Business Legal Services
HR Audit
Stay up-to-date with employment law and reduce the likelihood of claims being made against your business.
Employment laws and regulations are constantly evolving and with significant changes being introduced through the Employment Rights Act 2025, it is more important than ever to ensure your employment documentation and HR practices are up to date.
Our HR Audit helps your business assess whether your current policies, contracts and procedures meet current legal requirements and whether they are ready for upcoming reforms. It helps you improve compliance and reduce the likelihood of employment claims being made against your business.
Preparing for the Employment Rights Act 2025
The Employment Rights Act 2025 introduces several significant changes to UK employment law between 2026 and 2027, affecting areas such as unfair dismissal rights, statutory sick pay, trade union rules, workplace protections and employer obligations.
Our HR Audit provides a practical starting point for businesses that want to assess whether their employment documentation and HR processes are ready for these changes.
Benefits of our HR Audit
Choosing our HR Audit will help your business to:
Avoid costly litigation and risk of employment tribunal claims
With clear and transparent employment practices and documents in place from the outset, you are less likely to be at risk of costly disputes with employees and consultants who work for your business.
Ensure you are compliant and prepared for the upcoming Employment Rights Act reforms
Our HR Audit is a simple and cost-effective way of helping you identify potential problem areas in your business. Once we have identified missing documentation and/or inadequate practices, we will suggest corrective action, reducing the likelihood of claims being made against your business.
Prepare your business for sale
If you are looking to sell your business, any prospective buyer will conduct due diligence checks and, as part of this identify any practices that could cause future issues, should they decide to go ahead with the purchase. Our HR Audit and remedial plan will help to ensure that you have the necessary employment contracts, practices, policies and procedures in place, giving you confidence that your business will be in good order for its sale to proceed.
Whatever the driver, an audit will help you:
- Highlight areas where your current documentation or processes, including missing contracts, policies or practices, may not align with current employment law or upcoming reforms under the Employment Rights Act 2025.
- Suggest remedial actions to improve your documentation and HR processes.
- Support compliance with current employment legislation and evolving best practice.
- Reduce the likelihood of disputes with employees or contractors.
Service Deliverables
How does the HR Audit work?
An HR Audit conducted by a senior Employment Solicitor
The first step is for you to complete the questionnaire provided by our Employment Solicitor. This will help us understand your business and the practices, policies and procedures currently in place. You will be able to provide additional commentary if required. If you have any issues whilst completing the questionnaire you can contact a member of the Employment team who can guide you through the process. It is important that the answers you provide in the questionnaire are accurate as this will form the basis of your HR Audit.
Once you have completed the questionnaire you will receive a report identifying documents that are currently missing, areas where your business falls short of key legislative requirements or best practice, and any areas that may require attention in light of upcoming reforms under the Employment Rights Act 2025.
More importantly, we will suggest remedial actions in order of importance so you can clearly see the steps you need to take as a business.
What happens after you receive your report?
Our team of Employment Solicitors can quickly agree scope and costs of any remedial work and carry this out, should you decide to implement changes recommended in your report. We have significant expertise and experience in drafting all employment-related documentation, including: contracts, policies and procedures that can help you manage risk when it comes to contentious issues, such as discrimination allegations, disciplinaries, grievances and unfair dismissal claims.
Access to five free Employment related templates
As an added bonus, we will provide you with five free employment-related templates for you to use in your business. The templates that are included as part of the HR Audit include:
- Template suspension letter
- 48-hour week opt out letter
- Basic employment contract for a junior employee
- Job offer template
- Return to work form
How much does the HR Audit cost?
| Service plan
|
Engage
Legal support on our Standard Rates |
Enable
Monthly subscription |
Extend
Quarterly subscription |
| HR Audit | £1,590 | £795* | Cost equivalent to five hours from your plan |
The HR Audit is the equivalent to five hours of legal support. The costs listed are exclusive of VAT. Our Enable and Extend plans offer up to 50% discount on our Standard Rates (Engage plan). Remedial work is charged at the usual hourly rate according to your service plan.
*Minus any accrued credit on your Enable plan.
Why choose Harper James?
Our team of highly experienced Employment Solicitors are at hand to support you on your compliance journey. Our Employment Solicitors are recruited from top 100 UK law firms or from large international businesses and most have more than 10 years’ post-qualified experience.
Our Employment Solicitors are very accessible and responsive should you have any queries whilst you are completing the HR Audit. If we identify any missing documentation or poor practices currently in place, we have the skills and breadth of knowledge to quickly remedy these. As a full-service commercial law firm, we are also able to help you if the HR Audit highlights improper practices or compliance problems that are outside of Employment law, for example problems that relate to data protection or IP.
