When Return to Office Mandates Are About Control, Not Productivity

If you've been called back to the office and the reasons don't quite add up, you're not alone. The work gets done, nobody has shown you evidence that things were better when everyone was at their desks and you actually have a nice work-life balance where you don’t stress over doing the school run, but the pressure to return keeps building.

New research suggests there might be a reason the explanations feel thin and sometimes they are.

What the research found

Earlier this year, researchers at Wharton published a study looking at what actually predicts a leader's resistance to remote work. They examined Fortune 500 CEOs, surveyed hundreds of managers, and ran a controlled experiment. The trait that most consistently predicted opposition to flexible working wasn't concern for collaboration or performance. Now my theory was always control, and the reason was narcissism.

In plain terms: for some leaders, the office isn't about productivity, it's an audience. Remote work takes away the visibility, the admiration, and the sense of control that come with having everyone physically present. That loss is what they're reacting to, not your productivity output.

My own experience of this

For what it's worth, my honest position on remote work is not an ideological one. Most office jobs can be done from home. There are also times when being in person genuinely works better, and if you're lucky enough to have a team you like, wanting to meet up with them is a perfectly good reason to go in. None of that needs a mandate.

What I've noticed, though, is that hybrid working is almost always sold on collaboration and culture. I've never fully understood how that works when you and the people you actually collaborate with aren't in on the same days. You end up commuting to sit on video calls you could have taken from your kitchen. Or people are so buried in their computers and with earphones in that nobody speaks to each other. 

The chat over the coffee machine argument in particular is like nails on a blackboard to me. Some of us hate that kind of small talk. I'm also yet to work out what collaboration comes from Barry in HR asking Janet from Finance whether she wants milk in her coffee.

"Collaboration" and "culture" are doing a lot of heavy lifting in these conversations. Sometimes they're genuine, but very often they're the polite packaging around something else, which is exactly what the research suggests.

Why this matters

Some return-to-office decisions are made for defensible reasons, so I'd be careful about jumping from "some RTO mandates are ego-driven" to "my boss is a narcissist". The research matters because of what it does to the story you tell yourself. When your flexibility is taken away for no reason anyone can articulate, it's easy to start wondering whether you're the problem.

Here's the reframe worth holding onto: if the mandate is driven by a leader's need for control rather than a genuine operational case, that is about their psychology, not your performance. You can't fix it by working harder or being more agreeable.

What you can actually do

Know your rights. In the UK, you have a day one right to request flexible working, and your employer can only refuse on specific statutory grounds. "The CEO prefers seeing people at desks" is not one of them.

Keep a record of what you deliver and the feedback you receive, in case your arrangements are later challenged on performance grounds. Frame any flexibility request around what the business gets, not what you need. It shouldn't be necessary, but it works.

If the environment is affecting your health or your confidence, that's not something to quietly absorb. Sometimes the right move is a well-prepared request. Sometimes it's an exit on your own terms. Both are easier with support and a clear head and if you’re facing something difficult in work with your manager, performance issues or flexible working, book in a confidential 15 minutes discovery call with me here, and we can see how I can support you.

How a DSAR Can Reveal an Unfair Disciplinary Process

I recently spoke to a client who had been suspended during a disciplinary investigation while already on a final written warning. From the start, the process appeared flawed and unfair. It felt predetermined, partly because of the behaviour of managers and partly because decisions already seemed to have been made within the business.

The individual raised a grievance. Alongside it, they submitted a Data Subject Access Request (DSAR).

The DSAR revealed information that confirmed what they had suspected. Among the documents was communication from the disciplinary hearing manager saying that dismissal would be difficult because the individual's answers and mitigation during the process were strong and credible.

So actually the discussion was not whether misconduct had occurred, but about how difficult it would be to dismiss the employee.

I'll leave the specifics there, but what I will say is that an employment tribunal is unlikely to look favourably on evidence suggesting the outcome had been decided before the disciplinary process was complete.

What is a DSAR?

A Data Subject Access Request (DSAR) gives you the legal right to ask an organisation for a copy of the personal data it holds about you. That can include emails, meeting notes, internal messages and other documents where you are identified.

Submitting a DSAR is free, and in most cases an employer has one month to respond.

A DSAR will not always uncover something significant. Many employers conduct fair processes and communicate professionally throughout. However, where concerns exist about how a disciplinary has been handled, it can provide valuable evidence and greater transparency.

A note for employers

I understand that receiving a DSAR can be time consuming. Having processed them myself during my HR career, I know they take work.

They should never be something you worry about receiving, though. If the thought of an employee reading your internal communications makes you nervous, the problem is not the DSAR. The problem is what has been written.

Throughout my HR career, I have never submitted information that I was concerned an employee would read and that should be the standard. If you run fair processes and communicate professionally, a DSAR is an administrative exercise, not a threat.

If something doesn't feel right

If you are going through a disciplinary process and something doesn't feel right, trust that instinct. You may not have evidence yet, but there are legitimate ways to understand what has happened, and a DSAR is one of them.

If you'd like to talk through your situation, you can book a coaching session with me here

Why Your Employer’s Tone Shifts During Settlement Agreement Negotiations

Settlement agreement negotiations can be one of the most stressful experiences of your working life. You might already be dealing with a difficult situation at work, and then the process of trying to reach an agreement adds a whole new layer of pressure. One thing I want you to be prepared for, because I hear it from clients time and time again, is how the tone from your employer can shift once those negotiations begin.

It can come as a real shock. Up until that point, you may have had a reasonably professional relationship with HR or your manager. However, once you are in protected, confidential negotiations, some employers feel a degree of freedom to behave differently. The conversations are generally legally protected, meaning there are limits on how they can be used in future legal proceedings. For some employers, it can feel like a green light. 

What does that look like in practice? It can mean a harder, more transactional tone, it can mean your employer suddenly referencing support they claim to have offered you, support you know they never offered. It can also mean minimising what happened, or framing the situation in a way that feels nothing like your experience of it. This does not necessarily mean you are misremembering. It is a negotiation, and your employer is trying to reach a settlement at the lowest cost to them. 

