yeah.

DEBRA SPURWAY:
sector who have very onerous policies.

Chris Simmance:
for everything, hence why nothing gets done. But let’s not get into politics. Thanks very much for coming on the podcast today, Deborah. It’s been lovely to talk to you.

DEBRA SPURWAY:
Absolute pleasure. Bye bye.