esphr’s MyHRCases and expert legal support have been gamechangers for our HR team at Speedy Services. Our partnership with esphr has revolutionised our ER case management, enabling us to make informed decisions swiftly. With esphr as an extension of our team, we’ve gained not only pragmatic advice but also valuable coaching, ensuring we stay ahead of employment law changes

esphr was appointed – and continue to be retained – for its unrivalled ability to provide confident and sound HR and legal advice, while remaining responsive and accessible.

The team and I have significantly expanded our knowledge in terms of employment law, and we’re in a stronger position to deliver first-class support for our representations. A knowledgeable, commercially-minded and consistent point of contact at esphr is what has fostered such a positive learning environment, alongside the focused solicitor-led training.

I’ve really benefitted from understanding some of the wider implications of the law, thanks to esphr’s vast range of in-house experience. It’s been reassuring to know that when there has been employment law implications, we’ve had experts to sense-check and assist.

We were using some pretty expensive city lawyers before — but we wanted to get one consistent supplier, whilst being conscious of the cost. We chose esphr after careful consideration of all our options. There is a real in-house feel to the relationship, in that they know our business and the issues we face.

The wider HR team can avoid the cautious approach you can naturally adopt when costs are on the clock every time you pick up the phone to a lawyer which can, in turn, lead to the ER team not making certain calls solely down to cost implications. The esphr model means they can sense check cases daily and are less inclined to take a risk when specialist advice is readily accessible. I think the sense checking or sounding board part of the esphr model is very valuable.

The advice we used to receive was rarely commercial. Previously, we spent a lot of time, effort and budget on dealing with ER issues; now we don’t because we’re with esphr. They are able to give us super commercial advice which ensures positive results that are felt across the business.

It has transformed the HR function and this has made an impact on the business. We are able to capitalise on the time saved to do the projects we knew would make a difference. The wider business is already recognising this.

There is another happy by-product of our relationship with esphr. Speaking to our own dedicated employment lawyers is good exposure and experience for the HR team; it has been excellent for their professional training and development.

I became aware of esphr’s service offering before I was in a position to make a decision on service providers. When that changed, one of the first things I did was reach out to Pete Byrne (CEO) and the team – having previously spoken to one of their business development executives.

We were already using an outsourced law firm and a HR resource system, but they weren’t able to adapt to our employer brand. When we spoke to esphr – and discovered everything we needed was under one roof – there was simply nothing else like it on the market, so the decision was an easy one to make.

The HR team uses esphr’s employee relations (ER) case management tool, MyHRCases, every single day. It is incredibly intuitive and a simple and swift way for our HR team to log and manage each ER matter. With this platform, we know exactly where every case is, and how they are progressing. Additionally, from the subsequent data, we are now building real-time, detailed reports for our executive leadership team which means we can, collectively, identify employee hotspots clearly and prioritise them at the earliest opportunity.

Not only have we ditched our old HR spreadsheets – and put everything online – we had a gap in relevant library resources which has now been filled by esphr’s range of tailorable online HR templates.

Our dedicated legal advisors take the time to speak to us in a language we understand. The way they educate us expands the capability and quality of our advisory product. With such specialist support, we are freeing up our HR Business Partners to focus on more strategic activity and less firefighting and risk management. There is no question that the entire esphr workforce is an extension of our HR team.

As a multi-sited, globally recognised organisation, Dentsu International isn’t afraid to invest heavily in what matters – our people. With esphr’s integrated approach, this partnership has enabled us to manage scale, efficiency and professional standards without compromising the warmth of our brand and employee experience.

It is very rare to find someone who genuinely appreciates what we want to achieve – and what matters to us as a brand – and tailors a solution around that. esphr offered a business solution which carried longevity and truly understood what I was looking for in terms of support.

Randstad’s HR team is not employed to be reactive, but to focus on pro-active and forward thinking solutions, so that we can provide the very best working conditions for our team – something that esphr understands instinctively. Furthermore, the team has had a significant impact on our own efficiencies too – the speed which we get solid, practical and relevant advice is second-to-none.

Simply put, everyone at esphr is open and honest and wants to help make your working life better – in both the short and long-term. This is the way all business relationships should be. I do not want to change supplier every few years. esphr offers security and sustainability and I look forward to working with them in the future.

esphr is revolutionary in its support of our in-house People Team, the advice has always felt really commercial, and we get a wider perspective than we might via the more ‘traditional’ lawyers that local authorities typically use. I have been in HR for 23 years and it is easy to forget ourselves when prioritising personal development. esphr does not just offer an employee relations case management tool and specialist legal support, the organisation works with us to continually upskill colleagues.

With esphr’s help, our colleagues feel confident when managing complex ER matters and know when to escalate incidents to our dedicated advisors who are truly an extension of our team.