Not everyone I know or speak to has experienced it like this, but it is absolutely a possibility, and as much I hate saying, “It’s just process”, that’s what it is, but it doesn’t take away how tough it can be.

A few things worth holding onto if you find yourself here.

You need an employment solicitor, and this is not optional. A settlement agreement is only legally binding if you have received advice from an independent solicitor or other qualified adviser before signing it. A good employment solicitor will navigate the legal and financial side of this for you, and they will not be rattled by difficult tactics the way you might be. Their job is to advise you on the legal position and negotiate the best deal they reasonably can on your behalf. 

What your solicitor cannot do is manage the emotional weight of it. That part falls to you, the people around you, or someone like me. It is worth thinking about who your support looks like outside of the legal process, because the two things are separate and both matter.

Finally, and this is something a lot of people say in hindsight: many people who have been through a difficult settlement process say that if they found themselves in the same situation again, they would walk away from a toxic workplace earlier, before it got to this point. That is not a recommendation for everyone as every situation is different, and sometimes fighting for what is fair is absolutely the right thing to do. It is worth knowing though that for many people, the process itself takes a toll that they did not fully anticipate.

If you are going through this right now, or wondering whether you are heading towards it, you do not have to figure it out alone. That is exactly what I am here for. If you have been through a process like this and it has knocked your confidence, I offer coaching sessions so you can gain that confidence again. Book a discovery call here or read about the coaching I offer here.

The Silent Redundancy: How Companies use PIPs and Misconduct to reshape Teams

If you've recently been put on a PIP or suspended for alleged gross misconduct, I want you to think about something.

In some organisations, these things don't happen in isolation. Sometimes they reflect a wider attempt to reduce headcount or reshape the workforce without going through a formal redundancy process.

When someone is put on a PIP after years of strong performance, or when a suspension feels disproportionate to what's being alleged, the natural reaction is to assume it must be about them personally. It's the only part of the situation they can see and it's the only part they're being asked to respond to.

Over the last few years I've spoken to employees from the same organisations who were all being placed on PIPs, suspended, or moved into formal processes within a relatively short period. In those situations, the common factor wasn't individual performance. It was that something had shifted in the business itself.

Sometimes that's financial pressure, sometimes restructuring, or a pending acquisition. Sometimes a change in leadership and a decision to manage performance and exits more aggressively than before. The label matters less than the fact that something broader has changed, and employees are rarely told about it clearly or upfront.

Instead, each person is given an individual explanation for their situation and nd that explanation may well be accurate in isolation, because performance issues do exist, misconduct does need investigating, and employers are entitled to manage both. The difficulty comes when multiple people with previously clean records start going through formal processes at the same time. At that point it becomes harder to explain it as a series of unrelated individual problems.

That's when it's reasonable to ask a simple question: is this really about individual performance and conduct, or is the organisation dealing with something bigger and using formal processes as the mechanism for change?

That doesn't mean assuming bad faith or deciding in advance what's happening. It just means using that awareness to ask harder questions about your own situation. Is the feedback you're receiving consistent with what you were told before this process started? Is the threshold being applied to you the same one that's been applied to others? Does the timeline make sense?

If you're in the middle of a PIP, a suspension, or an investigation, it's worth paying attention to what else is happening around you. Not so you can point to other people, but so you can challenge your own situation with a clearer picture of the context you're operating in. Sometimes your situation is genuinely individual. Sometimes it's part of something bigger, and knowing that helps you ask the right questions and defend yourself properly. Let’s have a chat if you’re going through something at work that doesn’t seem right - book a meeting here.

"They Had Our Backs": The Reality of Corporate Redundancy and Broken Trust

Redundancy is always an awful process, but at times when it’s necessary there are things that can make it smoother for the individual whose job is at risk. Proper notice, prepared facilitators, a process that feels like it was designed with the people going through it in mind and being transparent and sensitive towards the people at risk.

What I experienced was three hours' notice that consultations were starting, with nothing to prepare with, a facilitator who was late to my consultation because they couldn't find a meeting room and then didn’t bother capturing my concerns properly in the notes. The same people who had driven the whole decision were on LinkedIn that week, announcing their exciting new roles and how great things were looking for the business, and the facilitator who didn’t bother having a meeting room ready was recruiting for this “new and exciting” team and times for the business. 

I was working in HR when this happened, so I had an idea of what a good process looks like and how to be sensitive towards the people going through this.

Knowing something was handled badly, knowing it was a cost decision and not a verdict on you, doesn't stop it knocking your confidence and it doesn't stop you questioning yourself, especially when the people behind this had assured you and your team for months that they had your back. Even if they did all the stuff like bringing forward open roles in the business and outplacement support, that all felt like lip service when other fundamentals were brushed aside, and you’re more likely to remember how little time you had to prepare and how excited they were about a new team than the outplacement support that was offered. Being angry about something like this is so exhausting and takes energy that these people don’t deserve, but it’s absolutely valid. 

Redundancy is one of the most disorienting things that can happen in your working life, and the way a lot of them are managed makes it worse. If they'll do it to the HR team, they'll do it to anyone. To me it changed how I feel about work because businesses will make decisions that are right for them. They will do it while you are in the middle of giving everything and they will do it without much warning, and sometimes without much care. Knowing that doesn't make you bitter, but you stop being surprised by it and you may even learn to set boundaries on how much you’re willing to give back.

If you've been through a redundancy recently and you're still carrying it, still not quite feeling like yourself, maybe your confidence has been knocked and it’s impacting the way you approach job interviews, that's exactly what Klar is here for. You can read what my coaching looks like here and you can book a free discovery call at here and we can talk about what that support looks like for you.

