Sectors We Work With
Specialist knowledge of your sector. Fresh thinking from working across all of them.
Our Sectors
Every sector has its own regulatory landscape, its own cultural pressures, and its own version of the problems that bring organisations to us. We work across multiple sectors, and that cross-sector experience matters, not because we are generalists, but because it means we have seen virtually every type of workplace challenge in virtually every type of organisational setting.
Education: further education, higher education, and multi-academy trusts
We work consistently in the education sector, across universities, colleges, academy trusts, and independent schools. We understand how multi-academy trusts manage workforce transfers across multiple sites, each with different staffing structures, pay arrangements, and cultural dynamics. We know the tension between academic freedom and employment obligations in higher education, and we navigate the safeguarding duties, PREVENT requirements, and complex multi-union relationships that characterise further education environments. Our education work spans independent workplace investigations in academic settings, pre-TUPE due diligence for school and college transfers, cultural reviews across multi-site education groups, ERA 2025 policy reviews for education employers, and training programmes designed specifically for academic and college leadership teams.
Healthcare and NHS
Healthcare environments bring a distinctive set of employment challenges. Clinical governance considerations shape how investigations are scoped and how findings are communicated. Patient safety concerns influence priorities in ways that do not arise in other sectors. The combination of hierarchical structures, shift-based working, and sustained high-pressure conditions creates workplace dynamics that require advisors with genuine experience of operating in clinical settings. We bring that experience, having supported NHS trusts, hospices, and private healthcare providers with sensitive workplace investigations, cultural change programmes, and specialist employment law advice tailored to the healthcare regulatory landscape.
Public sector and local government
Public sector organisations operate under a level of scrutiny and accountability that fundamentally shapes every employment decision. We understand how local authority decision-making works, how elected member involvement creates additional layers of complexity, how public sector procurement frameworks operate, and how to provide advice that meets the standards of public accountability while remaining practical and actionable. Our public sector work includes complex investigations, policy reviews, and organisational development support for local authorities, central government bodies, and arm’s-length organisations.
Professional and regulated industries
Employment challenges in regulated industries are shaped by the intersection of professional obligations, commercial pressures, and the reputational sensitivity that comes with client-facing and publicly scrutinised operations. Law firms and accountancy practices navigate partnership dynamics and sector-specific regulatory bodies. Banks and financial services providers operate under FCA conduct rules, whistleblowing regimes, and remuneration frameworks that directly affect how employment issues are managed. Consultancies face the complexities of client-secondment arrangements and matrix management structures. Organisations in energy and natural resources, including oil and gas, manage international operations, remote and offshore working patterns, and sector-specific health and safety regulatory frameworks that create their own distinct employment law and HR challenges. Across all of these environments, we bring an understanding of the regulatory landscape, the commercial context, and the reputational stakes that shape how workplace issues need to be handled.
Charities, voluntary, and third sector
Charities and voluntary organisations face workplace challenges that are no less complex for the fact that budgets are tighter. Governance structures involving trustees and boards create additional layers of accountability. The boundaries between volunteer and employee roles raise specific legal questions. Organisations that exist to care for others can find it particularly difficult to address internal employment issues with the directness they require. We provide proportionate, practical support that respects the financial constraints of the sector while ensuring organisations meet their employment obligations and protect both their people and their mission. Our work in the sector includes independent investigations, policy reviews, ERA 2025 readiness assessments, and cultural reviews for hospices, housing associations, advice services, and community organisations.
Private sector
Private sector employers face the same employment law obligations as every other sector, but the commercial context is different. Decisions about people directly affect the bottom line, and the pressure to act quickly can sometimes work against the thoroughness that complex situations require. Whether you are managing a restructure with redundancy implications, dealing with a harassment complaint that could affect client relationships, navigating a TUPE transfer as part of an acquisition, or trying to understand why staff turnover in one part of the business is significantly higher than everywhere else, we bring the same specialist expertise and rigour to commercial environments as we do to every other sector we work in.