What does an HR consultant actually do for a small business?

There's a conversation most founders have with themselves at some point. Usually it involves an employee situation they've been putting off - a performance issue they don't know how to raise, a contract they copied from the internet three years ago, a team that's growing faster than their HR knowledge is. They know they should probably do something. They're just not sure what, or who to call.

That's where an HR consultant comes in. But what do they actually do? It's a reasonable question, and the answer is more practical than most people expect.

The day-to-day of how a HR consultant can support your business

The honest answer is that HR consultants do whatever the people side of your business needs - but in practice that tends to fall into a few distinct areas.

Employment documents and policies. Contracts, offer letters, employee handbooks, parental leave policies, remote working policies. These aren't just admin - they're the documents that protect your business if something goes wrong. An HR consultant makes sure they're legally sound, written in plain English, and actually reflect the way your business works.

Employee relations. This is the difficult stuff. Grievances, disciplinaries, performance improvement processes, redundancies. These situations carry real legal risk if they're handled badly, and they take up a disproportionate amount of a founder's time and headspace. A good HR consultant takes the weight of them off you, guides the process correctly, and helps you get to a resolution without making things worse.

Manager support. Most managers in small businesses have never managed anyone before. They've been promoted because they're good at their job, not because anyone taught them how to have hard conversations, set objectives, or deal with underperformance. HR support often means coaching managers through these situations - before they escalate into something bigger.

Performance processes. Setting up review cycles, handling performance improvement plans, building the kind of feedback culture where problems surface early rather than late.

People strategy. The longer-term view. What does your org structure need to look like in 12 months? When should you hire, and what for? How do you hold onto the people who matter? These aren't questions most founders have time to think through properly - but ignoring them costs you.

Do you actually need this?

Not every business does, at least not immediately. If you're pre-revenue or very early-stage, basic templates and common sense will get you a long way.

But there are a few moments when it typically becomes worth it:

• When you make your first hire - getting the employment relationship right from the start saves you problems later.

• When you're dealing with your first disciplinary or grievance - these have legal timelines and procedures that genuinely matter.

• When your team reaches around 10 people and informal approaches stop working.

• And any time you're considering redundancies or restructuring, where the legal risk of getting it wrong is significant.

If you've been managing HR yourself until now and something has come up that makes you feel out of your depth, that's usually the right time.

Outsourced HR versus hiring in-house

For businesses under around 30 people, a full-time HR hire is rarely the right move. The cost is high (an experienced HR professional typically starts at £60,000), and the need is usually inconsistent - busy periods when you need a lot of support, quiet periods when you don't.

Outsourced HR gives you access to senior expertise at a fraction of that cost, with the flexibility to scale up or down as your needs change. The trade-off is that some external consultants aren't embedded in your culture in the same way an in-house hire would be. For most businesses at this stage, that trade-off is worth making.

Once you're consistently above 30-50 employees and HR is a near-daily function, hiring in-house starts to make more sense. A good HR consultant will tell you honestly when you've reached that point.

If you're based in Brighton or Sussex and want to understand what HR support could look like for your business, book a free 30-minute call with Louise. No hard sell - just a conversation about where you are and what you need. You can also read more about how Maven's HR support works.