Affordable HR, Employment Law and Mediation

Affordable HR, Employment Law and Mediation HR, Employment & Mediation Services (Workplace, civil & commercial) at a genuinely affordable cost. Leverage our proven experience.

Helping SMEs with conflict resolution, compliance, build leadership capability, and implement sustainable people solutions.

02/09/2026

Construction tells a very different labour-market story.

Government research on Industry Training Board reform reports that around 45% of construction vacancies are difficult to fill because of skills shortages.
It also reports that around 30% of construction employers see finding suitably skilled people as a key challenge.
https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/industry-training-board-reform/industry-training-board-reform

That does not sound like an employer-driven market. Not for the right skills.
For experienced workers with the right technical capability, qualifications and track record, the position can look very different from the wider labour market.
And this is where employers need to think beyond recruitment.

If the people are not available, repeatedly advertising the same vacancy will not solve the problem. The questions should be:
• What can be developed internally?
• Who could be trained?
• Where is succession planning needed?
• Which employees would be particularly difficult to replace if they left tomorrow?

Recruitment alone is one answer. Retention and development are another. And in sectors where skills are genuinely scarce, those conversations need to start much earlier.

Affordable Support can help.
Affordable Support provides HR and Mediation services for SMEs and individuals. Two distinct services that can complement each other.
Clear guidance | Practical process | Commercial understanding.

01/09/2026

More candidates does not mean more suitable candidates
Research published by Skills England identified 62 occupations in critical demand, accounting for around 5.1 million workers or 15.4% of UK employment.
A further 125 occupations were identified as being in elevated demand.
https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/occupations-in-demand/2025
This is where the labour market becomes much more interesting.
Because employers can have plenty of applicants and still have a recruitment problem.
Receiving 100 applications does not mean receiving 100 suitable candidates.
There is a difference between candidate availability and skills availability.
And employers need to understand that difference:
• Sometimes the market is genuinely short of the skill
• Or the salary is wrong
• Or the person specification has become unrealistic.
Sometimes the business is asking for experience that could actually be developed internally.
It is very easy to say “there are no good candidates”. It is much more useful to ask why.
Affordable Support can help.
Affordable Support provides HR and Mediation services for SMEs and individuals. Two distinct services that can complement each other.
Clear guidance | Practical process | Commercial understanding.

01/09/2026

Two employment markets at the same time.
One business can experience an employer-driven and candidate-driven market at the same time

The Bank of England's July 2026 Agents' Summary reports that recruitment difficulties are now below normal levels overall, particularly for more routine roles.
But it also identifies continuing shortages around specialist skills and in certain geographical areas.
https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/agents-summary/2026/july-2026

This is exactly why we need to stop talking about the labour market as though it is one thing. A business could advertise an administrative vacancy and receive a very strong response. Then advertise for an engineer, senior clinician, specialist technician or another difficult-to-find role and receive almost nothing suitable.

Completely different labour market. Which is a driving factor when deciding salary, benefits, flexibility and how quickly the recruitment process needs to move.
If candidates are scarce, a slow five-stage recruitment process can lose people.
If candidates are plentiful, the employer may have considerably more choice.
Recruitment strategy needs to reflect the market for the actual vacancy and not what happened the last time the business recruited.

Affordable Support can help.
Affordable Support provides HR and Mediation services for SMEs and individuals. Two distinct services that can complement each other.
Clear guidance | Practical process | Commercial understanding.

31/08/2026

Employers still need the work done. They are just becoming more careful about how they resource it.

The latest KPMG and Recruitment & Employment Confederation Report on Jobs found that permanent placements stabilised after 45 consecutive months of decline.
At the same time, temporary billings increased for the fourth month in a row and temporary vacancies increased for the first time in two years.
https://www.rec.uk.com/our-view/news/press-releases/report-jobs-recruitment-landscape-improves-permanent-placements-stabilise-and-temp-billings-rise-further

This shift does not mean that employers are saying they do not need people. Rather saying they do not necessarily want to take on another permanent fixed cost.
There will always be work that needs a permanent employee. However, there will also be work that can be covered temporarily, through consultancy, fractional support, outsourcing or project-based expertise. And businesses are becoming more open to that distinction.

Workforce planning should not only start with: “We need to recruit.”
It should start with: “What do we actually need?”

Affordable Support can help.
Affordable Support provides HR and Mediation services for SMEs and individuals. Two distinct services that can complement each other.
Clear guidance | Practical process | Commercial understanding.

31/08/2026

Businesses are thinking twice before recruiting

The CIPD Labour Market Outlook suggests employers are becoming increasingly cautious about adding people to the payroll.

Only 62% of employers said they expected to recruit over the following three months. In the private sector, that fell to 57%, the lowest level recorded by the CIPD since it began collecting the measure in 2016, excluding the pandemic.
https://www.cipd.org/uk/knowledge/reports/labour-market-outlook/

This is significant because businesses still need people and skills in order for the work to be completed. Albeit AI can help atomising things significantly.

Therefore, employers being hesitant to commit to another permanent salary.
And this approach changes the conversation. Rather than the question being “Can we find someone?” it becomes “Can we afford to employ someone permanently?”
That is where proper workforce planning becomes important and employers are looking at redistribution, development, cover, and whether temporary, fractional or outsourced support work better.

This makes planning even more important, and recruitment should be a business decision, not simply a reaction to someone becoming busy.

Affordable Support can help.
Affordable Support provides HR and Mediation services for SMEs and individuals. Two distinct services that can complement each other.
Clear guidance | Practical process | Commercial understanding.

30/08/2026

The labour market has changed. But not everywhere in the same way.