The legal team are really friendly, and you are matched with specific lawyers who meet your unique needs – providing a truly personalised experience. It feels like a genuine, collaborative approach when we work together because there is always someone on hand to help and provide commercially astute decisions. At other local authorities you tend to have to wait a few days for advice, but with esphr you can get a same-day response. I was extremely passionate about bringing the team in because it would make a meaningful difference.

Our people team is not transactional, it is forward-thinking and, with esphr’s support, we are becoming better coaches and enablers within our organisation. We know we are not employment lawyers and so esphr takes the pain of complex legislation and processes away.

esphr feels like the fifth member of our team and the advice offered is invaluable to us. We have a great working relationship with our lead and buddy legal advisors, and the team is contactable whenever we need them, and always respond in a timely manner. Our advisors are there in the hour of need and we have no qualms about engaging in a full and frank conversation with them.

For the business, it is all about trusting the advice received, and we get that in droves! esphr offers a truly exceptional service and gives the senior leadership team such confidence – and reassurance – that we have no issue in renewing our contract year upon year.

It is working brilliantly for us. What I really like is how esphr have taken the time to build the relationship and really understand our business.

The great thing about esphr is that they are a “family” business, not just because it’s family-owned or run but because they want to become part of your team.

They have embraced our values and understood our need for commercial, practical advice. They will give you exactly what you need. On high level calls with our CEO and MDs, the esphr lawyers are on the same wavelength. In the past when I’ve brought in HR advisors, I’ve found we have had to make the final decision. When the lawyers are there with me on the call, the understanding of our need to make a commercial decision is fully understood and made.

esphr offers fantastic value for money at the times when you might need it most. The advice provided is excellent and easy to understand, and our advisors are both accessible and speak in a language we can relate to. Since we have worked together, we have built some solid relationships with our advisors – so much so that they feel like a part of our own team as a result of being able to offer quick and sound advice. esphr is big on ER within their own organisation, and it’s very important for us to have a partnership with a company which shares similar values to those we aim to uphold here at Konica Minolta Business Solutions (UK).

The experience of working through a tribunal case alongside esphr’s team, having ongoing support throughout, and seeing the power of our investment in action has been a fantastic experience.

We might not speak to them every day, but it’s reassuring to have such peace of mind from a legal perspective, as well as having a wealth of documentation and information at your fingertips. They feel like intuitive friends who can read between the lines, listen and understand to what we want to achieve as a company and help us to make the right decisions to protect the future success of the firm, alongside our employees’ interests.

We have strong family values and can feel the same thing through esphr, regardless of their growth and remits too.

The consistency of esphr’s advice, tone and approach, further cemented our already-positive relationship. Although I have two named and dedicated key points of contact, there have been times when I have spoken to a different lawyer – for one reason or another. I value, firstly, the speed at which an alternative advisor is sought, and the clear, consistent approach and tone across the board. It is a hard thing to master, and the success is testament to the success of esphr’s recruitment strategy and approach.

The nature of advice – in the situations where you need it most – is second-to-none. There have been occasions when there have been solutions I would not have otherwise thought of. When you add to that the conscious effort esphr makes to truly understand the nuances of our business, they really feel like an extension of the Countryside Properties HR team, and I think that is their greatest asset and a real differentiator from many others in the market.

I would wholeheartedly say that esphr are crucial in helping us make the right decisions. We have had to make many difficult management decisions and esphr help take the stress out of doing this.

The business now has more people, has greater complexity and has gone through a couple of restructures and a few challenging employment tribunals issues. esphr help us manage all of that.

If we hadn’t chosen esphr as our partner, our options would have been to employ in-house or use one of the large legal firms. Hiring would have been more expensive and wouldn’t have given us the breadth of knowledge esphr delivers. With a large legal firm, you don’t have the peace of mind they are at the end of the phone when you most need their advice. Working with esphr, we have that level of service and responsiveness the business needs.

The consistency of esphr’s advice, as well as its continued availability has proven invaluable in the years we have worked together. Although we may not need to speak to esphr on a regular basis, knowing the team is there when we need to, is incredibly reassuring.

The structured processes and access to advice quickly and easily have assisted me greatly, while the work around unplanned events – such as a redundancy programme – is something which cemented esphr’s place within our organisation. Furthermore, it also gives the rest of the staff that reassurance that any situations are being addressed properly by some of the best employment lawyers in the UK.

We’ve been incredibly impressed with the way esphr has dealt with any query, the advice given, availability of the lawyers and the relationships we have built. The rapport is fantastic and esphr feels like a genuine extension of our own team, which helps to foster open discussions about likely outcomes, practicalities and risk. In turn, this allows us to make sound judgments accordingly.

In short, the level of service, quality and breadth of resources available is excellent and the offering is competitively priced.

