The people stuff, sorted.
What getting it wrong actually costs
Proper, ready-to-use HR templates, contracts, handbooks, the lot, written in plain English for actual humans running actual businesses, and ready to download today without the lawyer's day rate or the corporate ‘red tape’.
Sound familiar?
You started a company to build something, not to become its accidental HR department. But somewhere around the fourth or fifth hire, that's quietly what happened, and nobody handed you a manual on the way in.
So now there's that low hum of doubt in the background. Does the contract you cobbled together actually hold up? Are you allowed to do the thing you're about to do? Is "we'll deal with the paperwork later" going to come back and bite you at the worst possible moment?
That feeling is normal, and it's worth listening to, because the stuff it's nagging you about tends to get expensive when it goes wrong.
The part nobody mentions while you're heads-down building the business is how pricey the people side gets when it goes sideways. Defending a single tribunal claim, even a straightforward one you end up winning, usually startssomewhere around £6,000 to £8,000 in legal fees, and because tribunals are each-side-pays, you won't get a penny of that back even when you're completely in the right.
On top of that, the average unfair dismissal payout last year was £13,749, and discrimination claims aren't capped at all, so the number can climb a fair way further.
And it's getting trickier for employers: from January 2027, people will be able to bring an unfair dismissal claim after six months in the job rather than the two years it takes now, and the compensation cap is being scrapped altogether. A solid contract and a clear, fair process is really what stands between you and a very bad few months, and you'd far rather sort that on your own terms than on a tribunal's.
See what our packs are like with a free sample
Drop your email below, and we’ll send you the first part of our key pack so you can see the goods for yourself :-)
Way cheaper than a solicitor (yes, really)
A single employment contract drafted by a solicitor can cost around £1,000, and every policy for the handbook you add (let’s say 3) is another £500-ish on top, which means building even the basics the lawyer way leaves you north of £2,500 before you've had a scrap of advice to go with it (which is all on the clock by the way!)
And let’s talk about AI
Trusting your legal affairs to a word-matching program that randomly decides to reply in Welsh late at night (yes, it’s a recognised thing!) is a risk I personally wouldn’t want to take.
The minimum £6,000-plus it costs just to defend a tribunal claim when it goes wrong, win or lose, should be enough to convince you that this stuff probably needs a human involved.