"It’s Not Personal": Why We Need to Stop Using These 3 Toxic Workplace Phrases

There are a few phrases I've heard throughout my career that have always made me uncomfortable. "It's not personal" - typically said to someone going through a redundancy process. "This is a neutral act" - said about a suspension, as though the person on the receiving end should somehow feel fine about it. "We're just following the process" - as if the process existing makes it okay to stop treating someone like a human being.

I understand why these phrases exist. There are legal reasons, process reasons, and I'll be honest, I've used them myself. When you're managing a formal process, language matters and you're often trying to be careful. I get it.

The more I hear these phrases from clients though, the more wrong they feel. Because what they actually do, whatever the intention behind them, is make the person going through it feel like they're not allowed to have a reaction. Like their feelings are an inconvenience to the process rather than a completely understandable response to a frightening situation.

Redundancy affects your income, your identity, your routine, everything you've built around that job. A suspension means going home not knowing when you'll be back, what your colleagues have been told, or how this ends. These are not abstract events happening to a file on someone's desk. They are happening to a person, and that person is scared.

You can run a fair, legally sound process and still acknowledge that. You can follow every step correctly and still recognise that the person sitting across from you went home last night and couldn't sleep. Doing so doesn't make you less professional. Refusing to do so just makes people feel invisible.

Process and humanity aren't mutually exclusive. They never have been. We've just somehow ended up treating them like they are, and that's worth questioning.

If you're going through something at work and you need some support from someone who knows the ins and outs of workplace processes, that's what Klar is here for.

The night before your disciplinary hearing: how to prepare so you walk in feeling ready

A disciplinary hearing is one of the most stressful things you can go through at work, not least because depending on the outcome your job could be at risk, and yet here you are on the night before. You've probably read the letter a dozen times, looked through the evidence, you know the date, the time, the location, and your mind simply won't stop turning it over.

That's completely understandable, because the night before is often the hardest part of the whole process, the point where the waiting, the uncertainty, and the not knowing exactly how it's going to go all tend to converge at once.

If you haven't already done so, gather everything relevant including the invitation letter, any evidence you've been given, your own notes, and anything that supports your version of events, then read through it calmly and make a note of the key points you want to make, because you don't need to have everything memorised, you just need to feel oriented in the facts before you walk through the door or join that call.

You are legally entitled to bring a companion to a disciplinary hearing, whether that's a trade union rep, a colleague, or someone else you trust, and this is a right rather than a favour your employer is extending to you, so if you have someone lined up make sure they're properly briefed on the situation so you're both on the same page going in and they can support you effectively on the day.

It's also worth reminding yourself what your employer is actually required to do, because they must follow a fair procedure which means giving you reasonable notice of the hearing, sharing the evidence against you in advance, and giving you a genuine opportunity to respond to it, and if any of those things haven't happened that matters and you are entitled to raise it.

The hearing itself is not a verdict but a process, and that distinction matters, because you are there to put your side across and to be heard rather than simply sitting and absorbing what's said about you. If at any point you need a moment to collect yourself you are fully entitled to ask for a short adjournment, whether to speak privately with your companion, to take a breath, or simply because you need a minute before continuing, and you do not have to power through if you're struggling. In the same way, if a question catches you off guard or you genuinely aren't sure how to answer it in the moment, it's completely reasonable to say you'd like to come back to that point rather than feeling pressured into an immediate response.

Knowing your rights is important, but it doesn't always quiet the noise in your head, and how you're feeling going into that room or onto that call matters just as much as what you know.

The night before a disciplinary tends to bring a particular kind of mental spiral where you find yourself replaying past conversations, catastrophising about possible outcomes, and wondering how things got to this point. If that's where you find yourself tonight one of the most useful things you can do is try to separate what you actually know from what you're imagining or fearing. Writing down the facts in one place and your assumptions or worries separately can create just enough distance between the two to make the evening feel a little more manageable, and it often reveals that the facts themselves are far less overwhelming than the story your mind has been building around them.

Take some time to think about what you want to say tomorrow, not a word for word script, but the two or three points that matter most to you and that you want to make sure come across clearly, because knowing that you have something to say and that you have every right to say it can make a real difference to how you feel during that meeting.

On the morning itself give yourself more time than you think you'll need, eat something, and if you have a companion do a quick run through together beforehand, then remind yourself throughout the hearing that you are allowed to pause before answering a question, to ask for clarification if something isn't clear, and to refer to your notes at any point.

You don't need to have a perfect answer for everything, you just need to show up, put your side across honestly, and trust that you have every right to be heard. If you'd like to talk it through with someone who understands both the process and how it feels before you walk in, that's exactly what I'm here for.

When HR isn't on your side: How to heal and move on

“I can't believe you worked in HR,” she said it at the end of our session, half-laughing, half-disbelieving.

She'd just been through months and months of what I can only describe as a sustained, unfair process at work. It eventually ended with her leaving. Not because she wanted to, but because staying had become impossible and the working relationship had completely broken down. Her confidence was broken and she'd lost faith in HR professionals as a senior HR professional had been involved in every meeting she'd sat in during this process.

By the time we spoke, she hadn't really talked to anyone who understood what had actually happened. Not the technical side, not the emotional weight of it, not what it actually feels like to sit across a table from people who are supposed to support you and realise they aren't on your side.

We had an in depth conversation of all that happened and did an exercise to help her step outside the process entirely and something shifted, which she described as a massive weight lifting off her shoulders.

HR can be good, but it can also be complicit

With my experience I know how good HR operates, and I know what it looks like when it doesn't.

In some organisations, HR genuinely acts as a fair, independent function. It advises managers properly, applies process correctly, and considers the human being in front of it.

In others, HR cuts corners. It protects the organisation at the expense of the individual. It runs processes that look procedurally correct on paper but aren't fair in practice. This doesn't just happen to people outside of HR, but it happens within HR teams too. If organisations are willing to cut corners with their own HR professionals, people who know employment law, who understand process, who know exactly what should be happening, what does that tell you about how they treat everyone else?

So many people people going through a disciplinary, a PIP, or a redundancy have no idea whether the process is being run correctly and that's the gap Klar exists to fill.