Businesses never want to have to escalate a case to a lawyer so, technically, you don’t want to be speaking to your law firm! However, when we do, it is always a painless process and we come away with confidence that we are on the right path.

When needing to present an employee with a letter or policy, the esphr portal of templates makes it quick and easy to download a template of the document you want – something which would previously have taken us days to draft in-house.

Working with esphr gives us the peace of mind that you, essentially, can’t make a bad decision, as well as the reassurance that you will get a solution to any issue that is legally compliant as opposed to guesswork.

Being kept up to date with new legislation in a way that’s easy to digest and avoids legal jargon – particularly over the past year regarding furlough via esphr’s Coronavirus Q&As – helps to remove the pressure of updating contracts and handbooks with legislation changes.

esphr is incredibly open and transparent about its charging method – because it’s a subscription service – which gives you, as the customer, the confidence that you can spend as little or as long as you need to on a certain issue to get an appropriate result.

Finally, esphr truly is an extension of the DJST senior management team. They are completely relatable and easy to talk to – and most importantly, understand our business and what makes us tick. The legal team always provide commercially focused, practical solutions.

Working with esphr has been a positive experience. The esphr team is quick to respond to all manner of queries – even if it is only to acknowledge receipt. They actively encourage open conversations about how we are finding the ER case management system, MyHRCases, as well as potential areas for ongoing development in order to make the service more impactful for us – something you would not ordinarily expect from a HR software provider.

Whilst the ship is still sailing through unknown waters as we deal with the impact of Coronavirus, it has been amazing to have the support of the esphr team during the rough times we have been through these past three months.

From getting to grips with furlough, to managing a consultation with redundancies, we are so very grateful for the support we’ve had from our legal advisor Sarah and all the esphr team that worked together to provide the details we required at pace, as the world changed so drastically around us. The support we received has enabled us to protect the charity for the 70,000 people living with muscle-wasting conditions who need us more now than ever.

On behalf of us all, thank you!

Together with several members of our HR team, I attended esphr’s immigration sponsor license training course recently. It was a really enjoyable session and we found it incredibly useful, given the constant changes to immigration legislation over the last couple of years. The training not only covered what we need to know as sponsors, but it was also tailored to our specific business needs. We took away some actionable steps to ensure we’re being compliant and meeting our legal obligations.

As far as we are concerned esphr are definitely our Employment Law Firm of the Year. Although we have not worked with esphr for that long, I feel that the quality of their advice and support and the model that they operate has significantly changed our relationship towards the legal profession.

Sometimes, involving a lawyer is regarded with apprehension, sometimes with unfriendliness and often with a sense being the port of last resort, but our experience is that esphr doesn’t fit that model and they have definitely become our first port of call.

We enjoy our interactions with them and appreciate the in-depth expertise they provide. The confidence that has developed as a result really adds value to the support that we can bring to problem resolution in the work place.

We can’t praise the services of Sarah Dillon and the legal advisors at esphr highly enough. They always act with speed, efficiency and calmness, which reassures us 100% that we made the right choice to partner with them for legal advice. We have no hesitation in highly recommending them, and glad we made them our first choice for legal services. Thank you so much for supporting us with many key issues and ensuring the process has been collaborative and painless.

esphr have helped develop and upskill our staff with every conversation we have had, spending time to ensure we reach the end result as a partnership.

The service from the esphr team is exceptional and I try to sing your praises whenever I can. I’ve been in touch with my legal advisor Nina quite a lot recently, as we have a few changes going on, and it’s great to have her support. We have been a longstanding esphr customer since 2008 and I continue to be very happy with the excellent service I receive from you.

Being a large healthcare organisation that has seen significant growth over the last two years, we were exploring systems that would enable us to monitor and manage all our ER casework. We needed the system to be easy to use and for it to allow the HR team to have visibility and be able to monitor how cases were progressing. That’s when we found esphr’s ER case management system – MyHRCases.

We have been using MyHRCases for nearly 12 months now and have been delighted with the both the simplicity of use, but also the support we have received from the esphr team.

Our HR operations team use the system every day to log new cases and monitor ongoing cases. The dashboard offers a quick summary of the number of open cases, the number of new cases in the last 30 days and the average duration of matters that been archived in the last 30 days. It also categorises the number of cases by matter e.g. sickness absence and ill health or disciplinary. This is very useful when preparing reports for senior management and the Board.

The reporting function is very easy to use and allows us to categorise cases by region and unit which enables our HR advisers to produce weekly reports to keep the management team up to date on progress.

We particularly like the ‘actions’ feature which allow us to assign actions that need to be completed and allows us to set an action date and to send an email when due. This is particularly useful for the HR team to remind managers when follow up on cases is required to ensure we are moving swiftly through the cases.

