People Governance & HR Risk Audit
Is your HR setup quietly exposing your business to risk?
Understand where your organisation’s HR risks sit and what practical steps will strengthen your people governance.
Most businesses don’t realise where their HR risk sits until something goes wrong: a grievance, ACAS contact, or a tribunal claim.
This can happen for a number of reasons.
One key reason I have found is rapid business scaling or expansion. If you have undergone a significant period of workforce scale, you will know that feeling of quietly knowing everything is OK right now, but if it was stress-tested, it may not withstand the pressures - the risks of which could be anything from a grievance from an employee to a statutory breach you should have, but didn’t see coming.
The Employment Rights Act 2025 is being adopted in waves, with the first changes seen in April 2026, and subsequent changes in October 2026 and January 2027. You may have had sound policies up until now, but that was relying on legislation that had been in place for over 30 years. This is the biggest change to employment law in a generation and has significant impact on areas such as proactive prevention of sexual harassment at work, menopause, sick pay waiting days, tribunal claim time limits, trade union involvement, consultation rights, paternity leave from day one, and much more.
The recent changes to flexible working entitlements for employees now being a day one right, and the increasing awareness of neurodiversity in the workplace accounts for a substantial proportion of employee-led contract variations. Are you 100% confident that your managers are fully aware of the latest rules and that they have the training, tools and resources to apply them consistently?
Finally, with the statute changes impacting caps on probationary periods, reducing the qualifying period for unfair dismissal claims and the compensation cap for such claims becoming unlimited in 2027 - now its more urgent than ever to invest in a middle service that bridges the gap between your own HR team and a law firm - an subject matter expert whose designed a system that is immediately useful and practical rather than another thing to worry about.
I designed the Thrive People Governance & HR Risk Audit to help you understand exactly where your risks are and what to do about them.
This is a structured review of your contracts, policies, management practices, and HR processes so you can move forward with clarity.
What the audit looks at
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Contracts & Employment Terms
Review of employment contracts, legacy terms and contractual consistency.Handbook & Policies
Assessment of key policies including flexible working, family leave, sickness and workplace equality.Right to Work & Compliance
High-level review of right to work processes and statutory compliance obligations.Tribunal Risk Exposure
Review of potential risk indicators such as previous disputes, grievances or unresolved cases.HR Processes
Review of recruitment, investigations, disciplinary procedures and sickness management approaches.Manager Capability
High-level assessment of how management decisions are made and supported.Where relevant, I can also review regulatory risk areas linked to employment governance in regulated sectors.
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At the end of the audit you receive:
A clear action plan identifying:
• Immediate risks
• Structural gaps
• Governance improvements
• Recommended policies, processes or toolsIf chosen, you also receive an implementation roadmap, which sets out:
• what should happen first
• who should lead each change
• how the improvements can realistically be delivered.This helps organisations move from insight to action.
Investment
The Thrive. HR UK People Governance & HR Risk Audit is designed to give organisations a clear understanding of their HR risk exposure and what practical steps will strengthen their governance.
Different organisations require different levels of depth, so I offer three options depending on the size and complexity of the business.
Lite Audit – £595
The Lite Audit is designed for small businesses or early-stage organisations that want reassurance their core HR foundations are sound.
This review focuses on the areas most likely to expose a smaller organisation to risk and provides a practical starting point for improvement.
The Lite Audit includes:
• review of employment contracts (high-level review of terms and compliance)
• review of the employee handbook
• review of the ten highest-risk employment policies
• high-level tribunal risk sense check
• a short written action summary identifying priority improvements.
This option is often appropriate where:
• the organisation has fewer than 20 employees
• basic HR documentation already exists
• the main goal is reassurance rather than transformation.
What the Lite Audit does not include
The Lite Audit does not include a full governance review, management capability review or implementation planning. These elements form part of the full audit service.
Full People Governance & HR Risk Audit – £1,250
The Full Audit provides a comprehensive review of the organisation’s people governance framework, identifying both legal exposure and structural weaknesses that may create employee relations problems in the future.
This review examines the systems that influence how employment decisions are made across the organisation.
The full audit includes:
• review of employment contracts and legacy terms
• review of the employee handbook
• review of the ten highest-risk employment policies
• right to work and visa compliance checks
• IR35 risk where relevant
• statutory and mandatory compliance checks
• tribunal exposure analysis (including previous or ongoing disputes)
• review of key HR processes such as recruitment, sickness management and disciplinary procedures
• a high-level review of manager capability and decision-making structures.
Following the review, you receive a structured written action plan outlining:
• immediate risks requiring attention
• governance gaps that should be addressed
• recommended policy or process improvements
• suggested management tools or frameworks.
This audit is particularly valuable for organisations that have grown quickly or where HR processes have developed informally over time.
Audit with Implementation Roadmap – £1,750
Some organisations want more than a list of recommendations. They want clarity on how the improvements will actually be delivered.
The Implementation Roadmap builds on the full audit by translating the findings into a practical delivery plan.
This option includes everything in the Full Audit, plus a structured implementation framework that sets out:
• the order in which improvements should be delivered
• which changes are most urgent
• realistic timeframes for implementation
• who should lead each area of work within the organisation
• where additional support may be required.
The roadmap effectively converts the audit findings into a clear governance improvement plan, allowing organisations to move forward with confidence.
Many organisations use the implementation roadmap to guide HR development over the following 6–12 months.
Which option is right for you?
If you are unsure which version of the audit would be most appropriate, we can talk it through during a short call.
The goal of the audit is not simply to produce a report, but to ensure organisations understand their people risks and feel confident about the steps needed to strengthen their HR governance.
Book a clarity call