You are allowed to talk about what happened to you

If you've been through a disciplinary, a PIP, a redundancy, a grievance, or anything else that left you feeling ground down by a process that should have been fair, you don't have to carry it alone.

Talking to someone who actually understands HR, from the inside, makes a difference. Not to relitigate the past, but to make sense of it, process it, and move forward feeling less like something happened to you and more like you understand exactly what it was.

If you're ready to talk, this is what my coaching package looks like or you can book a discovery call here.

Flexible Working Refusals Are Rising. Here's What the Data Reveals and What's Changing

A new report from Pregnant Then Screwed makes for uncomfortable reading. Since the Employment Relations (Flexible Working) Act came into force in April 2024, flexible working refusals have not fallen. They have risen. For the groups who need flexibility most.

Single parents have seen a 109% increase in rejections. Disabled mothers, 65%. And the consequences go beyond disappointment. 8% of single parents and 10% of parents with a disability have left their jobs following a refusal. These are not abstract statistics. These are people pushed out of employment because an employer said no and faced very little challenge in doing so.

How did we get here?

The 2024 Act was a genuine step forward. It gave employees the right to request flexible working from day one, removed the previous 26-week service requirement, and allowed two statutory requests in any 12-month period. On paper, stronger protections. In practice, refusals are climbing.

Employers can still reject a flexible working request on one of eight statutory business grounds, including cost, performance impact, or inability to reorganise work. The legislation changed who could ask and when. It did not fundamentally change an employer's ability to say no.

What is changing in 2027?

The Employment Rights Act 2025 will raise the bar for refusals, expected to take effect from 2027. The eight business grounds remain, but employers will only be able to refuse if their decision is considered reasonable. They will also be required to explain their decision in writing.

That matters. Right now, employers can refuse without having to justify whether that refusal is proportionate. From 2027, a vague preference for office presence is unlikely to be enough. They will need to demonstrate a legitimate operational reason and show they have genuinely considered alternatives.

It is progress, but 2027 is a long way away for anyone navigating a refusal right now.

What can you do if your request has been refused?

If your flexible working request has been turned down, the first thing to check is whether the employer followed the correct process. They must consult with you before refusing and complete the process within two months. A refusal must cite one of the eight statutory grounds.

If they have not followed the process, or the reason given does not hold up, you have options. That might mean challenging the decision internally, raising a grievance, or understanding whether the refusal could amount to indirect discrimination, particularly if you are a parent, carer, or disabled employee.

You should also look at whether the employer has allowed comparable colleagues to work flexibly. Inconsistent application creates significant discrimination risk, and it is worth knowing where you stand before you decide how to respond.

Where to get support

Navigating a flexible working refusal on your own is stressful, especially when you are already managing the pressures that made you need flexibility in the first place. If you are not sure whether the reason given stacks up, or you want to understand your options before taking any next steps, I can help.

Book a session here to talk it through or you need help to grasp it or challenge it in preparation for an appeal, or download my Flexible Working Toolkit for practical guidance on understanding your rights and preparing your request. If you are dealing with maternity-related issues alongside a flexible working refusal, my Maternity Toolkit explains the support available and how to challenge unfair treatment.

Moving on from a Workplace Grievance or PIP: How Coaching can help you reclaim your Career Confidence

If you have recently been through a PIP, a disciplinary, a grievance, or a redundancy, you are probably not looking for a framework, but for someone who gets it.

These processes are designed to feel formal and procedural, and for most people that is exactly how they experience them from the outside. From the inside, they are exhausting, consuming, and deeply personal in a way that nobody really prepares you for. You go through the meetings, you get the outcome, and then you are supposed to carry on. Go back to your desk, or start the job search, or move to the next role, and most people do just carry on, or at least try to carry on. What they also carry, often without realising it for a while, is a version of themselves that is a bit quieter than before, a bit more hesitant and maybe not quite as confident as before.

That is what a knock to your confidence actually looks like in practice. It is not always dramatic, but you may be second-guessing a decision you would previously have made without thinking twice. It is the way your stomach dips slightly whenever a manager asks to have a quick word, and it can also the job application you started and then closed, because you could not quite make yourself sound as good on paper as you used to believe you were.

Coaching does not fix those things by telling you they are irrational, because they are not irrational. They are a completely understandable response to what you went through. What it does is help you examine them properly, understand where they are coming from, and work out what you actually want to do next.

A PIP tells you your performance is not good enough. Even if you disagreed with every word of it, even if you hit every target and came out the other side, some part of that lands. Coaching gives you the space to separate what was happening in that workplace, with that manager, in that particular moment, from what you are actually capable of.

A disciplinary, even one where you are cleared, leaves a residue. You were investigated and your conduct was questioned. For some people that is the first time something like that has ever happened to them, after years or even decades of a clean career, and the dissonance between who they know themselves to be and what that process implied about them is genuinely hard to sit with. This is something we work on directly.

A grievance is complicated whether you raised it or had one raised against you. If you raised it, you did something brave. You named something, put it in writing, and then had to keep showing up while it was investigated. Even when the outcome is the right one, it rarely feels like a clean resolution, and if one was raised against you, you may have felt blindsided, frustrated and had almost nowhere to put any of that. Either way, there is often something unresolved that does not just dissolve when the process closes.

Redundancy is its own particular kind of difficult. Logically, you know it is a business decision. Emotionally, being told your role no longer exists can feel like being told you are no longer needed, and those two things are very hard to keep separate, particularly when you are trying to sell yourself to the next employer while still processing the last experience.

What the coaching I offer actually involves is worth being specific about, because I think people sometimes assume coaching is just someone asking how you feel. That’s not now it works, and instead we work on what you want, not just what happened. That means getting really clear on where your confidence has taken a hit and what beliefs about yourself have formed as a result, challenging the ones that are not serving you, and building a much more accurate picture of your strengths and what you bring. We use structured goal-setting to give the sessions direction, and we work on the specific situations where you feel your confidence most, whether that is speaking up, managing up, interviewing, or just getting through a working week without dreading it.

