NORI HR and Employment Law is a family-run business that places its clients at the forefront of everything it does. We speak to co-founder, Amrita Govindji-Bruce about the firm and its unique approach during the pandemic which has paved the way for future success.
NORI HR & Employment Law is an HR Consultancy, based in the North West, and offering a bespoke range of products and services to help clients build company success with engaged employees.
The firm’s clients are from a wide range of sectors including hospitality, care homes, manufacture, service, retail, charity and education. In addition, NORI HR provide support to businesses of all sizes from 1 Employee through to restaurant franchise chains and over 300 GP surgeries amassing support to over 6,000 employees.
As well as all things related to HR and Employment Law, NORI HR also provides bespoke legal document creation and Health and Safety provisions. Their in-house CPD accredited workshops assist and aid its clients in the running of their businesses and their people management skills, and they provide HR People Management software through Breathe HR.
NORI HR was founded in 2019 and was the brainchild of husband and wife team, Jason and Amrita Govindji-Bruce. Throughout their vast experience of working within the corporate world of outsourcing, the couple had become agitated and disillusioned by the fact that clients were all too easily being seen as numbers rather than individual people. Decisions around support were more financially focused and based on profit rather than the required service. The human factor was lacking and decisions where less representative of the client’s circumstances or need and more in favour of the supplier. This was far from the type of HR and Employment Law both Amrita and Jason wanted to practice and had pride in providing. They decided to do something about it and, whilst addressing their own work/life balance at the same time due to a new baby on the way, they took the plunge.
With many years’ worth of experience, business values including transparency of service; trustworthiness; integrity; conviction of actions; and empathy, the dynamic duo set up NORI HR and now stand firmly by the mission of ‘HR peace of mind’.
“Our clients are not just a number,” explains Amrita passionately. “We take the time to understand how their business works and how they like to approach situations. Alongside this, we manage their expectations and, in some cases, change their perception on certain issues. We can do this as we are not tied in to unsubstantiated or unrelated KPIs. Our clients have names, families and emotions which we at NORI HR and Employment Law manage.”
When taking on a new client, NORI HR explains the above vision and values in the first instance, which provides absolute clarity and complete peace of mind. It also ensures that it maintains its philosophies, not just in marketing, but through the entire client journey. This is reflected in the many online 5-Star Google reviews provided by clients. Furthermore, NORI HR conducts weekly meetings with the team to ensure all marketing materials online and in print relay and uphold these values.
In the short amount of time that NORI HR has been trading, it has placed a huge emphasis on giving back and supporting the local community.
As a business, it has become a patron of Community Solutions North West (CSNW), based in Accrington, and is a huge advocate of the support they provide to individuals and businesses. In fact, Jason even supported them during their May fundraising month by running 5km every day with a 5kg weighted vest. He also encouraged the team at CSNW to get involved along with other individuals from his networking community, both in person and through over 4,000 personal social media connections. Collectively they have raised £4,750.
In addition to this, NORI HR runs several referral schemes where a portion of the money it receives for a client contract is donated to a specific charity or a charity of the referrer’s choice.
“We demonstrate our strong values and vision through our CSR Policy that financially donates referral fees to our local charities,” Amrita says. “We hope businesses and people see that we care about our community and therefore have trust that we will deal with all the issues they bring to us, in a fair and transparent manner.”
As well as the focus being on client satisfaction, Amrita tells us that NORI HR’s staff play a vitally important role within the business and both herself and Jason have a huge amount of respect for them.
“Planning of activities involves the whole team with regular feedback and fortnightly meetings. We are all responsible for researching the local business environment, being creative with new ideas, understanding the pressures of employers, and gathering feedback from clients using a range of innovative communication tools.
“We truly love what we do and we love engaging with people. It is not only a job, but a vocation and we hope that everyone who comes into contact with NORI HR and Employment Law will have a good feeling about us and the service they receive from us.”
The Covid-19 pandemic has fundamentally changed the way many businesses currently operate and will operate in the future. However, during the coronavirus outbreak and subsequent lockdown periods, NORI HR & Employment Law continued to trade at full capacity and even managed to adapt its range of products and services for its clients to ensure accessibility. This included the introduction of a deferred payment plan for businesses which were struggling and facing crisis – something that no other firm has been known to offer in the same way and something of which Amrita is very proud.
“We made an important financial decision to enable businesses to access our support now, on the basis they would only have to pay on the return of their last ‘furloughed’ employee, several months later. This decision was very much taken in the context that, if we demonstrate support comes first, we are living proof of our values and vision. We have had to financially forecast for this as a business ourselves.”
NORI HR further plans for immediate and future growth, including hitting its goal of tripling the number of micro and SMEs it services through several initiatives, including its CSR referral scheme, which can pay up to 20% to the referee’s charity of choice.
In January 2021 the firm will be moving into their new office and are increasing internal resources and capabilities through the integration of a new and robust CRM system and client support portal. 2 new Senior HR Advisors and an Office & Accounts Manager have already been appointed and in maintaining their ethos of community support, there is also a large recruitment scheme under way to support Kickstart applicants as well as the appointment of a new Apprentice. This is all alongside its primary focus of supporting its clients and their businesses as they navigate their way through Covid-19.
For NORI HR, the future is very stable and looks very bright. With the economy being under great strain following the Covid-19 pandemic this means that employment law support is going to be vital to businesses. There are going to be thousands of redundancies, additional pressure applied on retained employees and then the bounce back with employee recruitment and apprenticeships.
“Quality and fairly priced HR and Employment Law will be in demand and we will be looking at how we can support health and well-being of employers and employees,” states Amrita. “Whilst we never want to dilute our core services, we are aware there will be opportunities for us to expand our product portfolio either through our own direct initiatives, or by partnering with trusted providers of related well-being services.”