We have piloted the system with some of our service managers where they use the system directly to enter details of any ER matters in their services. This will allow them to update in real time and will eradicate our current system of sending in weekly trackers. The HR team will have oversight of all the cases.

We are very impressed with the support we have received, and it is great to partner with an organisation who are genuinely interested in improving their product to best meet customer needs. esphr are continually improving the system following feedback and are keen for their customer base to work with them collaboratively to support with improvements. They have generated bespoke reports to extract the information from the system that we specifically require, however, the reporting tool in the system is really easy to use.

Being able to save all documentation relating to a matter on the platform ensures easy accessibility and, should the case need to be referred for legal advice, enables the case history and all documentation to be sent at the push of a button.

In summary, we are delighted with the system and more importantly with the support we have received from esphr.

esphr’s ER case management system, MyHRCases, is integral to the data protection of our HR cases across the Bravo Group.

Due to our multi-site location and HR Business Partner activity, the system provides us with a safe place to retain sensitive people data, essential to meet GDPR compliance and SM&CR regulation in line with the FCA. We have found that MyHRCases has enabled multi-site HR Business Partnering ensuring that any member of the team can step in to oversee of pick up cases as required.

As the Group HR Director, I have found the system particularly useful for board reporting and analysis of our ER cases, helping to identify trends as well as enabling me to oversee the activity of business partnering with a comprehensive outline of each case.

We have been with esphr for over 14 years and they are my safety blanket on all things HR. I signed up to the esphr service not long after I left my former role to help in getting our own start-up off the ground. I used to work in HR and thought I knew all about employment law at the time, but found that I needed the support that esphr could provide. Over the years, not having to worry about formulating policies and being on top of legislation has really helped me. As a small business, you don’t have the benefit of different departments with specialists looking after everything for you, yet you still need to cover it all as you remain accountable. I would like to say thank you to the esphr team for being there for me over all these years!

We have been working with esphr for about six months now and the team, specifically Sarah, has been wonderful. They actually feel like an extension of our HR team rather than a third party. What really works for us is their availability, their ability to listen and understand the situation followed by a considered approach to options, actions and next steps. They are not risk adverse as many third parties can be, however they balance this by explaining any potential risks or consequences, allowing us to make an informed decision. They have taken the time to get to know our team and our business. For us their support and advice is truly valued.

We have been supported by esphr for a number of years now and we have always received top notch service in a manner that is clear and easy to understand. This is especially important when we have to relay that information to our management teams.

I think the relationship we have is really good for my team and our learning but I also know, from a business point of view, you have our best interest as a customer at heart. That’s why I recommend you to others both through my professional and personal network!

We have a long-standing relationship with esphr. The online portal is hugely valuable and the solicitor support is very personable and pragmatic. Everyone is extremely helpful regardless of who you speak with and we are very grateful for the support and how this complements our HR service.

The speed of response, quality of advice/support and personal touch provided by experienced lawyers at a fraction of the cost, is an incredibly valuable resource to HR professionals.

My legal advisors provide support, excellent advice and act as a sounding board. I would have no hesitation in recommending the services/resources offered by esphr.

As an experienced HR professional I have found the advisory and website support provided by esphr to be first class. Having a direct telephone and email access to my own personal specialist employment solicitors as and when I need it really compliments the knowledge and actions that I need to undertake on-site. This ensures we have complete peace of mind and that we are protecting our legal position, especially when we want to take a tough commercial stance with employees.

I’m very happy to have such a friendly and reliable group of people on the other end of the phone to give help and advice when needed. The customer portal is also very easy to use, very informative and extremely useful!

We approached Charlotte Ashton having seen an article online that she had written a couple of years ago which was aimed at employers and how to go about the process of sponsoring an international student. I tracked Charlotte down to esphr and was delighted that she was able to assist.

Her guidance ensured that we understood the process, documentation and she assisted in producing and checking various letters that we required to submit to the Home Office. I was grateful that she was readily available and she also spoke to our proposed staff member, so that he understood the situation and what was required.

I found Charlotte to be professional, friendly and I am very grateful for her help. We managed to obtain a sponsorship licence for our new colleague and without her help, I believe that we would not have had success. We would not hesitate to recommend her and the esphr service.

We have been very happy with the service from esphr, principally via Charlotte Ashton, who has guided our church through a difficult, and at times complex immigration process, whereby we have arranged for our new minister to obtain a visa to come and live and work in Edinburgh from the USA. It was anything but straightforward and we relied heavily on Charlotte’s legal expertise and her willingness to take time to talk us through difficulties and answer questions.

She was unfailingly helpful, often responding promptly to queries where we needed advice quickly. I doubt very much that we could have accomplished the task without her guidance – it would certainly not have gone so smoothly and in as good time as we could have hoped for. This was a classic example of specialist expertise providing invaluable advice and support, in the most customer-friendly manner possible.