The latest figures from the Office for National Statistics confirm that UK vacancies fell to around 707,000 between May and July 2026. Outside the pandemic, the last time vacancies were at or below this level was in 2014.

https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/employmentandemployeetypes/bulletins/uklabourmarket/august2026?

For many roles, employers have more choice than they did a few years ago. More candidates are applying. Vacancies are lower. Unemployment has increased.
But I would be very careful about calling the whole UK labour market employer-driven.
Because it is not.
It depends on the role. It depends on the sector. It depends on the skills needed and, increasingly, where the job is based.
An employer recruiting for a general role may receive a large number of suitable applications.
The same employer recruiting a highly specialised person may struggle for months.
Both can be true at the same time.
The question is no longer simply whether it is an employer's market or a candidate's market.
The question is what does the market look like for the person you are actually trying to recruit and whether the job description is suitable for that post.

Affordable Support can help.
Affordable Support provides HR and Mediation services for SMEs and individuals. Two distinct services that can complement each other.
Clear guidance | Practical process | Commercial understanding.

30/08/2026

Employment Rights Act 2025: What SMEs Need to Change Now (Part 3)

What to do now
You don't need to overhaul everything overnight, but three things are worth doing this quarter:
1. Audit your contracts and handbook against the changes already in force: SSP, paternity and parental leave are the two most likely to be out of date.
2. Review your harassment policy and any third-party exposure. Customer-facing and hospitality businesses in particular should look at this before the strengthened duty takes effect.
3. Tighten your probation and early performance-management process now, ahead of the unfair dismissal qualifying period shortening.

None of this needs a full-time HR department to get right. It needs someone who knows exactly what's changing and can tell you, in plain terms, what it means for your business specifically. Which is precisely the gap senior, on-demand HR support is designed to fill.

If you're not sure whether your contracts, policies or processes are up to date with the Employment Rights Act 2025, that's a conversation worth having before it becomes a problem rather than after.

Affordable Support can help.

Affordable Support provides HR and Mediation services for SMEs and individuals. Two distinct services that can complement each other.
Clear guidance | Practical process | Commercial understanding.

29/08/2026

Employment Rights Act 2025: What SMEs Need to Change Now (Part 2)

On the horizon: unfair dismissal

The change most SMEs are watching nervously is the planned reduction in the qualifying period for unfair dismissal claims, from two years' service down to as little as six months, expected in 2027. Anyone you hire from mid-2026 onwards could fall under the shorter timeline once it takes effect.

What this means for you: probation periods and early-stage performance management stop being a formality and become a genuine risk-management tool. Getting recruitment, induction and early performance conversations right matters more than it used to.
Why this hits SMEs harder

None of these changes are unreasonable in isolation, most are about fairness and transparency, and they've been well signposted. The difficulty for SMEs is volume and timing: several major reforms landing within the same 18-month window, without the in-house legal or HR capacity that larger employers use to absorb them.
That's usually where things go wrong. Not through bad intentions, but through outdated contracts, absence policies that no longer match the law, or a dismissal handled the old way when the process has quietly changed underneath it.

Affordable Support can help.
Affordable Support provides HR and Mediation services for SMEs and individuals. Two distinct services that can complement each other.
Clear guidance | Practical process | Commercial understanding.

29/08/2026

Retention still matters in a cooler labour market.
ONS estimates the UK employment rate at 75.1% for March to May 2026 and unemployment at 4.9%:
https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/employmentandemployeetypes/bulletins/uklabourmarket/july2026
ONS also notes that labour market estimates should be read alongside other indicators because some volatility remains in the Labour Force Survey:
https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/employmentandemployeetypes/bulletins/employmentintheuk/july2026

The labour market is split depending on the industry.
That does not mean employers can ignore retention. Losing experienced staff is still disruptive. Especially when businesses are already dealing with cost pressure, productivity demands and employment law change.

Retention is not just about pay. It is also about:
• manager capability
• workload
• communication
• fairness
• flexibility
• conflict
• progression
• trust.

A quieter labour market does not mean people will stay in badly managed workplaces.
Affordable Support can help.

Affordable Support provides HR and Mediation services for SMEs and individuals. Two distinct services that can complement each other.
Clear guidance | Practical process | Commercial understanding.

29/08/2026

Cost pressure is becoming people pressure

The British Chambers of Commerce reports that labour costs remained the main price pressure in Q2 2026, cited by 70% of responding businesses. Fuel costs were also cited by 52% of businesses in Q2, compared with 28% in Q1:
https://www.britishchambers.org.uk/news/2026/07/business-investment-plans-hit-post-pandemic-low/

That pressure does not stay in finance.
It becomes people pressure driving actions such as:
• Restructuring
• Reduced hiring
• Heavier workloads
• Delayed pay reviews
• Productivity demands
• Tougher management decisions.
These are HR issues, not just finance issues because cost pressure does not remove the need for fair process. In fact it makes process more important.

Affordable Support can help.
Affordable Support provides HR and Mediation services for SMEs and individuals. Two distinct services that can complement each other.
Clear guidance | Practical process | Commercial understanding.

Address

Commerce House, Carlton Boulevard
Birmingham
LN24WJ

Opening Hours

Monday 9am - 5:30pm
Tuesday 9am - 5:30pm
Wednesday 9am - 5:30pm
Thursday 9am - 5:30pm
Friday 9am - 5:30pm
Saturday 10am - 2pm

Telephone

+441212696508

Website

,

Alerts

Be the first to know and let us send you an email when Affordable HR, Employment Law and Mediation posts news and promotions. Your email address will not be used for any other purpose, and you can unsubscribe at any time.

Contact The Business

Send a message to Affordable HR, Employment Law and Mediation:

Shortcuts

Featured

Share