The coaching I offer runs across three sessions over 4-6 weeks depending on what we need to work with and how much time you need between sessions to get there. It’s 3 sessions and includes check-in time between sessions for when something comes up or you just need a sounding board before the next one. I hold an Advanced Certificate in Life Coaching accredited by the Association for Coaching, alongside my CIPD Level 7 and Mental Health First Aider qualification, and over a decade of HR and employee relations experience. This means I am not just a coach who has read about workplace processes. I have spent over a decade managing them, which means I understand exactly what is happening on both sides of the table. 

If any of this sounds like where you are right now, I would love to talk. You can find out more about the coaching package here and also read testimonials from clients I have coached, or book a free discovery call if you want to speak before you commit to anything. 

Signs Your PIP is Unfair: What HR and Management Should Be Doing Differently

I spoke with someone recently who had been on a PIP (Performance Improvement Plan) for nearly a year. There were no warnings beforehand, no informal conversations, no attempt to address any concerns outside of a formal process. They were simply placed on a PIP.

Throughout that year, the objectives kept shifting. What was expected of them changed repeatedly, with no clear rationale and no consistent measure of what passing actually looked like. This individual even struggled to see how these objectives were achievable and worked day and night trying to meet them. One of the measures written into the PIP was positive feedback from their peers and stakeholders.

They got positive feedback from everyone, but management appeared to disagree. That's what they said, as it later came out that management had been having a laugh about this and found it funny - the individual saw actual written evidence that management was trying to get rid of them. HR was in the room throughout every meeting and was involved in the process from start to finish.

In the end, this person left which had been the point all along. It was on their own favourable terms, most likely when management couldn’t sustain or justify this unreasonable PIP any longer.

Even though I only have one side of the story, I struggle to see how HR was playing a neutral or constructive role here, because if they had been, it would not have gone this far. How this impacted the employee and still sits in them is proof of this. 

The Real Role of HR in a Performance Process: Neutrality vs. Complicity 

A PIP is a formal process and it carries real weight for the person on the receiving end. Used properly, it can be a genuine tool for supporting someone who is struggling. Used badly, it becomes a paper trail towards an exit.

Even if this mainly falls back on management, HR's job in a PIP is not just to sit in meetings and take notes. They are there to make sure the process is fair, which means working with management to set objectives that are realistic, specific and measurable. It means advising on what reasonable timelines look like - being on a PIP for nearly a year is not reasonable! It means asking whether informal support was offered before anything formal began, and generally challenging management when something looks off. 

If an employee's stakeholders and peers are consistently saying they are doing well, and management is consistently saying the opposite, that is a red flag. HR should be asking questions, not facilitating the next meeting. It’s important everyone is on the same page in a process like this.

Challenging management is not always easy, and I have worked alongside HR professionals who were doing their best under real pressure from above, but there is a difference between being constrained and being complicit. Sitting in a room while someone is being pushed out through a process designed to look like performance management is not a neutral act.

Some people always argue that HR is there to protect the business, and I don’t disagree, but you are not protecting the business by managing someone out through a flawed process like this. It’s not just ethically wrong, it’s commercially reckless and exposes a company to claims of unfair dismissal and constructive dismissal. 

Moving the Goalposts: When a PIP Crosses the Line Into Workplace Bullying 

What this person experienced was not performance management, but bullying dressed up in a process.

Bullying at work does not always look like shouting or aggression. It can look like a process that keeps moving the goalposts or being told repeatedly that you are failing when the evidence says otherwise. It can look like a year of your working life spent feeling scrutinised, undermined and disposable, while the people responsible are finding it funny.

This is why some people say they do not trust HR. Not because HR professionals are inherently untrustworthy, but because experiences like this one exist, and they leave a mark. Also, this person has had HR involved in every single part of the process in every meeting, so they will associate HR with this process regardless of how HR has acted during this outside of the meetings.

Navigating an Unfair PIP: How to Protect Yourself and Know Your Rights 

This is exactly why I set up Klar. This person deserved support from the start and they deserved someone who could have looked at that process with them, helped them understand what a fair PIP should actually look like, and given them the information they needed to make informed decisions about their options.

If you are on a PIP and something does not feel right, whether the objectives feel unachievable, the goalposts keep moving, or the whole thing feels less like support and more like pressure to leave, I can help you understand what a fair process should look like and what questions you should be asking as well as what documentation you are entitled to.

I also have a PIP toolkit available, which walks through what a proper PIP process should involve and what to look out for if yours does not match that standard.

If you are going through a PIP that doesn’t seem fair, or struggling with something else at work that you’re unsure of how to approach, book in a session with me here.

Signed Off Sick During a Disciplinary? How to Protect Your Mental Health

When everything at work is happening to you at once, it is hard to see what you can actually do anything about. This is where one of my clients was a few weeks ago. Suspended, multiple processes running at the same time, signed off sick and emails arriving from their employer that were making them anxious just by landing in the inbox.

Through our coaching sessions, they started to figure out what was actually in their control. Not the outcome or what their employer did next, but how they were spending their days and how they were responding to the situation.

They decided to deal with emails on their own terms. Not ignore them, but open them when they felt ready rather than the moment they arrived. They were automatically moved into a separate folder and they gave themselves a time in the week for anything related to the situation, and outside of that it did not get to take over everything else. This may sound like a small thing to, but it took a massive weight of the client’s shoulders.

It also helped them to have someone who understands the processes and why the employer is doing what they’re doing and communicating the way they are doing. Being told that something is just process may not always be helpful, but it’s there and even if it feels like it’s taking over you, for some it helps to think it’s just stuff that’s there running in the background while you do your best to focus on you, what you’re good at, what skills to improve on, get out and go for walks, as well as seeing people that make you happy and who are not attached to this awful process. 

They kept doing the things that kept them well. Not because it fixed anything, but because it meant they were in a better state to deal with what came next and it made them feel more like themselves and like getting their identity back rather than being the process at work.

None of it changed what their employer was doing, but it changed how they were experiencing it, and that is not a small thing.

If you are in a similar position and want to work out what you can actually do, I offer confidence coaching for people who are trying to move on from difficult situations at work, and if you are going through a process that seems unmanageable, let’s have a chat as I may be able to help you. Book a discovery call here.

On a final note, if you are going through something similar, there will be days that are worse than others while going through a process, but we also have bad days when life seems to be going great and they all pass, but it helps to accept it knowing things will become better.

Your Job Is Not Your Identity: Recovering From Workplace Trauma

The job market has been brutal for a while now with redundancies that feel rushed and poorly handled and disciplinary processes that leave people shaken, sometimes after decades of unblemished careers. Grievances that drag on, take over your headspace, and make you dread Monday mornings. These things are happening to a lot of people, and yet when they happen to you, it can feel completely isolating.

I set up Klar to support employees navigating exactly these kinds of situations. The HR support side helps people understand their rights, their options, and what to do next. The coaching I now offer does something different but just as important, it helps people separate what happened at work from who they are.

When you go through a formal process at work, especially for the first time, it gets inside your head in a way that is hard to explain to anyone who hasn't been through it. You replay conversations, you second-guess yourself, you wonder what you could have done differently, or whether you were actually ever any good at your job, or whether this makes you unemployable. A redundancy that felt hasty and disorganised can leave you convinced that you must have done something wrong, even when the evidence says otherwise. A disciplinary or grievance can knock your confidence so much that the person who walked into that meeting room doesn't always quite come back out.

I know what this feels like because I have lived it. My whole team went through a redundancy that was poorly managed, with very little empathy and very little room to present a case to avoid redundancy. While our consultations were still happening, management were advertising new roles replacing our team and openly excited about bringing in a brand new one. It was disorganised, it was rushed, and it was deeply difficult to be part of, especially as it seemed they couldn't wait to get rid of us. None of that reflected anything about how good our team was at our jobs. The process reflected the people running it and not the people going through it. That distinction matters enormously, and it is often the hardest one to hold onto.

I offer coaching for people who are trying to find their way back to that distinction.

If you have been through a redundancy, you may be quietly terrified it will happen again. You may be going into job applications or interviews carrying doubt you didn't have before, or struggling to talk about yourself with any confidence. If you have been through a disciplinary or grievance, you may be trying to reconcile the person you know yourself to be with what was said in that process. These sessions are for you.

My coaching is focused and practical and most importantly, non-judgemental. The first thing you'll know when you speak to me is that even if I don't know you, I won't define you by what happened at work. We work across three sessions, and we work on what matters most: rebuilding your confidence, separating the process from your professional identity, and making sure that a difficult chapter in what is likely a long career doesn't get to define the rest of it. A redundancy, a formal process, even a really painful period at work, these are moments. They are not you, but you can reflect on them, learn from them where that is useful, and still walk away knowing they don't tell the whole story.

If that resonates, I would love to hear from you. Contact me here so we can arrange the next steps.

Commuting to a Teams Call? Why It’s Time to Challenge ‘Performance by Presence’

I have worked remotely, I have worked hybrid, and I have worked in offices. What I want is flexibility and to be trusted to do my job.

I do not have a problem with offices when there is a genuine reason to be there. If I am needed for a training session, a brainstorm, or a conversation that is better face to face, I am happy to go in. What does not make sense, and sometimes makes me want to pull my hair out, is sitting in an open plan space with everyone's heads down, scrambling around for a meeting room so I can take a Teams call in private, commuting in to do exactly what I could have done from my kitchen table, but with added noise and less focus.

The places I have worked best have trusted me to get on with it. My output was measured on what I delivered, not where I was sitting when I delivered it. The difference in how that feels, in terms of motivation, focus, and just basic respect, is significant.

I once had a hybrid role where we were trusted to manage our own office and home days. I set Mondays and Fridays as my home days, with the understanding that I would obviously be flexible if I was needed for anything. These were the quietest days, the days I caught up with colleagues in other locations, so being in an office where I would end up in meeting rooms on my own all day made no sense. The response from my manager was, "You can't just sit at home on Mondays and Fridays." Nothing about whether the work would get done or who it would impact. Just the assumption that I was stretching my weekend by working this way.

That response stuck with me, because it revealed exactly what a lot of return-to-office mandates are really about. It is not about collaboration or culture, as they would like us to believe, but  about visibility, and the discomfort some managers feel when they cannot see you. To be perfectly honest, it also exposes poor leadership, because it is far easier to keep an eye on people than to actually measure what they are producing.

This is happening at a time when a lot of people feel they cannot push back. The job market is insecure, redundancies are happening across sectors, and workers are quietly aware that they are not in a strong position to make demands. Some employers know this, and they are using it with flexible working being one of the first things that gets pulled back when the power shifts, and right now, for many people, it has shifted. Surely, it’s cheaper to pay less in rent somewhere smaller or not have people in the office all the time??

I have also spoken to people whose bonus structure weights office attendance above performance. You could be delivering strong results from home and earning less than someone who commutes in every day and contributes far less. That is not a productivity strategy, but control and insecurity.

During the pandemic, most of us proved that working from home can increase productivity. The concern at the time was the minority who struggled with it. Trust me though when I say the person who is not productive at home is probably checking football scores or reading the news when they are in the office too. The answer to that is a management conversation, not a blanket policy that punishes everyone. Treat people like adults, manage the ones who need managing, and stop using collective punishment to paper over weak leadership.

What Your Maternity Policy doesn't tell You

I speak to so many people who go on maternity leave with a policy document which covers the statutory stuff: the dates, the pay, the notice periods, and the information is usually correct, but then that’s it, you’re off to have a baby.

It won't tell you what to do when your manager goes quiet during your leave, or how to think about returning to a role that feels like it belongs to someone else now. It probably won't say that it's completely normal to feel uncertain about going back even when you were sure you wanted to, and it won’t tell you how you and your life changes and that you’ll most likely return to work as a different person.

Maternity leave is one of the biggest career transitions there is. It's not just a period of absence and going back to work is not just a couple of weeks of getting adjusted either. It's a completely new way of working alongside a whole new way of living.

The Klar Maternity Guide is free to download for the next couple of months. It covers the practical stuff too, written to sound less like a policy and with more focus on the person than the process.

I cannot tell you how many people I speak to who say it was all fine until they got the flowers when the baby was born, and then felt unsupported and underprepared for how things would actually be. I am always here if you or someone you know is going through something similar. Start with downloading the guide, or if you want to talk through your situation, book a session here.

Facing a PIP? How Preparation leads to better Outcomes

What happens when an employer realises you know your rights and your value? 

There's a line in a recent testimonial from a Klar client that's stayed with me. She'd been placed on a PIP unexpectedly, we worked together ahead of her meeting, went through the process, talked about what to expect and what to ask for. She went in prepared. And afterwards, she told me her employer had seemed surprised at how ready she was.

“My outcome has been successful and I felt my employer was surprised at how well prepared I was during the meeting. I can't recommend Liv and Klar enough.” 

This detail says a lot because there's an assumption in a lot of these processes that the employee will show up uncertain, reactive, maybe a little rattled. That the employer holds all the cards because they've done this before and you haven't and that the meeting will go the way they've planned it to go. This is why I offer performance support specifically for this.

When you show up knowing your rights, asking the right questions, requesting the support you're entitled to, that assumption falls apart, and this can even be visible in the room. 

I don't say that to make it adversarial, because it doesn't have to be, but a PIP meeting doesn't have to be you versus them. Walking in underprepared when the other side has had time to plan puts you at a real disadvantage, and that's worth being honest about.

Being prepared doesn't mean being combative, but knowing what the targets actually mean and whether they're measurable. It means understanding what support you can ask for. It means knowing whether the process has been followed correctly, and what it means if it hasn't. It means being able to engage with the conversation rather than just absorb it.

You don’t have to be aggressive or combative to change the dynamic by holding them just as accountable as they are holding you.

My client described feeling confident going in, which she hadn't expected to feel. She also said the outcome was successful, and I don't think those two things are unrelated.

If you've been placed on a PIP and your first instinct is that this is already decided, I understand why it feels that way. It still matters how you show up in that meeting room and you don't have to figure out how to do that on your own.

A free discovery call is a good place to start, and you can book on here I also have a toolkit on how to manage the PIP process here.

Employee Rights in Small Businesses: What to Do When There’s No HR

If you work for a small company, the chances are there's no HR department. There might not even be an HR person and for a lot of people, that's actually part of the appeal. Decisions get made quickly, there's less bureaucracy, pay increases and promotions don't have to go through three layers of sign-off. You're often closer to the people who run the business, and that can make for a really positive working environment.

However, when something goes wrong, that same absence can feel very loud.

Small companies often don't have the processes and structures that larger organisations do. Contracts can be light on detail and there's often no policy document to refer to. When a situation arises, whether that's a disciplinary, a dismissal, a difficult manager, or just something that doesn't feel right, there's often nobody internally to turn to. So people either suffer in silence, take to Google, or assume they just have to put up with it.

The reality is that your rights at work don't change based on the size of the company you work for. A small employer still has legal obligations. Your contract still means something and the fact that there's no HR function doesn't mean you're on your own.

That's where I come in. I work with employees directly, helping them understand where they stand, what their options are, and how to handle their situation with clarity and confidence. Sometimes that's a complex, ongoing piece of work. Sometimes it's a single conversation that takes 30 minutes and completely changes how someone feels about what they're dealing with, like the client below:

“I came to Liv when I had an urgent issue with work. Despite handing in my notice for 3 months, I was trying to be dismissed within 24 hours.

She had great availability for talking to me as my situation was fairly pressing and talked me through my legal rights and the important parts of my contract. 

She was very helpful and approachable and I would highly recommend her for any issues regarding HR. The company I worked for was so small I didn't have an internal HR to go to. In addition, knowing I was going to be starting somewhere new, she provided me with some useful information regarding probation periods. She really went above and beyond.”

If you work for a small company and something at work isn't right, you don't have to figure it out alone, and you can book a session with me here.

Workplace Problems in the UK: When Free Advice Isn't Enough (Grievance and Disciplinary Help)

When something goes wrong at work, like a grievance, disciplinary, or performance issue, most people start by looking for free advice. That usually means ACAS or Citizens Advice. To be perfectly clear, they do genuinely useful work. If you need to understand a process, check your basic rights, or get pointed in the right direction, they are a solid starting point.

There is a limit to what free advice can do, and the limitation isn't effort, it's design. These services are built to handle volume, so what they provide is necessarily general. You get information, but not someone applying that information to your specific situation.

A lot of people come to me after speaking to ACAS because they still don't know what to actually do next. That's not a criticism, but ACAS won't have read your grievance, seen the evidence, or understood the full context of what's been happening. Their advice is based on process, not your case, and those are two very different things.

Unions are worth mentioning too. If you're a member and haven't contacted them, you should. I'm a big advocate for unions and the role they play in protecting workers' rights. For collective issues, pay disputes, and wider workplace rights, they are exactly who you want in your corner. Where it gets more complicated is individual casework. The approach can sometimes feel quite process-heavy, and occasionally quite adversarial, even when you're not looking for a fight with your employer and just want to resolve a situation. How much support you get can also depend on your workplace, your industry, and your individual rep. Some people get excellent support, while others feel like they're being guided through a process without a clear strategy.

What I offer is different. When you come to Klar, I look at your actual situation, not a general version of it. Whether you're dealing with a grievance, facing a disciplinary, or trying to handle something difficult at work, we work through what's happening, what it means, and what your options are. More importantly, we look at what those options are likely to lead to, because knowing your rights is one thing, but knowing how to use them is another.

I'll help you prepare for conversations and meetings so you go in knowing what to say and how to say it. If your situation is more complex, I'll review your documents and we'll build a clear approach before you take your next step. If something doesn't feel right, I'll tell you, and if what you actually need is a solicitor, I'll tell you that too. Solicitors are absolutely the right call in some situations, particularly where there's potential tribunal action or significant legal complexity, but they are expensive and not always necessary to get a good outcome. Most people going through a grievance or disciplinary don't need one. What they need is someone who understands the process, knows how employers think, and can help them prepare properly. Part of what I do is help you work out which category you're in.

It isn’t free, but it isn’t generic either, and when you’re dealing with something like a grievance or disciplinary at work, generic advice often isn’t enough to help you make clear, confident decisions about what to do next. 

If you're not sure what to do next, or whether Klar is right for you, just get in touch and ask, you can tell me about your case and we can look at how I can help you. You can start with booking a 15 mminutes discovery call here, and then we’ll take it from there.

Flexible Working Rejected After Maternity Leave: Should You Appeal?

A little while ago someone got in touch after their flexible working request had been rejected following maternity leave. They wanted me to look at the outcome letter and talk through where they could go from there.

I’ll be honest, I wasn’t impressed.

The request had been refused, which does happen, but they had also put forward an alternative and the employer hadn’t engaged with it at all. There was no response, no acknowledgement, nothing to show it had even been considered.

They had long service with the company, just had a year off with their baby, and were about to return to work with a completely different life, and all they were asking for was a bit of flexibility to make that work. The employer relied on a few of the business reasons for rejecting it, but it didn’t really line up with what had actually been suggested, and there was nothing to show it couldn’t work in practice. It was all “may”, “might”, “could”.

There was a case for an appeal. The reasoning was vague, it didn’t properly deal with what had been proposed, and the fact they hadn’t engaged with the alternative she’d suggested gave her something real to challenge.

Before getting into any of that, I always ask the same question: what do you actually want from this?

Her answer was that she wasn’t even sure she wanted to go back.

We talked about whether discrimination could be involved. That’s ultimately something a tribunal would decide, but there was a potential argument there. Where someone has caring responsibilities, refusing any flexibility can raise questions under the Equality Act, particularly around indirect discrimination.

Before deciding whether to go down that route, it’s important to be clear on what it actually looks like. That could mean appealing the flexible working decision, raising a grievance as well, and potentially appealing that outcome too. Alongside that, there’s the decision about whether to stay or leave, and if leaving, whether to go to tribunal or try to negotiate a settlement.

It’s a long road which takes time, energy and resilience, and there are no guarantees at the end of it.

Not everyone wants to go through that, and that’s completely fine.

Some people do, but choosing not to doesn’t say anything about you other than you’re making a decision that works for your life. In this case, she didn’t want the stress. She wanted to be there for her baby and to work somewhere that would understand her situation and give her the flexibility she needed. Being able to walk from that takes a lot of strength as well. 

The next time we spoke, she was applying for jobs. She’d come to terms with not going back and was focused on moving forward, which was the right outcome for her.

Sometimes that’s what this is about. Not fighting every battle, but helping you work out what you actually want, what your options are, and what decision you can live with.

If your flexible working request has been rejected and you’re not sure where you stand or what to do next, that’s exactly the kind of conversation I am here for. 

Book a session here if you want to discuss your options. I also have a flexible working toolkit here

Should I raise a grievance at work? Why waiting too long can backfire

Should you raise a grievance? It's one of the most common questions I get, and the answer is almost never straightforward. There's a case from my HR career that illustrates what happens when the answer gets delayed for too long.

A member of a management team had been feeling excluded, left out of decisions that should have involved them, sidelined in ways that were hard to put your finger on but impossible to ignore once you'd noticed. They didn't say anything, but instead they kept a log.

For two years, they documented everything. Every meeting they weren't in and every decision made around them. Every moment that confirmed what they were feeling, but for two years, from the outside, they just seemed to be getting on with it.

Then they raised a grievance and two years of material arrived in a formal process all at once. The people named in it hadn't seen it coming, so memories of specific incidents had faded. Context that might have explained some things was gone and what could have been a difficult but manageable conversation, had it happened close to the time, became something nobody in that room knew how to handle. Relationships that had been strained broke completely and there was a massive breakdown in the team.

Some of the more recent things were partially upheld, which in some ways made it harder, and not easier. It confirmed that something had been going on, but by that point the process had already done its damage and there was nothing left to salvage and in addition to this, the person who raised the grievance didn’t want to move on from it despite parts being upheld.

The log wasn't the problem - keeping records is sensible and I always recommend it. The log had become a strategy though, and two years of silence had turned something that might have been fixable into something that wasn't. Whatever the intention, the outcome wasn't good for anyone.

There are lots of reasons people don't raise things at work when they happen. Sometimes it is fear, sometimes it's uncertainty about whether something is serious enough, but sometimes, as in this case, it's more calculated than that. Whatever the reason, waiting rarely works in anyone's favour. The longer something sits unraised, the harder it becomes to resolve, and the more damage it tends to do when it finally surfaces.

So back to the question. Should you raise a grievance? If someone came to me now with a situation like this, the first thing we would do is look at what had actually been done to try to resolve it. Had any conversations happened? Had anything been raised informally? Was there still a realistic chance of opening things up before going formal? In a lot of cases, even where the issues are real and serious, there is still a window to try to sort things without a process that leaves everyone worse off. That window is worth using because waiting can create more damage for all parties.

Most grievances can be resolved by talking to each other. The formal process exists for when that genuinely isn't possible, not as a first move. Sometimes though, even starting that conversation takes more confidence than people feel they have in the moment. If that's where you are, I'm happy to give you a bit of a push in the right direction. I can help build a personal strategy on how to approach and handle a difficult conversation at work. Book a free 15 minute discovery call here so you can get support today.